New leaders are taking charge at two government agencies that spend tens of billions of dollars a year building and operating infrastructure to ensure continued U.S. superiority in space.
Erich D. Hernandez-Baquero, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, will oversee acquisition for the U.S. Space Force as an assistant secretary of the Air Force, and L. Roger Mason Jr., a defense industry and intelligence executive, will guide the nation’s intelligence satellite programs as director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
During Senate hearings in July, Hernandez-Baquero and Mason expressed support for closer coordination between the Space Force and intelligence agencies, wider use of commercial technology and faster action on acquisition programs, the website SpaceNews reported.
Their August 7 confirmation came one day after the Senate confirmed Space Force Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess, deputy chief of space operations, as the next chief of space operations. Schiess, nominated in May, becomes the service’s third chief, succeeding Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, who is retiring.
Hernandez-Baquero told senators his priorities would be acquisition reform, integration across missions and rebuilding the acquisition workforce. He called for broader authority for portfolio acquisition executives, or PAEs, who are charged with speeding up the delivery of combat-ready capabilities to the Space Force.
PAEs will control groups of related programs and cross-functional teams, enabling the service to make trade-offs across an entire mission area rather than managing a satellite, ground system or network separately. The PAE system replaces program executive offices, whose operations were narrower in scope.
Nine broad mission areas have been created: space access; space-based sensing and targeting; missile warning and tracking; infrastructure; battle management, command, control, communication and intelligence; satellite communications and positioning, navigation and timing; advanced capabilities; electromagnetic warfare and cyber; and space combat power. The PAEs were installed from January through July, with the most recent — infrastructure leader and Space Force Col. Richard R. Beckman — announced August 6.
Hernandez-Baquero said PAEs will help test capabilities earlier and more frequently to ensure that systems developed separately will work together. He also pledged to “personally coach and mentor every PAE,” SpaceNews reported. Hernandez-Baquero returns to the Air Force after a stint as a vice president with Raytheon, an Arlington, Virginia-based maker of precision weapons, guidance systems and defense electronics.
Hernandez-Baquero replaces Frank Calvelli, who left in January 2025.
At the NRO, Mason takes over an agency that changed its architecture over the past seven years under former director Christopher J. Scolese. The NRO is shifting away from a few large, expensive satellites in geosynchronous orbit to a network of more and cheaper satellites in low Earth orbit that can take a hit and continue operating.
The NRO is one of 16 intelligence community agencies, a hybrid organization employing some 3,000 people and staffed by uniformed and civilian armed forces personnel and by the Central Intelligence Agency. The NRO’s existence and its overhead mission were declassified in 1992, but most of its programs remain classified, according to an NRO fact sheet.
The director of the NRO reports to both the director of national intelligence and the secretary of war and serves as assistant to the Air Force secretary. The agency provides the military, intelligence community and policymakers with global situational awareness, real-time engagement support, signals intelligence and near real-time imagery, agile systems, and access to denied areas.
Mason had been working as chief growth officer at V2X of Reston, Virginia, provider of logistics and technical services to the Pentagon and intelligence community. His background also includes executive positions with defense contractors Parsons Corp. and Peraton Corp.