A former official at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) recently said that the federal government should offer a degree of financial protection for commercial space systems.
“We have to have a financial incentive during peace time, during surge time, where the companies are getting additional contract purchases so that they can offset future costs of this capability,” David Gauthier, the chief strategy officer at GXO, Inc. and the past director of NGA’s commercial and business operations, told Kratos‘ [KTOS] Constellations podcast. “The other thing is in the CRAF [Civil Reserve Air Fleet] model with aircraft, it was easier for the government to hold civilian aircraft outside of combat operation zones, not force them to go into direct environments where they’re threatened by the military adversary, where they could be attacked. In space, it’s completely different.”
“The entire domain can be under threat at any time,” he said. “Anyone operating there can be considered a target, and we’ve heard Russians and the Chinese talk about commercial companies helping the [U.S.] military as being targetable so the threat is real, and that’s why I mention things like war risk insurance. The government has to provide some type of commercial protection to the companies that are supporting military operations in the space domain, and that would be the best way for companies to decide that they can be a part of this.”
Last August, Pete Muend, the head of the National Reconnaissance Office’s (NRO) Commercial Systems Program Office, announced the signing of the Commercial Space Protection Tri-Seal Strategic Framework by U.S. Space Command, the NRO, and the NGA (Defense Daily, Aug. 8, 2023).
Companies with NRO commercial space remote sensing contracts include Planet Labs [PL], Maxar Technologies, BlackSky Technology [BKSY], HawkEye 360, and Kleos.
In February 2022, Gauthier, who then headed NGA’s commercial and business operations, told Federal News Network that he estimated that more than a quarter of NGA’s imagery came from commercial companies and that he foresaw the percentage reaching 50 percent.
An official suggested recently that the more than 25 percent figure is still in the ballpark, although Defense Daily has not seen evidence to suggest that is or is not an accurate number.
U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command has said that it wants to establish an agreement with the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Space ISAC), established in 2019 in Colorado Springs, as SSC develops the framework for the Commercial Augmented Space Reserve (CASR), modeled on the CRAF.
Space systems have faced cyberattacks that CASR may help alleviate, Col. Richard Kniseley, senior materiel leader of the U.S. Space Force’s commercial space office at Los Angeles AFB, Calif., has said (Defense Daily, Nov. 6, 2023).
China uses artificial intelligence/machine learning for “sophisticated” phishing and business email cyberattacks, which are relatively low-cost, Kniseley said.
Last March, Space ISAC said that it had opened an
Operational Watch Center alongside the National Cybersecurity Center in Colorado Springs to monitor, analyze and respond quickly to cyber threats to space systems (Defense Daily, March 30, 2023).
Space ISAC has said that it shares free alerts and advisories from members and partners with current adversary activity.
Its members receive daily notices of cyber threats, incidents, and vulnerabilities to critical systems, Space ISAC said. Founding board members of the organization include Kratos, Microsoft [MSFT], Lockheed Martin [LMT], Northrop Grumman [NOC], L3Harris [LHX], Booz Allen Hamilton [BAH], and Parsons Corp. [PSN].
Ukraine’s use of commercial space in the country’s struggle to repel the Russian invasion points to future requirements to augment the protection of commercial space systems, Gauthier suggested in the Constellations podcast.
In the past, U.S. military/intelligence community use of commercial imagery “was as augmentation to current mission and not really providing the role for a commercial imagery to break out of its shell, and so it was always in a supporting role,” he said. “But this is the first conflict, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, where commercial ISR and imagery has a leading role, and I think
they’re winning the Oscar this year.”
“Russia-Ukraine provided the perfect use case,” Gauthier said. “If you think about it, there’s a lack of U.S. drones for ISR imagery over the battle space. There’s not a U.S.-led coalition with command and control infrastructure and everything else so we were relying on a scrappy [Ukrainian] military to make best use of what they could from commercial capabilities, and we allowed our industry to jump into the fray and showcase those capabilities, and I was personally driven to help commercial radar imaging get a foothold and take part in this effort.”