According to a consultant for the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Post-Conflict Reconstruction evaluation effort in Afghanistan, the ordinary Afghan is losing faith in his country’s progress and government ability to sustain reconstruction in comparison to one year ago. Seema Patel, who traveled for six weeks in Afghanistan working with Afghan interviewers for the PCR project, found that ordinary Afghans expressed more wariness over security concerns and were only slightly less pessimistic when it comes to the other pillars of reconstruction—governance, justice, economic opportunity, and well-being. She wrote for the PCR online forum that Afghans believe inaccessibility to leaders and corruption are hindering the government’s capacity to meet peoples’ needs.
After the first tranches of its ambitious low-Earth orbit constellation faced production and supply chain issues that delays launches, the Space Development Agency is trying something new for its next round of satellite procurement. The agency awarded a $55 million contract to SAIC on April 22 for “system engineering and integration…