Col. Eric Felt
Director of Space Systems Engineering, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration
Col. Eric Felt leads a team within the Space Force’s Pentagon acquisition office responsible for systems engineering and integration of space capabilities: communications; position, navigation, and timing; remote sensing; space access, mobility, and logistics; and space control.
For the past three years, they focused on:
- Speed: Ensuring Space Force programs deliver critical capabilities that work faster
- Resiliency: Proliferating and protecting systems to counter rapidly-changing threats from peer competitors
- Integration: Systems-of-systems engineering to deliver, at scale and speed, end-to-end capabilities
“One of the best ways we’ve found to deliver space capabilities faster is to fully embrace emerging commercial and international partner capabilities as integral elements of our operational hybrid space architectures,” Felt said. “Robust entrepreneurial space innovation is a vital strategic advantage we never take for granted, a game changer that deters our adversaries.”
Through the Secretary of the Air Force’s Operational Imperatives, Felt and his team identified $43 billion of space initiatives needed to deter conflict and successfully advocated for funding the highest priorities through the Defense Department’s budgeting processes.
Why Watch
For 2025, one of the acquisition team’s primary focus areas is space superiority.
“Space superiority is our prime imperative,” said Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, “and we do not yet have the service we need.”
In addition, DOD is moving out aggressively on Golden Dome for America.
“Potentially transformative space capabilities pursued as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s could not be built at the time, but critical technologies have now matured,” Felt said. “Golden Dome will be a big deal — very exciting and impactful.”
Felt will retire from Space Force in May 2025 after 28 years of service. Watch for what comes next.
Fun fact: Felt also loves aviation. He is a private pilot and building a Van’s Aircraft RV-12 experimental light sport aircraft in his basement. “Building my own plane has been a dream since Test Pilot School and I’m very excited to be finally doing it. It’s easy and fun, like LEGO for pilots,” he said.