Beauchamp began working for the department in 2015, and most recently served as the director of security, special program oversight and information protection within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. In that role, he oversaw the Air and Space Forces’ highly-classified special access programs (SAP) and worked on insider threat mitigation.

But Beauchamp’s 29-year career spans across multiple positions at the Department of the Air Force, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). By and large, he either led or was involved in several critical events within the national security space — so much so that someone once described him as “the Forrest Gump of the national security world.”

“He goes, ‘You were kind of there in all the big happenings of your time of your career. You were right in the middle of all these things that were the big developments. Sometimes you were there in the background of the scene, and sometimes you were there front and center doing the thing,’” Beauchamp told DefenseScoop in an interview on July 3, his last day at the Pentagon, recalling how a colleague described his tenure.

After graduating from Lehigh University in 1992, Beauchamp was hired as a systems engineer for General Electric Aerospace’s programs with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He would eventually move to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) — the precursor to the NGA — after it was founded in 1996 as an operations analyst supporting work to collect imagery and targeting data in the Balkans during the Yugoslav Wars.

In 2000, Beauchamp became NIMA’s senior technical advisor for studies and analysis when he was 29 years old, making him the youngest person to be hired for a senior executive position within the agency since it was founded. Almost immediately, he was tasked with developing a congressionally mandated strategy that would convince the government to purchase imagery from commercial vendors.

At the time, the IC held a monopoly over space-based imagery and data, and the industry market was only just beginning to take hold. Beauchamp described the assignment as “trying to sell milk to people with their own cows.”

“Why would the NRO want to encourage the government to buy commercial imagery? They’re the judge to build and operate imagery satellites,” he said. “So I figured out what it would take in terms of investment to get industry to buy and build satellites sufficient to meet the government’s demands, because the national satellites were not meeting all of the government’s demand for mapping data.”

But after developing a business case for the strategy, Beauchamp said the government was largely opposed to implementing it. He decided to shelve the strategy after one final unsuccessful meeting held on Sept. 10th, 2001, he said.

“On the 11th of September, [Congress] called me up,” he said. “I’m in my office, we’re watching pictures of the [Twin Towers] smoking, and my phone rings and it’s the congressional staff saying, ‘You’ve got your money. Could you spend more?’”

Beauchamp’s $830 million plan was funded by one of Congress’ post-9/11 supplemental packages and created ClearView — the first program that allowed commercial companies to provide satellite imagery to the IC. Once U.S. forces had entered Afghanistan, Beauchamp also moved to purchase all of the overhead imagery of the country, he said.

“What we really wanted to do was make sure that this imagery that was being collected wasn’t being used by the Taliban to target our forces,” he said. “So I basically stitched a camouflage net made out of $100 bills over the country of Afghanistan in order to keep our forces safe.”

Today, commercially derived imagery is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. Companies like Maxar, BlackSky and Planet Labs all have several lucrative contracts with the federal government to provide space-based data for national security, weather and other needs. 

“So this industry, would it exist? Maybe. But would it have blown up the way it did? Probably not, if we hadn’t done this,” Beauchamp said.

The next several years of Beauchamp’s career would be spent at the NGA in various roles focused on strategy and acquisition. In 2012, he began a joint duty assignment as the ODNI’s director of mission integration under then-Director of National Intelligence Gen. James Clapper — a job he noted was one of the highlights of his career. During his second day on the job, U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, were targeted by militant groups, leading to the death of four American citizens.

Once Beauchamp’s team finished the assessment of the attack, he was immediately thrust into the fallout of the classified document leaks by Edward Snowden in 2013. His oversight led to a massive reform of the IC’s compartmented access programs and yet another overhaul of the government’s policy on commercial imagery.

“All of a sudden, now I’m convening people on the analytics side [and the] collection side, trying to figure out how to make up for the losses and capability that Snowden revealed,” he said. “And part of that is doing a reform of the IC’s compartmented programs, because they had way too many of them in overlap.”

Toward the end of his three-year assignment, Beauchamp started working with former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work on a “side project” focused on standing up a new organization to pivot the Defense Department away from counterterrorism operations in the Middle East and towards great power competition, he said.

Beauchamp’s time in the intelligence community came to an end in 2015, when he was picked to be the Department of the Air Force’s deputy undersecretary for space and director of the principal DOD space advisor. There, he had two critical tasks, he noted.

“One, I’m working with all the international relationships with other countries who want to cooperate with us in space,” Beauchamp said. “At the same, I’m trying to convince the Americans to shift from space as a sanctuary from which you provide services, to space as a domain for warfighting.”

At the time, the Pentagon was reluctant to expand operations in space out of fear of being the first to weaponize the domain. But Beauchamp argued that the idea wasn’t about weaponization, and instead protection of critical space-based capabilities.

“It’s almost like before then, we were deliberately not protecting them so as you didn’t look like you wanted to start something,” he said. “And I was like, ‘This is not an option anymore.’ The Chinese had already demonstrated they could shoot down their own satellites, what’s to stop them from doing the same thing to us?”

Part of Beauchamp’s work was to develop a plan for how the Pentagon could make its space systems more resilient — many of which have become central to the Space Force’s operations, he noted. And when the first Trump administration decided to stand up the Space Force, Beauchamp was at the forefront of the effort to convince officials to approve the new military service.

Beauchamp would then transition to the Department of the Air Force’s office of the CIO, first as its director of enterprise IT in 2018 and later as the deputy CIO in 2020. His main focus was preparing the DAF for transitioning to telework operations as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, as well as consolidating the department’s enterprise licenses and creating a plan for modernizing base-level infrastructure, he noted.

“The overall trend line was eliminating the county option of uniqueness that was taking place at every base, and replacing it with a core set of enterprise services that were provided centrally,” Beauchamp said. “Big things like moving to zero trust — you can’t do those things if every base and every two-letter has their own architecture independent of everybody else’s.”

Today, the DAF has a strong path forward on modernizing its IT infrastructure, but Beauchamp said the true challenge will be convincing the department’s major programs to rely on enterprise services instead of building their own networks.

“It’s going to allow them to consolidate and collapse multiple redundant networks and really reduce the amount of money we’re spending on sustaining all this infrastructure,” he said. “When you modernize those networks, you also improve your cybersecurity, because the more deviation you have, the more gaps are created between the different baselines and different versions of software.”

Moving forward, Beauchamp said he will be taking time off but is open to other opportunities in the future.

“I’m excited for whatever the next challenge might be,” he said. “I’m interested in talking to folks who do exciting things, and to see who needs somebody like me to solve big problems.”

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Inked by Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman and NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth during the annual GEOINT Symposium in St. Louis, Missouri, the MOA outlines the boundaries between NGA’s operations and the Space Force’s nascent Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking (TacSRT) program — putting an end to a two-year turf war over which organization should purchase commercial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance products and deliver them to combatant commanders.

“What [the agreement] really reflects is the quality of collaboration and every echelon that was necessary to work through these procedures,” Saltzman said in a statement. “I’m excited about this because of what it represents, and that’s really industrial strength collaboration.”

Whitworth first shared news of a drafted MOA with the Space Force in April during an interview with DefenseScoop, noting that moving forward NGA will work closely with the service to ensure the organizations weren’t “paying twice” for commercial ISR.

In a statement, Whitworth called the finalized agreement “a new standard for collaboration.”

While the full text of the MOA was not made public, the document outlines a “governance framework” between the intel agency and the Space Force by detailing the roles and responsibilities each organization has in providing commercial ISR to military leaders, an NGA spokesperson said in a statement to DefenseScoop.

Furthermore, a Space Force spokesperson told DefenseScoop that the MOA requires the service to collaborate with NGA support teams to “ensure data purchases and derived products … conform to consistent, mutually agreed upon National System for Geospatial Intelligence standards when applicable.”

The accord also states the Space Force will “coordinate processes and procedures for dissemination and releasability of products,” and submit a report to NGA each quarter that describes the service’s efforts to minimize overlapping efforts, the spokesperson added.

Disputes between the Space Force and NGA first arose when the service kicked off TacSRT in 2023. The program established a marketplace where combatant commanders can directly buy and rapidly receive “operational planning products” — including unclassified imagery and data analytics — from commercial space providers. 

Although Space Force officials have touted the success of TacSRT and begun efforts to scale it, the program caused some tension between the service and the intelligence community.

Under current Pentagon-IC policies, NGA holds responsibility for acquiring commercial ISR products and determining who across the government receives them. At the same time, the National Reconnaissance Office is tasked with buying commercial remote sensing imaging and sharing it across the department and intelligence community.

Space Force leaders have claimed that TacSRT is not meant to step on the toes of NGA and NRO, but instead serve as a complement to the intelligence community’s work.

During a hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Saltzman said the program “fills a niche where you have unclassified capabilities that can get quickly into planners’ hands.”

Now that the Space Force has finalized an agreement with NGA, the service is expected to also reach a similar arrangement with the NRO.

When asked by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., about progress on the Space Force’s work with the intelligence agencies on Tuesday, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink emphasized that foundations for collaboration have been laid — but “the devil’s in the details.”

“We’re just starting to feel good now and starting to do experimentation with [TacSRT] now, using tools to allow that to happen,” Meink said. “There’s obviously still a lot of work to go, but I think there’s been great progress made, and the fact that we already have systems that we can start doing testing work and start doing exercise will be critically important.”

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Col. Rich Kniseley, director of the Commercial Space Office (COMSO), told reporters Thursday that the service will stand up CASR pilots across three mission areas in 2025. One program will focus on small launch and is anticipated to kick off before the end of fiscal 2025, while the other two — satellite communications, and tactical surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking — are expected to be ready by December, Kniseley said.

The program’s growth comes just two years after the Space Force first conceived it as its own version of the Air Force’s Civil Reserve Air Fleet. Under CASR, the service can contract space-based services from commercial vendors during peacetime, which could then be used to augment and support military operations in the event of crisis or conflict.

In March, the Space Force launched CASR’s pilot phase when it awarded contracts to four commercial vendors to provide space domain awareness capabilities. The agreements cover an initial three-month period of performance and include peacetime and pre-priced surge capabilities, as well as the ability to conduct wargames with vendors, Kniseley said.

“What that allowed us to do is to start exercising some of the processes while we are still working in the background with some of the more challenging aspects of CASR, whether that’s prioritizing capabilities for US government use [or] denial of service,” he said during a media roundtable at the annual Space Symposium.

For the small launch pilot, the office will look to commercial launch providers already part of the Space Force’s Orbital Services Program-4 (OSP-4) program, which focuses on fast-turnaround launches of small payloads, Kniseley said. COMSO is partnering with Space Systems Command’s Assured Access to Space (AATS) directorate and the Space Safari program office for the pilot.

“It’s formulating a framework around launch, but small launch specifically,” Kniseley said. “Think of a call-up at a given point and some of the ongoing pieces. It will be a tabletop exercise more than anything, instead of an operational call.”

The pilot will align closely with the Space Force’s ongoing Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) initiative that aims to improve the service’s ability to respond to new threats on-orbit, such as by reducing time taken to launch payloads or prepositioning assets in space, Kniseley said.

He added that while the small-launch effort isn’t quite ready to serve as a mechanism for TacRS, the program’s managers are learning from COMSO’s pilot — including supply chain management and how it’s building the contracts to “surge and scale.”

Similarly, COMSO is looking to leverage the pool of vendors under the Space Force’s larger Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking (TacSRT) program for its upcoming surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking pilot, Kniseley said.

Broadly, the service’s TacSRT effort allows combatant commanders to quickly and directly purchase unclassified data from imagery and sensors collected by commercial satellites — but COMSO’s pilot will be framed through the CASR concept.

“What if we were to put a company on to provide X number of products during peacetime? If I want to scale that up, and as things go on and I’m going to be getting more and more requirements from the combatant commands — that’s the type of model and framework I’m seeing for that,” he said.

And while Kniseley didn’t provide specifics for the service’s SATCOM pilot plans, he said the mission area was the focus for the office’s first CASR wargame completed recently. The event was critical, as it gave COMSO a slew of action items and topics it needs to work on with commercial vendors as it builds out the program.

During the wargame, Kniseley exercised a forceful activation of CASR — representing a real-life scenario in which industry would be required to turn off capabilities to other customers to fully support U.S. military operations. The event allowed companies to coordinate together, while also giving them the opportunity to think about how they would work with their investors and other customers.

“I viewed that as a complete success because it wasn’t 100% successful,” Kniseley noted. “What I wanted to do was have nothing but commercial capability or vendors in there, and I wanted to start exercising the framework for CASR. I really wanted to key in on some of the aspects that we have questions on, and to have that dialog back and forth.”

As COMSO prepares to launch the three new pilot programs, the office is also conducting a study with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and the legal community on financial protection options for CASR vendors, Kniseley said. The results of the study should be released in the next few months to provide guidance on how the office plans to proceed, he added.

Overall, Kniseley said his office’s efforts to integrate commercial capabilities on a larger scale have garnered positive support from Congress. Before receiving $40 million in funds from the yearlong continuing resolution passed in March, lawmakers added $50 million to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for commercial space services, which was critical to getting COMSO initiatives like CASR off the ground.

He also pointed to President Donald Trump’s recent executive order calling for prioritization of commercial capabilities within the Defense Department as validation for COMSO’s work.

“[When] I look at the executive order, I look at it more as an exclamation point on a lot of the things that we’re doing,” he said. “But it will require additional budget. It will also require additional resources, and that usually means people, as well.”

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Initiated as a pilot effort in 2023, TacSRT established a marketplace where CoComs can directly purchase commercial imagery and related data analytics. In order to expand the program, the Space Force received an additional $40 million in funding as part of the continuing resolution passed by Congress in March. 

“The addition of this money represents a congressional vote of confidence in our efforts to tap into the commercial space market for the collective good,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said Wednesday during his keynote address at the annual Space Symposium.

Saltzman and other service leaders have touted the success of TacSRT in recent months, especially the initiative’s ability to rapidly deliver critical information to warfighters. Through the program’s Global Data Marketplace, combatant commands can put in requests for “operational planning products” that include unclassified data from imagery and sensors collected by commercial space vendors. 

Col. Rob Davis, program executive officer for space sensing at Space Systems Command, told reporters Wednesday that TacSRT data is primarily being used to support humanitarian operations and monitoring of illegal fishing around the world. 

And while the pilot version of TacSRT initially supported U.S. Africa Command, leaders at other combatant commands are leveraging the program’s marketplace as well. For example, U.S. Central Command also purchased commercial data analytics during construction of the Joint-Logistics-Over-the-Shore pier in Gaza, and TacSRT provided U.S. Southern Command with real-time tracking of wildfires in South America, according to the Space Force.

As it looks to scale TacSRT, the service is still figuring out the best ways to operationalize the program, Davis said.

In the TacSRT Tools Applications and Processing Lab, “we are doing the development of additional techniques, partnering with industry, partnering with [Space Force] component field commands … to develop new tools that we can then operationalize, as well,” Davis said during a media roundtable. “We continue, in that more developmental space, to do ad hoc support through that experimental space to answer questions that combatant commands have.”

With plans to expand TacSRT, the Space Force is also working with the intelligence community — including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office — to delineate roles and responsibilities for purchasing commercial imagery. 

Under current Pentagon-IC policies, NGA is responsible for buying analytical models and ISR products from commercial providers, as well as determining who across the government receives the packaged data. At the same time, the NRO is tasked with acquiring imagery from commercial remote sensing satellites and disseminating it across the Pentagon and intelligence community. 

However, the Space Force’s TacSRT pilot caused some tension between the service and intelligence agencies — with some concerned that the Space Force’s acquisition and distribution of space-based commercial imagery is a duplication of NGA’s and NRO’s work. 

But after years of back and forth, NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth told DefenseScoop in an interview that the agency and the Space Force have drafted a “memorandum of agreement” over the relationship between NGA and TacSRT. The service is also finalizing a similar agreement with the NRO, according to a report from Breaking Defense.

Whitworth explained that in his role as functional manager for geospatial intelligence, he is charged with oversight of both the Defense Department’s and intelligence community’s acquisition of space-based ISR from commercial satellites. To that end, his responsibility moving forward will be reporting on the use of commercial imagery in warfighting — including via TacSRT — to lawmakers while also involving the Space Force, he said.

“This fits beautifully into being that integrator, and Congress feels the same way from a stewardship perspective,” Whitworth said. “So getting to that issue [of] we’re not paying twice, keeping that denominator involving TacSRT officially in our world and vice-versa is healthy.”

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Space Systems Command’s Front Door — which facilitates the Space Force’s collaboration with commercial industry — launched the Orbital Watch effort March 21 by releasing “an unclassified threat fact sheet” to over 900 companies registered with the organization, according to a press release. The program intends to disseminate critical data to commercial providers so they can improve the designs of their systems against modern threats.

“Front Door is moving out on this essential effort,” Victor Vigliotti, director of Front Door, said in a statement. “We are providing our commercial partners the information needed to increase system resilience and mitigate threats, both of which are foundational to the successful integration of commercial space capabilities in national security space architectures.”

Last year, the Pentagon and Space Force each released strategies outlining how they planned to improve collaboration with the rapidly growing commercial space industry. While the Pentagon’s strategy outlined department-wide guidance on policy and procedures, the Space Force’s document focused on service-specific use cases for commercial technology integration.

Both strategies called for the establishment of processes that allow the Defense Department to share threat information — such as space domain awareness and cybersecurity — with companies in order to mitigate risk to commercial vendors working with the military.

“This initiative is in direct alignment with the DoD Commercial Space Integration Strategy and the USSF Commercial Space Strategy, as well as congressional guidance,” Col. Richard Kniseley, senior materiel leader of SSC’s Commercial Space Office, said in a statement. “Front Door has vast ties to industry right now and a clear mechanism for communicating threat information. The goal is sharing threat information in a timely manner, and Front Door is well equipped to do that.”

According to the Space Force, Orbital Watch will roll out in phases. The initial operating capability — or “beta phase” — will focus on releasing unclassified assessments of evolving risks in the space domain on a quarterly basis. That cadence will increase as SSC’s Front Door identifies and consolidates more sources of unclassified threat data.

“The full operational capability phase of Orbital Watch will introduce a secure ‘Commercial Portal,’ enabling two-way threat information sharing between the government and commercial space providers deemed critical to Space Force operations,” a service press release noted.

The Orbital Watch program comes as the Space Force continues exploring how to better integrate commercial capabilities into its warfighting architectures and operations. Notably, SSC is in the midst of reviewing its portfolio of legacy programs to understand if some of its requirements could be fulfilled using technology developed by industry.

The review was initiated in March by Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, military deputy for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, and began with an acquisition decision memorandum focused on analyzing commercial options for new space domain awareness capabilities that cover geosynchronous orbit.

However, SSC commander Lt. Gen. Phillip Garrant said the effort has expanded to every major acquisition program under the Space Force, and that program managers are now considering how they could meet their requirements with commercial capabilities. 

“It’s aligned with the pivot we’re trying to make, and everything’s on the table — from [the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability], which is a major construction project around the world, to satellite systems,” Garrant told reporters Tuesday on the sidelines of Space Symposium. “Nobody got a pass, everybody has to do this excursion of, could I start over and meet my requirements commercially?”

Garrant added that he hasn’t seen any initial results from program managers, but emphasized the review is much more than an academic exercise.

The Space Force has been clear about which mission sets can lean heavily on commercial technology — such as satellite communications and imagery — and others that will need to remain within the government’s purview, including defensive and offensive space control. However, Garrant noted that other mission areas are more difficult to delineate between what commercial can and can’t bring.

“Flying a GPS satellite could be commercial, [but] application of regional military power is probably inherently governmental,” he said. “So, it depends. But there are specific missions that won’t ever be commercial.”

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Companies that are part of the Space Force’s Commercial Integration Cell (CIC) will now be able to share and receive information at the top secret security clearance level for the service’s space domain awareness (SDA) and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, according to officials. With the addition of five new CIC members, a total of 15 vendors are now part of the effort.

Started as a pilot in 2015, CIC allows companies that have existing contracts with the U.S. government to receive top secret security clearance and insight into the Space Force’s current operations and planning. Along with the new SDA and ISR mission areas, the effort has previously focused on satellite communications and imagery. 

A key benefit to the program is back-and-forth information sharing between the service and vendors already providing capabilities for CIC’s mission areas, Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess, commander of Space Forces — Space, said Wednesday during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute.

“What that means is, when they’re a member of the CIC, they literally could have a person from their company, as long as they were cleared, sit in the [Combined Space Operations Center] with us,” Schiess said. “Most of them don’t tend to do it. Some come for a little bit, they get their folks trained, and then they go back. But they have the connections there.”

At the same time, CIC serves as a venue for commercial industry to provide feedback to the Space Force about business perspectives, capability requirements and technology solutions, according to officials.

The CIC is one of several ongoing efforts at the Pentagon that are intended to help the department leverage a fast-growing commercial space industry for warfighting missions. One of the key issues for commercial firms has been the ability to receive updated and rapid information about current and ongoing threats in the space domain — which has historically been highly classified.

Schiess did not immediately provide the names of the five companies that have been added as CIC partners, but noted that the Space Force is in the process of approving two more vendors for the cohort by early 2025 — bringing the total number of firms to 17.

Vendors in the program are also encouraged to collaborate and share data with each other, he said. For example, after Russia’s 2022 cyberattack on satellites operated by Viasat, a CIC member, the Space Force and other companies in the program received information about the attack.

“If there were things that that company found out, then they could also harden their ability to do that,” Schiess said. “We could provide information to them on maybe different satellites that are close to them, that might be listening satellites and things. And so we can provide that information to them on a fast basis.”

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While the strategy’s development is still in nascent stages, it’s intended to provide guidance as to how member nations can take advantage of a range of commercial space technologies to increase resiliency in the domain, Maj. Gen. Devin Pepper, deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and policy at NATO, said Thursday.

“There’s a lot of commercial capability out there that we can leverage to increase our own resiliency at NATO. We want to be able to capture that,” he said during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute. “Right now we have contractors with several commercial companies today. We want to be able to expand that and make sure that we can rely upon that in a conflict if we need it.”

Having previously served as deputy commanding general for operations at U.S. Space Operations Command (SpOC), Pepper was recently promoted to serve within NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) where he will work to advance the alliance’s multi-domain operations, including in space. Since it officially recognized space as an operational domain in 2019, NATO has worked broadly to bolster its presence and capabilities in that realm.

“We need to be able to have that data and that information available in a fight, whether it comes from the military or not,” Pepper said. “But if that gets shut down, we have got to be able to ensure that we can still prosecute a fight leveraging commercial capability.”

On Oct. 2, NATO hosted representatives from the space industry at its headquarters in Brussels for a Commercial Space Forum, where attendees discussed emerging threats — from cyber attacks on ground stations to GPS jamming and spoofing — as well as investment opportunities and information-sharing on threats, according to officials.

The meeting followed the alliance’s decision this summer during the 2024 NATO Summit in Washington, to develop its own commercial space strategy.

Pepper added that NATO’s commercial space strategy will be closely aligned with those published by the U.S. Defense Department and the U.S. Space Force earlier this year. The Pentagon-wide strategy outlines the policy guidelines for the entire department, while the Space Force document focuses on the service’s use cases for commercial technology integration and desired end states.

A NATO press release stated that its strategy will include guidance on protection for industry partners. However, there will likely be alliance-specific bureaucratic processes and mission opportunities included in the organization’s commercial strategy, as well as a different pool of commercial vendors able to participate, Pepper noted. 

“Not every nation in NATO is a space-aring nation [or] has space capability,” he said. “That’s why we have asked all of our nations to please tell us what you have, and then what industries may be available in your particular country that has a capability that we can certainly leverage.”

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The Space Force intends to have companies under contract for its Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) by 2025 or earlier, Col. Richard Kniseley, director of the Commercial Space Office (COMSO), told reporters this week at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference. The program is part of the Defense Department’s plans to leverage the commercial space industry for select military operations, as outlined in the Space Force’s Commercial Space Policy released in April.

Once finalized, the framework would allow the DOD to contract commercial space services during peacetime that would specifically be used during times of crisis or conflict — much like the Air Force’s Civil Reserve Air Fleet.

As it irons out details for the CASR contract, COMSO has engaged with dozens of firms during three separate industry days to discuss any concerns with the service’s draft framework, Kniseley said. The office is now reviewing responses to its request for information published in August, which included a draft readiness plan, incentive plans and contract clauses.

“This is a partnership, and it’s a voluntary partnership, so it’s important for us to get that industry feedback to make sure that this is a construct that they want to be a part of,” he said.

One key issue brought up by commercial companies has been the Space Force’s proposed “H clauses,” Kniseley noted. Two levels of industry support are outlined in the RFI — one intended for “day-to-day” and “surge” operations in the event of regional conflict or significant crisis, and a second known as “full CASR execution” that would be triggered by an order from the secretary of defense during a larger conflict.

If it’s decided that full CASR execution is needed, the RFI states the Defense Department would impose “direct denial of service to vendor customers or denial of service over designated geographic areas” — meaning industry would be prohibited from selling or providing services to other customers during that time. Three alternative H clauses are also included in the RFI.

“Some of the feedback from industry is that it just really puts them in a bad situation with their current contracts,” Kniseley said. “I would even say from a government standpoint, we kind of come in overbearing, if you will, and I don’t think it would be part of a partnership.”

One option industry has proposed is to have the Space Force consider linking the direction for denial of service to established sanctions lists, which would restrict sanctioned entities from accessing commercial products and services that are under CASR contracts, Kniseley later told DefenseScoop in an email.

The approach would simplify full CASR implementation by aligning with existing laws, mitigate risk of interference with other commercial business and streamline operational decisions in the event of conflict, he added.

“The primary distinction between this approach and the contract clauses options outlined in the RFI is its targeted, easily implemented and statutorily anchored nature,” Kniseley wrote. “Unlike draft contract clauses that sought contractor agreement to give exclusive access and 100 percent denial of other customers during crises, leveraging sanctions lists keeps denial of service during full CASR execution within already established legal boundaries, thus reducing the full CASR execution hurdles for companies and/or the government.”

Kniseley emphasized that the sanctions list option is not finalized, but added that the government continues to assess the approach for inclusion in the final framework.

Another point of interest for commercial industry has been financial protections in the event a company’s on-orbit systems are damaged or destroyed during war time, Kniseley said at the roundtable. Financial protection tools — including “commercial war-risk” insurance and indemnification — is one of nine incentives for industry to join CASR outlined in the RFI.

While working closely with the assistant secretary of defense for space policy on financial protections, Kniseley said COMSO has also met with legal professionals and private insurance companies to understand the service’s options for providing war-backed insurance. He noted that industry has routinely brought up options for indemnification, which would have the Defense Department compensate companies for damages or losses to their systems.

“I think legally, it doesn’t really fit the mold there. But I think the recognition is that we will easily continue to work with [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] on what that looks like,” Kniseley said.

Sustainable funding, access to wargaming exercises and threat-sharing mechanisms have been additional concerns from industry. Kniseley said COMSO is strengthening its partnership with the Space Force’s Joint Commercial Operations Center, the Commercial Integration Cell and the Space Information and Security Access to improve how it shares threats with future CASR members.

Kniseley noted that each CASR contract will likely not be the exact same, and COMSO will modify them based on specific mission areas and possibly through negotiations with each company. The office is about to kick-off mission area analysis for specific contracts.

“We’re looking at commercial SATCOM as it supports the Indo-Pacific region, working with the space component out there, as well as [the Space Warfighting Analysis Center], that will lay the foundation of how much we actually need to put on contract, and kind of extrapolate what a potential war would look like,” Kniseley said.

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The new document expounds on the Space Force’s previous assertions that it will integrate commercial space solutions into military architectures “wherever possible” as a way to augment or supplant current capabilities. The guidance indicates that the branch is looking for a range of “goods, services, and activities that support and integrate into a multifaceted hybrid space architecture.”

During his keynote speech at the annual Space Symposium on Wednesday, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman noted that the Space Force has become comfortable with using commercial capabilities in order to add capacity, but has not effectively integrated those technologies into its force design.

“The Commercial Space Strategy is not a panacea. It does not provide all the answers, but I do think it frames the discussion that must take place,” Saltzman said. “It sets the conditions for productive collaboration and it starts the critical processes needed to accelerate the purposeful pursuit of hybrid space architectures.”

The strategy comes months after Saltzman announced he had sent an early draft of the document back to the drawing board for revision. He emphasized that the strategy could not just be “aspirational” discussions, but required concrete definitions, examples and actionable guidance for the commercial industry.

Now, the 19-page strategy details four lines of effort — each with an immediate goal and offices assigned to oversee them — as well as the four criteria the Space Force will consider when deciding when and how to leverage commercial space technology.

While the strategy does not provide specific details about how much money is available to integrate commercial space technologies, Saltzman emphasized that “effective integration will only come about with a common understanding of our priorities, the missions where we need help, our proposal evaluation criteria and clear definitions of terms to enhance that collaboration.”

The directive comes on the heels of the Defense Department’s separate Commercial Space Integration Strategy, which was released last week. While the Pentagon’s strategy outlines the policy and structural guidelines for the entire department, the Space Force’s document focuses on service-specific use cases for commercial technology integration and provides criteria for mission areas and desired end states.

As detailed in the strategy’s second line of effort, “Operational and Technical Integration,” the Space Force wants to “operationally integrate commercial space solutions into a hybrid space architecture.” It also identifies and prioritizes seven mission areas where commercial integration is possible, including the potential capabilities that the Space Force is seeking commercial support for.

At the top of the Space Force’s list is satellite communications, and the service is looking for commercial tech that will increase and improve data transport “speed, capacity, agility, flexibility, reliability, and/or resiliency” for those missions.

Second is space domain awareness, where the Space Force wants capabilities from the commercial sector that “contribute to the holistic generation of SDA,” the strategy states.

New mission priority areas where commercial technology could be integrated, according to the service, include tactical, surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking (TacSRT); space-based environmental monitoring (SBEM); positioning, navigation and timing (PNT); and space access, mobility and logistics (SAML).

Cyberspace ops and command and control are included in the strategy’s list, as well.

In addition, the Space Force is seeking hybrid solutions for what it is calling “space mission enablers” — or capabilities that are essential to space operations and span across multiple mission areas. Those could include constellation management, artificial intelligence, ground support and more.

The strategy calls for both the Space Force’s force design and planning, programming, budgeting and execution (PPBE) processes to include more commercial space solutions, indicating that funding “will be allocated based on the strategic importance and urgency of missions within the USSF and priority will be given to mission areas critical for enhancing national security.”

In order to guide the Space Force’s decision-making when evaluating mission areas and commercial technologies that could be integrated into government architectures, the strategy includes four consideration criteria: operational utility, feasibility, resilience by design, and speed to fielding.

“As we work these lines of effort, we will have to make tough choices about where to place our precious resources,” Saltzman said. “There is never enough money to go around, so we will prioritize and scrutinize our investments. We are in an era of constrained resources and we are going to have to make trades between what we buy and what we build.”

Broadly speaking, the strategy’s remaining three lines of effort indicate that the Space Force plans to improve its engagement and collaboration with the commercial space sector.

For example, the document calls on the service to develop “a comprehensive understanding of the commercial sector’s innovative culture, shorter development timelines, and a burgeoning array of commercial space solutions to the greatest extent practicable.”

To do so, the Space Force will improve its overall awareness of commercial tech, identify requirements that can be met by commercial solutions during the force design process, and look for opportunities where guardians can integrate into the commercial realm to build mutual understanding.

The service is also tasked with establishing a process to improve how it shares threat information — including situational awareness and cybersecurity risks — with the commercial sector across multiple classification levels. The strategy notes the Space Force will actively work to reduce overclassification and other barriers that inhibit accurate and timely information-sharing.

Lastly, the Space Force is looking to establish a formal process to evaluate commercial technologies in order to identify potential capabilities and services that can meet requirements, according to the strategy. That includes tech from both traditional and non-traditional companies.

“We must continuously assess the future operating environment, what missions will be needed in what we need to perform, what threats we will face and what technologies we can bring to bear to meet our operational challenges,” Saltzman said. “We know we will need substantial support from the space industry to answer these vital questions.”

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The Department of Department released a new strategy this week that looks to improve how the DOD leverages and integrates technology from the commercial space sector for some mission sets. The document emphasizes that effectively working with industry requires a conceptual shift away from legacy practices and the elimination of “​​structural, procedural, and cultural barriers.” 

A key challenge moving forward for the department will be its ability to grant and facilitate classification access to commercial firms that are trying to work with the government, John Plumb, assistant secretary for space policy, said Friday during a meeting with reporters hosted by the Defense Writers Group.

“We have to start knocking those things down. I think I’ve helped lead the way on that, but it’s not enough to open the floodgates,” Plumb told DefenseScoop.

Plumb, who is exiting his role at the Pentagon at the end of April, has been a staunch supporter of reducing over-classification issues at the department. In January, his office updated its classification policy on space programs, essentially rewriting decades-old practices that were inhibiting how the DOD worked with outside partners.

“What things are classified due to policy concerns — I believe that problem is solved,” he said. “But issuing the policy didn’t change anything overnight. The services are still going to have to work on bringing things out of higher levels of classification down to things that are more reasonable.”

One notable part of the new commercial integration strategy is the department’s commitment to increase information-sharing on potential threats. The strategy specifically highlights space domain awareness and cybersecurity threats across various classification levels.

“The Department will work to mitigate barriers including overclassification, clearance processes, and cleared facility access to establish scalable procedures for unclassified communications with the commercial space sector,” the document states.

Plumb noted that because the National Security Agency is further along in its ability to provide actionable intelligence on cybersecurity threats to commercial entities, it is possible that the Pentagon could provide that data via the NSA in some cases.

However, it’s a different problem set for space domain awareness information, he told reporters.

“For the specific space threat — ‘Here’s a physical threat to your systems located in this country that you need to be aware of’ — we’re working through that, and I don’t want to pretend like we’ve solved it,” Plumb said.

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