Interview With Space Development Agency’s Chief Of Contracts, Christopher Glista

Date: March 3, 2025 | Outlet: Defense Acquisition University Magazine | By: Emily Ashcom and Benjamin Tyree

Christopher Glista, Chief of Contracts for the Space Development Agency (SDA), is responsible for the daily operation of SDA’s contracting cell and advises agency leadership on acquisition planning and provides contracting support for SDA business operations. Under his management, SDA has awarded more than $10 billion in contracts supporting its Proliferated Warfare Space Architecture (PWSA) Tranches 0-to-2 Middle Tier Acquisition programs. 

Earlier, Glista spent more than a decade at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a contracting officer, where he provided contracting support to the Tactical Technology Office for the majority of the DARPA space portfolio.

He began his government career as an intern in the Naval Acquisition Program at the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR).

Glista holds a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and an MBA from Johns Hopkins University. He received the Defense Acquisition Workforce Award for Contracting and Procurement in 2022; the DARPA Operations Executor of the Year in 2015; and the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service in 2009.

Glista was interviewed Feb. 4, 2025, by Defense Acquisition editors Emily Ashcom and Benjamin Tyree.

Q. Multiple agencies have responsibilities for U.S. interests in space, like Space RCO [Rapid Capabilities Office], Space Systems Command [SCC], and NASA. Where does SDA fit in this picture and how are you coordinating and collaborating with those different organizations?

A. For SDA, it’s really, really easy. We’re the low Earth orbit people. We’re developing something known as the PWSA. It’s a massively proliferated constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit. That’s really what we concentrate on versus Space RCO, that’s doing more classified work and SSC, which has a huge portfolio mostly in middle Earth orbit and geostationary Earth orbit.

So, we do have a clear delineation of responsibilities, and there’s really not too much duplication of effort. We do work with SSC. We also have a good relationship with the Missile Defense Agency.

Space Force was set up very cleverly. Each of the three acquisition organizations has our own contracting authority and our own head of contracting activity. So, we kind of control what we do. What they did that was smart, though, was set up the Space Acquisition Executive for the Space Force, so a lot of coordination happens at that level.

Obviously SSC owns the launch enterprise. I think we’re going to be one of their biggest customers given the number of launches we have planned. So, we do coordinate with them on that front as well.

Q. As the inaugural member of the SDA Contracts Cell, you built a contracting organization from scratch, I believe. How did you begin this monumental effort? Can you discuss some of the hurdles and successes during that journey?

A. Yeah, it was quite a journey. I was literally the second employee here at SDA. I’d say when we started one of the toughest things was just letting people know we existed. When we were stood up, we were another defense agency, so we were completely independent. We then had a second sort of rebirth, sort of a second stand-up when we were moved to the Space Force in FY 2023. So, to a certain extent, we had to go through that process all over again. We had to get a new DoDAAC [DoD identification code], a new contract writing system, and sort of familiarize ourselves with certain Air Force policies that we hadn’t followed in the past. It’s kind of been an ongoing struggle. I think we’re in a good place now. The Air Force has done a good job integrating us in their process.

At first, we kind of had to sink or swim on our own, so it was a challenge. But I think we were able to overcome that fairly quickly.

Q. SDA has been praised for your success in navigating what’s traditionally a very slow DoD acquisition process. How are you leveraging different commercial technologies and different authorities to achieve this?

A. Well, I’ll start with the authorities first. We were given just about every helpful authority you could imagine. We had our own head of the contracting activity, our own Senior Procurement Executive Authority. We also have, obviously, the Other Transaction Authority, which is helpful for attracting nontraditionals.

I’d like to say that we’ve gotten a lot of support from the department and probably the thing that’s been most helpful to us is the Middle Tier Acquisition Authority. That has been a godsend. Having validated requirements under DoD Directive 5000 using the traditional JCIDS [Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System] process is just too cumbersome. You can’t move fast enough.

For our requirements here at SDA, we use something called the Warfighter Council with representatives from all of the Services and the combatant commands who come up with an informal list of requirements, which we implement on the next tranche of the PWSA. And then we take those requirements to the Middle Tier Acquisition Board.

Middle Tier acquisition has really enabled SDA to move quickly.

Also, our decision to procure capabilities on a fixed price basis brought in nontraditionals. A lot of those companies can’t do contracting on a cost reimbursement basis because they don’t have the accounting system. For our initial tranche, York Space Systems was one of the performers. They were a very new entity that hadn’t done business with the department before. So bringing them on board using the fixed price contracting mechanism really helped. And we’re still currently trying to expand our performer base to include more nontraditionals.

Q. Given your contracting background at SDA, DARPA, and NAVAIR, what critical gaps do you see in terms of national security and intelligence in the space realm?

A. With respect to our basic and applied research (DARPA and AFRL [Air Force Research Laboratory]), I think there could be some tighter coupling there. I don’t think we have direct agreements with any of them in terms of what technologies are going to flow specifically into SDA. So, I do think if they could codify that [it would be helpful].

The Navy was really smart. When I was at DARPA for the long-range anti-ship missile program, they actually set up a joint program office where Navy folks from NAVAIR were embedded at DARPA. And so, we were really able to have that face-to-face interaction. I’m not seeing that tight coupling with space at that level. So, that would probably be my bigger recommendation. You don’t want to handcuff that relationship, but I do think that the acquisition activities and the R&D organizations could probably talk to each other in a more formal setting.

Q. And we wanted to talk a little bit about the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Tranches 1 and 2 involved missile tracking and defense capabilities, and you recently released solicitations for a Tranche 3. Can you talk a little bit about the contracting aspects and how you’re tracking with that?

A. Tranche 3 is underway. We released a solicitation for what we call the Tranche 3 program integrator. So, we’re actually going to bring in a company to help us coordinate amongst the multiple vendors that are going to participate on Tranche 3 of the PWSA.

Our acquisition model is a little bit unique in that we don’t just have one big prime that builds the whole system for us. We have multiple performers communicating with each other through common standards. We want interoperability, but we do have multiple performers. There are advantages to that in the sense that we don’t get vendor-locked to one big prime. But there are challenges when you’re trying to coordinate with multiple performers. And for Tranche 3, we’re bringing on this integrator; that’s sort of one programmatic thing to highlight.

In terms of the actual satellites themselves, you know we have our data transport layer and our missile warning/missile tracking layer. For transport, we’re going to be fielding 140 satellites and we’re dividing those up into three variants. We’re using Greek letters: Lambda, Upsilon, and Sigma. Lambda is going to be our advanced Global Link 16 satellites. We’re going to add additional capabilities to the existing Link 16 capability that we currently support. The 40 Upsilon satellites are going to support legacy global tactical satellite communications. And then the 20 Sigma variants will support tactical SATCOM [satellite communications] using S band frequency. So, we’re rolling out with that.

We’ve actually had an industry day where we’ve pitched that concept. We also talked during the industry day about the plans for our tracking layer. We’re not as far along with tracking, but we anticipate that we’re going to have a total of 54 satellites that we field. Thirty-six of those will provide missile warning/missile tracking capability, and the remaining 18 we hope will have missile defense capabilities.

For both the Upsilon transport variance and the missile warning/missile tracking/missile defense, we have recently released draft solicitations looking for industry feedback. We’ll see what we get back. Our plans won’t change too much, but in terms of the specific mechanism contractually and programmatically, we’re looking to get industry feedback.

We anticipate that some of those Tranche 3 solicitations will be awarded by the end of this fiscal year and early Fiscal Year 2026.

Q. Last November, SDA awarded contracts for about eight satellites scheduled to launch in the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2027 as part of the FOO Fighter program. Could you describe the program and its value?

A. I can’t go into specifics with the program because the statement of work itself is classified. Like you said, it is eight satellites providing fire control capability to the Warfighter on orbit.

We’ve also put into place a contract for ground support that’s going to support the FOO Fighter mission called the Advanced Fire Control Ground Infrastructure. And FOO Fighter is part of that bigger Futures Program that we have. As the name implies, it’s looking at future capabilities. They’re not going to be at least immediately incorporated into the PWSA, but we’re trying to validate those on orbit to see if they would be good candidates for future tranches. So that was the whole idea behind that Futures Program Office.

Q. Are there any other ongoing SDA programs that you would like to highlight for us?

A. I think the biggest one is probably our HALO [Hybrid Acquisition for Proliferated Low Earth Orbit] program. It’s basically an IDIQ [Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity] type arrangement. We have a pool of 19 nontraditional space companies. They were given small awards for about $20,000 each. They’re going to be competing for prototype mission demonstrations on orbit. I think it’s exciting because it’s people that haven’t really been working with SDA yet that may have good satellite buses that we’d like to take advantage of for future tranches of the PWSA.

So, that has attracted a lot of interest to SDA. I think originally we got 43 proposals for that. It just shows that we’re sending that demand signal and that nontraditional folks are interested in playing with us. HALO is another effort to diversify our performer base. And it seems like it’s gotten off to a good start.

Q. Is it tough to find adequately prepared nontraditional suppliers in your market?

A. It is in a sense. We try to leverage commercial technology as much as we can. Probably the easiest place to do that is with the space vehicle bus, the stuff that we bolt our payloads to. That’s where we’re really looking to expand our nontraditional base to the extent we can. The Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture is a little bit different than what people think of with a typical LEO [low Earth orbit] constellation, like Starlink. Our constellation has to be backward-compatible with legacy weapon systems. By definition, that’s going to limit some of the folks that can do business with you. When you’re talking about missile warning/missile tracking missions, those are exquisite payloads that only certain companies know how to produce. We’re trying to expand the base there, but it’s harder to do.

I think the biggest chance we have to expand the performer base is with the space vehicle bus, and that’s sort of what HALO is trying to get after, right now. We’re ultimately trying to move toward what we call commoditized buses where these nontraditional companies build a bunch of space vehicles that come off the assembly line and then we can bolt our payloads onto there. We’re just not there yet, and a lot of that has to do with the industrial base that hasn’t ramped up fast enough. And our payloads are kind of exquisite, so you’re not going to just be able to bolt things onto any random space vehicle.

SDA is kind of in a unique spot between being a truly commercial capability and something that has to be backward-compatible with existing DoD systems. I think that’s where SDA actually provides value. If you could just buy everything purely commercially, you wouldn’t need a separate acquisition activity. So, we’re trying to leverage commercial to the maximum extent possible, recognizing that that’s probably never going to happen as long as we need to play with other DoD systems.

Q. As an award-winning contracting professional, how do you think the acquisition workforce could be better equipped to meet the unique needs of space acquisition?

A. I think in general we have the tools we need. We have electronic contract writing systems. We have good filing systems. We have DAU to get people up to a certain level of proficiency. So, I think we’re in a good place.

I would say for the Space Force specifically, there are increasing opportunities to bring people together from the three acquisition activities, to talk about specific programs to the extent that’s possible, the challenges that folks have faced, getting them all in the same room sharing real-world experience, sharing battle stories—I think that will really help things out.

I also mentioned having the right tools. With artificial intelligence, I know the Air Force is looking into how we use that. I think there’s a big gain in terms of updating the department’s business tools, reducing level of effort, sharing information, and getting our contracts correct. I think we’re not leveraging technology to the full extent we could be.