"We're trying to monitor the space environment — actively monitoring, actively looking, always on, if you like — through space to pick up activity, to pick up changes in plan, behaviors or patterns of life," explained Stewart Bain, CEO of North Star Earth & Space.
"This is a full-on disaster," said one senior industry executive close to the effort. "It means no change from the status quo, which will ultimately harm US leadership in space."
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
"It's mostly a bunch of backward-looking colonels at DoD" causing the problems, said one industry source, "not the IC."
House appropriators rejected Trump's plan to put satellite regulation under the Commerce Department and chide Secretary Wilbur Ross for his refusal to testify on the 2020 budget request.
The Air Force can't regulate civilian satellites. The White House wants the Commerce Department to do it. But Democrats say FAA.
Industry officials say there remain strong pockets of resistance to any new regulations, especially among aggressive space startups.
The GPS network continues to prove its unmatched reliability, and it’s only getting stronger.