Satellite imagery taken by Maxar Technologies on Aug. 29, 2022 shows the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine. (Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies)
GEOINT 2023 — The Space Force and the Intelligence Community are slowly honing in on a multi-faceted agreement about their respective roles in buying intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data from commercial satellite operators, according to officials from both sides, centering on how new contracting arrangements could foster sharing and avoid duplication.
While nothing official has yet been signed, a number of developments, unreported until now — from a new informal accord, to planned meetings with relevant officials, to discussions of a common “marketplace” for commercial buys — suggest a new push to resolve bureaucratic squabbles over the strategically critical capability. How far that gets, however, remains an open question, considering the difficulties involved and the tendencies of large organizations to cleave to the status quo.
“Officially, the roles, responsibilities, and budgets are very clearly aligned. However, it is also quite clear that this is a time of significant change,” said Keith Masback, a former senior IC official who now councils commercial firms seeking to break into the national security ISR market. “There are new realities — such as the vastly increased agility and timeliness of commercial remote sensing as well as improvements in spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution — that call for a different construct in terms of warfighter support. I think we are lacking comprehensive, blunt discussions about the way forward which include the Hill, the services, and the agencies.”
The latest round of haggling deals primarily with the division of labor between the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), traditionally the keeper of US spy satellites, on the circumstances in which the neophyte service would buy its own commercial imagery to fill what it sees as an “urgent” military need. Indeed, the bickering over commercial ISR acquisition was called out by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in a September 2022 report.
NRO has maintained acquisition authority for commercial remote sensing imagery since 2018, when the office took it over from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). NGA remains in charge of acquiring analytical services produced by commercial providers, as well as for disseminating ISR products derived from sensors in other domains provided by NRO, DoD and other national security organizations (such as the CIA).
“There is no formal agreement yet” between the Space Force and NRO, Col. Rich Kniseley, director of the new(ish) Commercial Space Office at the Space Force’s primary acquisition command, Space Systems Command, told Breaking Defense. His office is responsible for procurement of satellite-based commercial services, including imagery of both terrestrial targets and other spacecraft, as well as communications, weather and positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) data. It combines previously stand-alone organizations for interfacing with commercial providers, including: the Commercial Satellite Communications Office (CSCO), the Space Domain Awareness Marketplace, the SSC Front Door, and SpaceWERX.
While confirming that no official agreement has been inked, an NRO spokesperson explained in an email that the outlines of a tentative, “informal” accord is already in place.
“To leverage NRO and Space Systems Command’s (SSC) acquisitions, we have an informal agreement with the Commercial Space Office (COMSO) that SSC will use NRO contracts first wherever possible. Similarly, as COMSO establishes acquisition strategies and data purchase agreements within SSC’s area of responsibility, such as Space Domain Awareness, NRO agrees to use COMSO data purchases wherever possible,” the spokesperson said.
Kniseley said that he is planning to meet with the IC’s Commercial Space Council to work out details of a future agreement.
“I am in the process of setting up a meeting this month for that very purpose, but this effort has been in work for some time,” he said. The September GAO report “laid out some great recommendations to clarify some roles and responsibilities in this area, and we are focused on delivering outcomes at speed. The intent has always been to be integrated with the IC activities to ensure no unnecessary duplication but deliver Combatant Commands commercial space options in timelines they have more influence over.”
‘Tactical ISR’: The Devil Dances In The Details
The rub, of course, remains in defining “wherever possible” — that is, the criteria for judging who does what when, under what circumstances. While IC and Defense Department leaders publicly sing “Kumbaya” and praise never-better space cooperation, there has been plenty of rough-and-tumble behind the scenes (and sometimes spilling over into public discourse) about the delineation of roles and missions in the three-plus years of the newest military branch’s existence.
Senior DoD officials long have been throwing metaphorical elbows about responsibility for what they call “tactical ISR,” insisting that the job of providing up-to-the-minute imagery, coming from both their own and commercial satellites, belongs to them — most lately over tracking targets on the ground, a mission primarily conducted by the Air Force up to now using the aging E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) aircraft and drones.
Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback, Air Force deputy chief of staff for ISR and cyber effects operations, told the Mitchell Institute last week that DoD has concluded that current ISR aircraft across the board simply would not be able to survive future conflicts with China and Russia. Thus, she said, her service is working to transition the mission to space-based capabilities provided by the Space Force and the IC.
She explained that in her mind, when it comes to thinking about the “space-based layer” of ISR, that does not “necessarily equate to the intelligence community owning that. Just as we have an airborne layer that is dedicated to Department of Defense, purchased or owned and operated by Department of Defense, I think the same can be said for a space-based layer. We’re in these conversations right now — the departments, both DNI [Director of National Intelligence] and the DoD are — and so we’ll see what comes out of that.”
NRO and NGA officials, by contrast, have gently pushed back — for example, raising the question of whether “tactical” and “strategic” are delineators that make sense with regard to ISR data. Further, NRO and the Space Force recently worked out an accord on a cooperative approach to acquiring government-owned satellites carrying classified ground moving target indicator payloads that will see the spy-sat office in charge of contracting a vendor, albeit with Pentagon input.
“NRO remains responsible for developing acquisition strategy, purchasing, and ensuring integration of remote sensing data on behalf of the Department of Defense and the Intelligence community,” the NRO spokesperson stressed.
At the same time, the spokesperson said, the spy-sat agency “also recognizes solving today’s most difficult challenges requires that we depend on our partnership with U.S. Space Force to identify new opportunities to optimize our acquisition strategies.”
A ‘Marketplace’ Solution?
Kniseley told Breaking Defense that a future agreement on commercial ISR buys could include some sort of overarching contractual mechanism that would involve not just the Space Force and NRO, but also NGA — something that he said would be “consistent with” GAO’s recommendations.
“[I]n efforts to address timeliness issues that our combatant commands face, while also lowering the barrier of entry for providers, we are evaluating several ‘marketplace’ concepts that could have contracts from multiple agencies (to include the work done at NRO and NGA) underpinning available commercial data or analytics,” he said.
An NGA spokesperson confirmed the discussions with the Space Force, noting that such a new mechanism might contribute to the agency’s own ISR database that provides the entire US government with needed imagery, along with analysis of what it means.
“NGA is engaging with USSF on their development of a ‘marketplace’ concept, with an eye to how it can augment the development and operationalization of NGA’s GEOINT Supplier Matrix, which is the tool/database that acts as a commercial GEOINT knowledge repository for the USG. The goal is for NGA’s GEOINT Supplier Matrix and the USSF ‘marketplace’ to be complementary to avoid duplication,” the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, Kniseley and SSC have been pursuing several other avenues for acquisition cooperation with the IC.
In a May 11 presentation to the National Security Space Association. Kniseley said that COMSO will open a new “commercial collaboration center” in Chantilly, Virginia June 7 in order to be “close to” the IC, as well as NASA and the Space Development Agency. Chantilly is the home of NRO headquarters. The opening will coincide with an “industry day” for commercial PNT providers, he noted.
He further told Breaking Defense that for the first time, the Space Force will contribute to the June iteration of the “unclassified biannual Joint Commercial Constellations Report” put together each June and December by the NRO, NGA and the National Security Agency “to showcase knowledge gained from collaborative with commercial industry.” (Little information is publicly available about that apparently under-the-radar report.)
The Space Force’s submission to the June report will be for “Space Domain Awareness/Space Situational Awareness,” Kniseley added.
Space Domain Awareness: Low Hanging Fruit?
Given the fact that keeping tabs on-orbit spacecraft, using both terrestrial and space-based sensors, has long been a DoD mission and not an NRO focus, it would make sense that this would be one area where the two sides could find harmony — raising the possibility that this will be the arena the service and the IC can agree a shared acquisition approach.
An NRO spokesperson confirmed that the Joint Commercial Constellations Report discussion could serve as a venue for an agreement between the office and the Space Force on commercial acquisition.
Buying power for other missions where ever-improving commercial capabilities may expand military capabilities, however, may be a whole lot harder to wring out.
To muddy the waters further, the National Space Council’s industry advisory group in February decided that it too would wade in on the issue of how the military might make better use of the commercial space sector. It is unclear, however, if and when the group might issue recommendations.
Of course, it is Congress that will have the last word on who buys what, in that lawmakers hold the power of the purse. And lawmakers traditionally has been divided when Title 50 (IC) and Title 10 (DoD) equities clash, as different policy and appropriations committees oversee each side. Thus, even if the IC and DoD come to terms, it’s anyone’s guess whether or not that accord would be acceptable on Capitol Hill.