Will Space Force shift contracts to commercial? ‘Everything’s on the table,' official says

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—The Space Force’s main acquisition arm is looking to see which of its major programs could be scaled back or replaced with a commercial alternative.

“Nobody got a pass. Everybody has to do this excursion of 'Could I start over and meet my requirements commercially?' Haven't seen the results of those studies yet but…this wasn't just an academic exercise,” head of Space Systems Command Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant told reporters at Space Symposium on Tuesday. 

“Everything’s on the table,” Garrant said—from the DARC program, a massive construction project to build ground-based radar facilities to track satellites deep in space, to SSC’s satellite systems. 

The review was directed by Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the military deputy to the assistant Air Force secretary for space acquisition and integration. In February, Purdy warned that some of SSC’s programs have “nearly unbounded risk exposure” in their current form and are “future Nunn-McCurdys,” waiting to happen, alluding to legislation designed to manage defense-program cost overruns.

Garrant didn’t disclose when the command might move some of its programs to commercial alternatives. However, he did say certain missions will remain inherently government, like defensive and offensive space control, while missions like satellite communications, commercial imagery, and GPS satellite operations could be handed off. 

The Space Force is also searching for areas where it can just buy data instead of a new system, Garrant said. But the service will always need systems, especially those with “exquisite” requirements that perform strategic missions, he said. “It's going to be a balance. It's not a complete pendulum swing,” he said. 

It’s been about a year since the Space Force unveiled its commercial space strategy, which outlined which missions and capabilities could potentially move to commercial. The service has made some headway in adopting commercial offerings and is finally “putting our money where the mouth is” and allocating funds in the budget process, Garrant said. 

“We've caught up with the [planning, programming, budgeting, and execution] process now, and we're actually putting commercial in the budget. And the PEOs are expected to take their program dollars and spend it on commercial. So it's taken a little while for us to catch up, but we're there,” Garrant said. 

New commercial threat-sharing program

Also on Tuesday, the Space Force announced a new program called “Orbital Watch,” to share information about threats in space with commercial companies.

The program will be run through Space Systems Command’s Front Door program, which helps companies interact with the government, and will share unclassified threats with more than 900 commercial providers.

Orbital Watch will roll out in phases, the service said, and its “beta phase” will focus on disseminating information on a quarterly basis to give commercial firms assessments of threats in space. When the program reaches its full operational capability, it will have a secure portal to enable two-way threat information sharing. 

The initiative is in “direct alignment” with the Space Force’s commercial space strategy and congressional guidance to deepen the Pentagon’s relationship with commercial companies,  said Col. Richard Kniseley, senior materiel leader for SSC’s Commercial Space Office. 

“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,” Kniseley said.