Space Force’s ‘Rapid’ Era Ends as House Bill Targets Elimination of SDA and Space RCO
Table of Contents
The End of the ‘Rapid’ Exception
For years, the Space Development Agency (SDA) and the Space Rapid Capabilities Office (Space RCO) have operated as the disruptors within the Pentagon’s orbit. Established in 2019 and 2018 respectively, these entities were designed to bypass the notoriously glacial pace of traditional military procurement, allowing the U.S. Space Force to field satellites and emerging technologies at a speed closer to Silicon Valley than the typical defense bureaucracy.
That era of exceptionalism may be coming to a close. A draft fiscal 2027 defense policy bill from the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) proposes the elimination of both the SDA and Space RCO as standalone organizations. The move isn’t an indictment of their success, but rather a signal that their methodology has been absorbed. The Pentagon intends to reorganize these programs under Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs)—senior officials who manage broad mission portfolios rather than isolated, high-speed programs.
Institutionalizing the Hustle
The transition represents a fundamental shift in the Space Force’s internal logic. By moving SDA’s Transport and Tracking Layer constellations into the PAE framework, the Department of the Air Force is betting that “rapid acquisition” is no longer a niche specialty that needs its own agency, but a standard operating procedure that should be baked into every program.
However, the transition hasn’t been seamless. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo, the acting director of the SDA, now finds himself in a “dual-hatted” role, managing the agency while simultaneously serving as the PAE for missile warning and tracking. This overlap highlights the friction of a reorganization still in progress.
For those in the Space RCO, the outlook is more ambiguous. Because the RCO manages predominantly classified programs, its exact placement within the new PAE structure remains a mystery. Kelly Hammett, director of the Space RCO, didn’t mince words during the State of the Space Industrial Base conference in Albuquerque, describing the process as a “frustrating journey.”
“The service requested… the authority to essentially break glass, destroy everything we have in space acquisition and start fresh,” Hammett noted. “That’s what they’re trying to do, but all the details about what that means have not essentially rolled out.”
Hammett’s concern is poignant: the Space RCO spent years cultivating a team of what he calls “acquisition hunter killers.” The risk is that by dissolving the organizational boundary of the RCO, the specialized expertise and cultural agility of those teams could be diluted by the very bureaucracy they were created to avoid.
The Commercial Gap
While the reorganization focuses on how the Space Force buys, the HASC is equally concerned with what it is buying. There is a growing tension between the Space Force’s strategic rhetoric and its actual spending. Despite record budget requests, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers pointed out a troubling trend: the request for commercial services in the fiscal 2027 budget is nearly half of what it was in 2026.
The committee is specifically eyeing the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR)—a critical pool of commercial satellite communications and sensing that can be activated during a conflict—and the Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking (TAC SRT) program. Lawmakers are signaling that the Space Force is talking a big game about “commercial-first” strategies while failing to put the necessary capital behind them.
Service vs. Integration
The Space Force, however, argues that the HASC is looking at the wrong ledger. Col. Tim Trimailo, director of the Space Systems Command’s Commercial Space Office, contends that the military is moving away from buying commercial tech as a standalone “service” and instead embedding it directly into government-owned hardware.
According to Trimailo, the integration of commercial software, cloud infrastructure, and satellite buses into bespoke government constellations is still “commercial integration.” In this view, the lack of a dedicated “commercial service” budget line isn’t a lack of investment, but a sign that commercial technology has become so foundational that it is now invisible—merged into the very fabric of the Space Force’s primary architecture.
The HASC is scheduled to debate the National Defense Authorization Act on June 4. Whether the dissolution of the SDA and Space RCO will truly streamline acquisition or simply re-institutionalize the red tape remains the central question for the contractors and engineers currently building the future of American orbital dominance.
