Is it fair to say that by collapsing various portions of your organization into a more centralized structure you’ve been able to better centralize the authority to work on projects as well as being able to better focus the organization?

Lt. Gen. Richard Formica: Well, I think the intent is to be more efficient and, at the same time, to be more effective by enabling better integration across the three functional areas. Maybe it is more “centralized” but the intent wasn’t necessarily to “centralize” it as much as it was to better integrate across the three functional areas so you improve the collaboration between the capability development folks that are doing doctrine and organizational development, with the technology folks that work with Deb Wymer. Let me pause here and let Deb give you a perspective from her vantage point on the organization, the command, and streamlining and the effect that that’s had.

Debra G. Wymer: I agree with Gen. Formica that the streamlining of the three core tasks that he’s accomplished has helped us better work across the command. Now from the materiel development perspective, which is my responsibility within the command, also collapsing the two previous organizations that were doing materiel development into one that’s now the Technical Center, has also facilitated the management of programs. Essentially what we’ve done by collapsing the two materiel development organizations is create one organization that is essentially a microcosm of the acquisition process. So we have elements within that organization that do technology development, integration, and demonstration where we’re actually producing vehicles for flight testing, and then we also support conducting flight tests. The USAKA/RTS, the Reagan Test Site, is part of the effort there in the Technical Center too. So, I believe that we’ve accomplished in the past year a streamlining on the acquisition side of the command that has allowed us to better focus those three main areas: technology development, technology demonstration, and testing.

 

In addition to doing this within your own command, it looks like you are doing a lot of outreach and partnering with other services and even other nations out there.

Lt. Gen. Richard Formica: Yes. I’d say, first, just by the nature of the command – because we operate in two areas, space and missile defense, that have fairly extensive governance structures in [DoD], and lots of stakeholders in both space and missile defense – by our very nature it was important for us to sustain and improve the relationships that we had with those stakeholders. So we work hard, for instance, at maintaining a close and collaborative, though not always in agreement, relationship with the Missile Defense Agency [MDA]. [We also] work closely with the Naval Air and Missile Defense Command [NAMDC], which in fact I just came back from recently visiting.

Gen. Campbell had helped the Army stand up Army’s Cyber Command [ARCYBER – the Army component to U.S. CYBERCOM], and served temporarily as the Army’s component commander. We have retained a close relationship with ARCYBER, because of the operational linkages between space and cyber warfare, because we can help them with their capability development function as they stand that up. They’ll never really have the materiel development function like we have, and we can be reached back to them. So working closely with improving our relationships with MDA, NAMDC, ARCYBER, JFCC-IMD [Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense], the other functional components [is a priority.]

And then there’s a pretty broad space community, so [we work with] U.S. Air Force Space Command, NGA [National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency], NRO [National Reconnaissance Office], and we’ve got pretty good relationships with all those and have worked hard to expand them.