DOD space systems support and provide a wide range of capabilities to a large number of users, including the military services, the intelligence community, civil agencies, and others. These capabilities include positioning, navigation, and timing; meteorology; missile warning; and secure communications, among others. Space systems can take a long time to develop and often consist of multiple components, including satellites, ground control stations, terminals, and user equipment. DOD satellite systems are also expensive to acquire. Unit costs for current DOD satellites can range from $500 million to over $3 billion. The ground systems can cost as much as $5.5 billion and the cost to launch a satellite can climb to well over $100 million. Many major DOD space programs have experienced significant cost and schedule increases. For instance, program costs for the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite program, a protected satellite communications system, had grown 118 percent since its first estimate as of our March 2017 review and its first satellite was launched over 3.5 years late. For the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS), a missile warning satellite program, costs grew nearly 300 percent and the launch of the first satellite was delayed roughly 9 years. Both programs are now in the production phase where fewer problems tend to surface, and where there is typically less risk of cost and schedule growth. The only major satellite program with systems in the development phase is the Global Positioning System (GPS), which has seen an almost 4-year delay and unit cost growth of 9 percent due to technical issues. Cost and schedule growth has also been a challenge for satellites and their ground systems. In fact, delays with ground systems have been so lengthy, that satellites sometimes spend years in orbit before key capabilities can be fully exploited. For example, as discussed below, the command and control system for GPS III satellites, known as the Next Generation Operational Control System, or OCX, is at least 5 years behind schedule. Because of these delays, the Air Force has had to start two separate back-up efforts to ensure the continuity of GPS capabilities and to make anti-jamming capabilities available via Military Code, or M- code, until OCX is delivered. Additionally, over 90 percent of the capabilities to be provided by Mobile User Objective System communications satellites—the first of which launched in 2012 and with five satellites now in orbit—are being underutilized because of problems with integrating the space, ground, and terminal segments and delays in fielding compatible user terminals. Figure 1 provides more details on the current status of DOD’s major space programs. Cost and schedule growth in DOD’s space programs is sometimes driven by the inherent risks associated with developing complex space technology; however, over the past 8 years we have identified a number of other management and oversight problems that can worsen the situation. These include making overly optimistic cost and schedule estimates, pushing programs forward without sufficient knowledge about technology and design, and experiencing problems in overseeing and managing contractors, among others. Some of DOD’s programs in operation, such as SBIRS, were also exceedingly ambitious, which in turn increased technology, design, and engineering risks. While satellite programs have provided users with important and useful capabilities, their cost growth has significantly limited the department’s buying power—at a time when more resources may be needed to protect space systems and to recapitalize the space portfolio. Our work—which is largely based on best practices in the commercial sector—has recommended numerous actions that can be taken to address the problems we have identified. As shown in table 1, our previous work on weapons acquisitions in general, and space programs in particular, identified best practices for developing complex systems, such as developing more realistic estimates and ensuring technologies can work as intended before moving them into more complicated phases of the acquisition process. In 2016, we testified that DOD had implemented actions to address space acquisition problems, and most of its major space programs had transitioned into the production phase where fewer problems tend to occur. These range from improvements to cost estimating practices and development testing to improvements in oversight and leadership, such as the November 2010 addition of the Defense Space Council, designed to bring together senior leaders on important issues facing space. DOD had also started fewer new programs and even those were less ambitious than prior efforts, which helped to reduce the risk of cost and schedule growth. Given the problems we have identified in the GPS program, however, it is clear that more needs to be done to improve the management of space acquisitions. In 2015, we reported that the Air Force was experiencing significant difficulties developing the GPS ground system, OCX, and consistently overstated its progress to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). At the time of our 2015 work, the program needed $1.1 billion and 4 years more than planned to deliver OCX due to poor acquisition decisions and a slow recognition of development problems. The Air Force began OCX development in 2010 prior to completing preliminary development reviews in contrast with best acquisition practices. It accelerated OCX development in 2012 to meet optimistic GPS III satellite launch timeframes even as OCX development problems and costs grew, and then paused development in 2013 to address problems and resolve what it believed were root causes. After a rebaseline to the schedule in late 2015, further evidence that OCX still had unaddressed problems surfaced in 2016 when the Air Force informed Congress the OCX program had breached a Nunn-McCurdy unit cost threshold. We are continuing to monitor OCX’s progress and challenges to determine if it is on the right track as part of our ongoing GPS review. In 2015, we also looked at the Air Force’s military GPS user equipment (MGUE) program to develop for the military services GPS receiver cards capable of receiving the M-code signal. M-code is a stronger and encrypted, military-specific GPS signal which can help users operate in jamming environments. We found that the Air Force had revised MGUE’s acquisition strategy several times. Even so, the military services were unlikely to have sufficient knowledge to make informed procurement decisions starting in fiscal year 2018, because operational testing that provides valuable information about MGUE performance would not be complete until fiscal year 2019. On a positive note, at the time of our 2015 review, the current GPS constellation was proving to be much more reliable than the Air Force predicted when we last reported on it in 2010, giving the Air Force some relief in dealing with the delays with new GPS satellites. However, we found that OCX contingency plans were still necessary for sustaining the GPS constellation. We also found that initial M-code broadcast capability would not be available until the current ground system, the Operational Control System, or OCS, was modified in late-2019 at the earliest to make up for OCX delays. Full M-code capability—which includes both the ability to broadcast a signal via satellites and a ground system and user equipment to receive the signal—will take at least a decade once the services are able to deploy MGUE receivers in sufficient numbers. Preliminary results from our ongoing review of GPS shows that the satellites, ground systems, and user equipment are all still on a high risk path; though satellite delays are still somewhat mitigated by the longer than anticipated performance of older GPS satellites. More specifically, the first GPS satellite is planned for launch in March 2018, over 3 years before OCX Block 1 is scheduled to become operational. Block 1 is needed to command and control the current and new generation of GPS satellites, bring M-code into operations, and provide enhanced cybersecurity capabilities. In light of delays with OCX, the Air Force has spawned two additional development efforts—one to ensure continuity in the ability to process GPS satellite positioning, navigation, and timing signals (known as Contingency Operations or COps) and another to help mitigate the delay in the ability to process the M-code signal (known as M-Code Early Use or MCEU). However, these efforts will have limited capabilities. Moreover, more than 11 years after launching the first M- code capable satellites, DOD has yet to deliver M-code capable MGUE receivers. DOD will not have a full M-code capability until receivers are deployed on sufficient numbers of weapons platforms and munitions to support the warfighter, yet it is following a high risk path to deliver them. Based on our preliminary results, risks specific to each GPS segment are described below. Satellites: Since our 2015 report, the satellite program has encountered technical issues that have further delayed the first launch, which is almost 4 years later than the original estimate. Issues with failed and damaged capacitors have been a recent driver for the delays to the first satellite. Capacitors are components used to store and release electrical charges. According to program officials, each satellite has over 500 capacitors of the same design that experienced failures. The program discovered that a subcontractor had not qualified the capacitors for use in the GPS satellites and in response the program conducted qualification and reliability testing. However, the reliability testing was conducted using an incorrect circuit board, invalidating the test. The capacitor design was successfully qualified in December 2016. The Air Force decided to assume the risk of capacitor failure and proceed with the first satellite as- is, fitted with capacitors mostly from the questionable lot. The program replaced the suspect capacitors in the second and third satellites, the only other satellites that had the suspect parts. OCX: The contractor’s performance over the past year suggests a 2-year extended schedule approved in 2015 is insufficient. The contractor has experienced code growth and high defect rates, and is operating under significant schedule compression and concurrency, with minimal schedule reserve to account for acquisition risk. Moreover, the contractor’s current schedule estimates assume efficiencies from software engineering improvements, such as increased testing automation, that have not yet been demonstrated. These new processes have required the contractor to manage cultural changes. Additionally, the contractor almost doubled its staff to over 1,000 people to achieve the extension.