GEOINT image, BlackSky

An image captured by a BlackSky system. (BlackSky)

WASHINGTON: Defense Department space leaders are pressing their case for the Space Force to take on responsibility for buying commercial satellite imagery and analytical products to support day-to-day military operations, despite cautionary rumblings from Capitol Hill about overlap with the Intelligence Community.

Over the past two decades, “there’s been a lot of need to have imagery and information products on the fly. … We don’t need a lot of that information for intelligence,” Steve “Bucky” Butow, Space Portfolio director at the Defense Innovation Unit, told the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space 2021 show yesterday.

Instead, Butow said that unclassified, but rapidly available, space-based remote sensing imagery and analytical products are needed for routine military operations.

Uyen Dinh, who is vice president for government relations at commercial remote sensing sat firm BlackSky, foot-stomped Butow’s point about increased need — noting the call by nine Combatant Command heads in their so-called “36 Star memo” for the IC to declassify more data about threatening Russian and Chinese activities including disinformation campaigns.

“COCOM commanders were not just gently, but very vigorously, advocating for more unclassified data, and commercial imagery is uniquely shareable,” she said.

BlackSky operates satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO, between 2,000 and about 100 kilometers in altitude) and provides access to imagery via an on-demand model, with a constellation of small sats that is set to grow to 14 by the end of the year. The company further announced in February that it would be going public via a merger with Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The deal is expected to pass through regulatory approval next month.

Butow, who is an Air National Guard brigadier general, further stressed that unclassified data is particularly important for coalition operations and for sharing with allies and partners for a variety of reasons, including things like humanitarian relief.

“We can even share information with with other countries that may not be so much friends, but with whom we need to work together,” Butow added.

Space Force leaders have been arguing that there is a need to split responsibility for providing “tactical” remote sensing products from satellites to military operators from that used for providing “strategic” information to the president, IC leaders and top-level DoD policymakers. The former, they insist, includes missions such as ground targeting formerly handled by the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) aircraft the Air Force now is looking to retire.

The idea is for the newest military service to both build its own capabilities — such as the ground moving target indicator payload recently revealed by Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond — and buy commercial imagery and analysis on-demand, including as a service. (Meanwhile, the Army also is lobbying to be able to acquire its own, bespoke space-based ISR.)

Echoing remarks made in April by Space Force Vice Chief Gen. DT Thompson, Butow noted that the service already has legacy expertise in acquiring commercial space services via the Commercial Satellite Communications Office. “Three-quarters of my satellite communications that I use as an operator are commercial,” he said. “That’s what we want to see with remote sensing and ISR services.”

However, the two IC agencies currently responsible for those missions have made it very clear that they have no plans to drop out of the game.

Those two entities are the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which both builds and operates US spy satellites, and since 2017 also acquires commercial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data; and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which gathers up geoint data, analyzes it and disseminates products such as 3D maps to military as well as IC users, and also buys commercial analytical products to augment its capabilities.

Instead, both agencies over the past three years — pushed strongly by Congress, particularly the Senate Armed Services Committee — have been stepping up efforts to acquire commercial space ISR products and services.

This includes the creation of a cross-agency IC Commercial Space Council designed to rethink how data and analysis is gleaned from commercial space systems can help speed intel products to users.

“In October 2020, the DNI signed the charter to create the IC Commercial Space Council (ICCSC) as an IC-level forum to improve interagency collaboration on commercial space policy and strategy topics,” a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.

“Current Council focus areas include supporting the commercial remote sensing licensing regime, developing a deeper understanding of commercial space based radio frequency detection and mapping, opening the lines of communication between the IC and the U.S. commercial space industry, and identifying innovative and novel commercial space capabilities with the potential to impact IC equities,” the spokesperson elaborated.

When Space Force became the 18th member of the IC in January 2021, it was invited to participate in meetings and discussions, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson did not answer a direct question about whether the council is addressing the question of dividing responsibility for tactical ISR. However, they did make clear that Space Force is not a voting member of the council; those are NRO, NGA, CIA, NSA, and DIA.