Space Force Targets Speed in New Acquisition Approach

The Space Force is prioritizing faster contracting and innovation over perfection, aligning with the War Department’s acquisition shift, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, said last week.

“Today we face a complex, dynamic security environment, and we’re in an era of exponential technological change,” Saltzman explained during the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Hudson Institute “Drivers of Change: Understanding the Changing Needs of Military Space Operations” event on Nov. 20 in Washington, D.C. “The acquisition systems and practices we’ve used in the past are simply not suited to allow us to compete and win in today’s strategic landscape we must change if we want to maintain our edge.”

Saltzman said the military’s traditional methods for buying satellites and ground systems are outdated. He called the current moment a “generational opportunity” to overhaul a defense acquisition system that still functions as designed but is too slow for an era of rapid technological change.

The Speed Imperative and the OODA Loop

Saltzman said acquisition reform is both a bureaucratic efficiency goal and an operational requirement shaped by the OODA loop — the cycle of observe, orient, decide and act. He warned that major weapon system development timelines have become so long that early assumptions about the threat environment often change before a system is fielded.

“If the ‘decide’ and ‘act’ takes so long that the fundamental observations shift, then you become disoriented,” Saltzman explained. “The orientation that you did around those early observations are no longer valid and you are building systems that no longer meet the requirements that you started with.”

To combat this “disorientation,” Saltzman said the Space Force must compress its decision cycles. Echoing War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent comments on acquisition reform, he pushed for shifting from “chasing perfection” to building “minimum viable capability.” Under this approach, the service would field capabilities faster and iterate using real operational data.

“A capability that is good enough and ready now will always be better than a perfect solution that arrives too late for the fight, or one that never arrives at all,” Saltzman said. “We’re moving away from a fixed all or nothing ops acceptance milestone in favor of smaller, more frequent delivery. Increments will bring that minimum capability to bear for the war fighters sooner.”

This philosophy extends to testing. Saltzman called for moving away from long, single-event requirements testing toward more streamlined, mission-focused validation.

“We must … [shift] our test mindset to validate only what is required to ensure the minimum viable capability is effective for the users,” said Saltzman. “We can’t afford to maintain the status quo.”

The Pivot to Software and Ground Architectures

Saltzman said reform also requires shifting from a hardware-centric mindset to one that prioritizes software and ground infrastructure. Space programs have long focused on satellites while treating the software that operates them as secondary.

“If you think you can perform space capabilities without a deep understanding of network and cybersecurity, you don’t understand our business,” he said.

To operationalize this shift, the Space Force is aggressively adopting War Department’s software acquisition pathway, a program designed to buy code differently than tanks or planes. Space Force is applying the shift to its personnel strategy, too, he said.

“Everywhere we can apply it, we are applying it, because you acquire software differently, and we recognize that, and it’s such an important part of our business that we’re really focusing on that heavily,” said Saltzman. “In fact, we give directions to our developmental teams to find people that have software acquisition experience, and make sure we’re tracking that separately, because it’s a different competency, it’s a different skill set, and we want to track those competencies.”

Building the ‘Operationally Savvy’ Workforce

Saltzman also outlined a new approach to workforce development. He argued the complexity of modern systems requires officers who are both operators and acquirers.

He detailed a plan for “OPEX (Operational Experience) for all.” Under this model, officers will receive foundational training across all core disciplines: intelligence, cyber and space operations.

“By the time you’re an eight-year captain, you’ll have spent four years in operations, four years in a SPO [System Program Office], you’ll be trained as an intelligence officer, a cyber operator, a space operator and an acquisition professional,” Saltzman explained.

This cross-training is designed to eliminate the translation gap between the engineers building the systems and the guardians employing them. By ensuring acquirers speak the language of operations — and understand the tactical realities of the threat — Saltzman believes the service can “bypass” the friction that typically slows down program development.

Reframing Risk and Failure

Saltzman said the push for speed depends on accepting more risk, enabled by the changing economics of the commercial space industry. Historically, expensive satellites required 15- to 20-year lifespans and extensive testing. But lower launch costs and faster production cycles now allow the Space Force to refresh constellations every three to five years.

“We must accept more process risk to achieve more mission success,” he said. “This will come with more small-scale shortfalls, but those setbacks will help us field capabilities more effectively and on shorter timelines.”

Objective Force 2025

Saltzman also announced a new strategic initiative titled “Objective Force 2025,” an effort aims to formalize the service’s force design into a concrete, rigorous document that signals exactly what the Space Force intends to build.

He described it as a spreadsheet-level articulation of the capabilities, personnel and resources needed for mission success over a 15-year horizon. The document will identify which systems will be sustained, which will be retired and which new systems must be developed.

“There are some systems we use today that will that we will wean ourselves off of in the intervening years between now and 2040,” said Saltzman. “The Objective Force 2025 [plan] will say that.”

Saltzman has directed his staff to complete internal work on Objective Force 2025 by December, with a public release expected in early 2026. The document will be updated annually, with major revisions every five years.

“We have to clearly communicate the warfighting space architecture we need now and into the future,” Saltzman said.