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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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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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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