Long-term planning and adoption of commercial practices could...
Long-term planning and adoption of commercial practices could improve the Department of Defense satellite control operations, a GAO report said. DOD satellite control networks are fragmented and potentially duplicative, GAO said in a report released Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/13qToyQ). The agency has…
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no long-term plan for such operations, the report said. DOD lacks “reliable data on the costs of its current control networks and is unable to isolate satellite control costs from other expenses,” it said. Though Air Force officials and a decade of government research agree there are opportunities to use commercial practices in Air Force operations, the Air Force “has generally not implemented these practices,” it said. GAO recommended that the DOD do an analysis at the start of a new satellite acquisition to determine a business case to proceed “with either a shared or dedicated satellite control system.” It also suggested developing a long-term plan that identifies ways to “capture or estimate satellite control costs” and authorities to be given to program managers, that will give them flexibility “to ensure ground systems are built to a common network when the business case analysis shows it to be beneficial,” GAO said.