The Space Force has put a defense contractor on a blacklist intended to hold companies accountable for poor performance and program delays.
“There is a company on the watch list today. I won’t say who it is,” Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, commander of Space Systems Command, told reporters at a Defense Writers Group event.
The Contractor Responsibility Watch List, or CRWL, was created in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act to give Space Systems Command the power to stop underperforming contractors from getting new contracts. Until today, the service has never confirmed if it has used the list.
The list “has absolutely worked as intended. We’ve seen significant improvement in performance and attention at the most senior levels of the corporation,” Garrant said. While Garrant didn’t name the company, he said the contractor works on high-priority space programs.
The service wants to expand the tool in the 2025 NDAA and move the authority to blacklist contractors to Air Force space acquisition chief Frank Calvelli. Calvelli has been known to publicly call out defense contractors for schedule delays, and has emphasized the need to hold industry accountable.
Once the authority is moved, Calvelli will likely use it “more frequently,” Garrant said.
Calvelli has been trying to address long-delayed “problem children” programs in the Space Force, including an RTX program called GPS Next Generation Operational Control Segment, or OCX, which are ground stations that will control the Pentagon’s constellation of GPS satellites, as well as an L3Harris space command-and-control system called Advanced Tracking and Launch Analysis System, or ATLAS.
The Space Force recently booted RTX from a contract to develop new missile warning and tracking satellites due to cost overruns and schedule problems—an example of how the service is keeping contractors accountable, Garrant said.
“[Calvelli] has talked a lot about holding people accountable, whether they’re in the government or in industry. Without particulars, in my tenure, we have relieved program managers that work for me, holding them accountable. I would offer that removing one of the industry partners was holding them accountable to what they proposed to us from a cost, schedule, performance perspective. That’s the indication,” he said.
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