Space Systems Command head Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein has rebranded and elevated the acquisition command’s commercial integration efforts under the Commercial Space Office. (U.S. Space Force/Luke Kitterman)
SPACE SYMPOSIUM — The Space Force’s primary acquisition arm, Space Systems Command, has rebranded its efforts to interact with commercial industry, creating a higher-level umbrella group responsible for a number of different outreach and contracting units.
“We’ve realized we need to reimagine our Commercial Services Office. Because that had ‘services’ in it, that really focused people only in the services realm and so, the boss, Gen. [Michael] Guetlein, has has decided to reimagine that office to become the Commercial Space Office,” Brig. Gen. Jason Cothern, SSC deputy commander, said Wednesday.
The Commercial Services Office (CSCO) was stood up only last April and was designed to serve as a one-stop-shop for connecting commercial space operators — from communications to remote sensing to space monitoring firms — to potential government customers. Its goal was to both widen DoD’s use of commercial capabilities and to shift the way the Space Force contracts for them, moving toward a “managed service” model that mimics how most customers contract for telephone and internet connectivity.
Speaking to the Space Foundation’s annual Space Symposium, Cothern said the new office, which will be led by Col. Rich Kniseley, “at the senior materiel leader level, which is our very senior level of leadership within the acquisition community.”
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Kniseley, in an interview with Breaking Defense Wednesday, said that “it was important to rebrand the Commercial Services Office as the Commercial Space Office because we were always wanting to go after more than just services. It was end-user items and other capabilities [too]. … At the end of the day, I want to be a customer in the commercial market.”
He explained that the office initially will look at “capability areas that are a little bit more matured, noting, for example, that CSCO “has been doing amazing things … executing almost a billion dollars per year.”
Kniseley said he sees other mission areas that are now ripe to emulate that success. “We mentioned the Space Domain Awareness Marketplace — I want to do more with that. I see a lot of Tac ISR [tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] commercial capabilities. In fact, it was great meeting [here] with some of these companies to understand their capabilities, because I see there’s a lot of ways that we could get quick wins out to the warfighter ”
A key to being able to broaden and deepen the Space Force’s ability to leverage commercial innovation and capabilities will be changing the Defense Department’s culture.
“If we are going to get after this 2026-2027 fight, you know, it’s a cultural mind shift change [that’s needed] — both from an acquirer and operator standpoint — that it is okay to get less than 100 percent out there. If there’s something that fulfills 60, sometimes even 20, percent of your needs, that we can get out there and then we’re doing constant innovation in the background, that’s all goodness right there.”
Cothern explained that as well as the Commercial Services Office, Kniseley will be responsible for the other industry engagement units that were in process of being transferred to it:
- The Commercial Satellite Communications Office (CSCO), that serves as a middleman between commercial satellite operators and then matches them to the needs of various operational commands and other DoD customers — helping manage the contracting process. The office formerly was an arm of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), but was transferred to Air Force Space Command in 2018, and the Space Force in 2019. DISA, however, for the moment still handles contracting via a working capital fund filled from the coffers of from all the services and combatant commands. An SSC spokesperson told Breaking Defense the command expects to stand up its own working capital fund by September 2024, when DISA’s spending authority also will shift to CSCO itself.
- The Space Domain Awareness Marketplace for vendors of related products and services, created in 2019.
- The SSC Front Door, designed to be a virtual one-stop-shop for industry engagement with the Space Force’s acquisition community, and
- SpaceWERX, the service’s innovation hub that currently resides under the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Kniseley also will be in charge of the Space Force’s fledgling effort to create a space parallel to the existing air and maritime civil reserve fleets that can be called up by the government in times of crisis or conflict to support military missions, dubbed the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve.
