May 1, 2023
COLORADO SPRINGS — Few issues are of greater importance to the U.S. Space Force than the ability to identify, track and characterize objects in space on an operationally relevant timeline. Yet, despite the urgency of the mission and advanced commercial capabilities, Space Force is not leveraging available SDA solutions in a meaningful way.
An April Government Accountability Office report confirmed what many vendors have known for years. Programs intended to evaluate and acquire SDA data licenses to support the DoD mission “have been limited to a few studies and training events.” Even commercial data incorporated into the Unified Data Library (UDL), the cloud-based repository for government and commercial data, is not being used in daily SDA missions. This is driven, in part, by commercial and DoD data being stored on separate systems, formatted differently and not incorporated automatically for operational use, creating “significant disincentives for using the UDL.”
Space Force officials have acknowledged they are facing a big problem, especially in low Earth orbit. Speaking at the Space Symposium, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman warned that “capabilities for space awareness are still lagging.”
In just the last five years, there has been a nearly tenfold increase in the number of satellites operating in LEO. DoD is currently tracking some 47,000 pieces of orbital debris, nearly twice as much as it was tracking in 2019. Norms of behavior as they exist in other military domains simply haven’t been established and continued access to space is not assured.
“The threats in space are scaling,” said LeoLabs Founder and CEO Dan Ceperley. “Legacy space domain awareness systems were not built to scale; they were built in the Cold War. Now, commercial industry is bringing all of these solutions and they are scaling.”
Dozens of vendors with advanced ground and space-based sensor networks, data fusion tools, analytics and flight-tested software solutions make up the SDA commercial market. Many have solutions that could meet DoD needs immediately but continue to encounter roadblocks. Behind the scenes, there is growing frustration among commercial providers, policymakers and even military officials who are looking for ways to succeed in the SDA mission and support a thriving commercial space industry.
Two-Month Contracts
In recent years, there has been a series of efforts to make it easier for commercial providers to work with Space Force. The service has stood up new offices and programs designed to seed private innovation and improve the speed of testing, validating and incorporating commercial SDA capabilities.
The Joint Task Force-Space Defense Commercial Operations cell (JCO) was stood up as the SDA marketplace or storefront inside SSC. The JCO is supported by the newly rebranded Commercial Space Office (COMSO), led by Col. Rich Knisely, which aims to be a “one-stop shop” for government buyers to purchase commercial space data and services.
Through these efforts, Space Force appears to be embracing administrative mandates to buy what it can and build only what it must. Vendors are optimistic about the changes, but also skeptical of the service’s ability to chart a new course.
“They say all the right things. And that’s a plus. Three years ago, they weren’t even saying the right things,” said Jim Cooper, SSA Solutions Lead at COMSPOC, a space domain awareness software solutions provider. “They’re proud of the SDA marketplace and other efforts. I think they’re trying…but it’s all kind of small potatoes.”
Read the full article: https://www.kratosdefense.com/constellations/articles/dod-commercial-space-domain-awareness-dilemma
