Space Force Highlights Industry’s Role in Space Development

The future of the military space domain will rely on commercial partnerships and span multiple orbital regimes, according to Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, commander of Space Systems Command at the U.S. Space Force. Speaking at the 2024 CyberSat Conference in Tysons Corner, Virginia, last month, Garrant emphasized the importance of collaboration and innovation in shaping this future.

“I think it will, in the future, be multi-orbit phenomenology. We’re very interested in alternate means of positioning, navigation and timing (PNT),” Garrant told reporters at a Defense Writers Group Meeting in November.

Garrant emphasized that the Space Force would not move away from traditional GPS constellations, but will be adding more commercial entities and constellations to its portfolio through its program offices.

“Allies and commercial partners have to be part of our architecture, not added onto our architecture,” Garrant said. “I highlight that because that’s an area where we really think we can help the commercial and allied partners is threat information and cybersecurity up front, not reactively.”

The planned creation of the Space Futures Command will provide an opportunity for the Space Force to speed up emerging tech acquisition, but Garrant said it is unlikely to change the way the Space Force currently operates.

“I think it’s going to create an opportunity … It will be the old traditional XR, the valley of death, the technology and concepts people, so a close tie to the program offices, but now an even closer tie to the warfighter, the wargaming, the future design work,” Garrant said. “The big thing we want to do is if there’s a game-changing capability out there, how do we rapidly get that into the hands of the warfighter when we can’t afford to wait for the traditional programming process, acquisition process?”

Garrant highlighted opportunities for the commercial sector to contribute in areas like space domain awareness. This could involve adopting a hybrid approach or leaving the responsibility entirely to commercial partners. He also emphasized that the Space Force aims to share cyber threat data with commercial partners to enable them to address potential threats proactively instead of reactively.

“I think a big change that we could make coming out of this commercial office, and as we negotiate groups with commercial providers, is our ability to share intelligence data to include cyber threat data,” said Garrant. “As we get these agreements in place, we can be more proactive and help these commercial partners who are part of the architecture understand some very specific threats and, in some cases, working with other partners, how we can actually defeat them as well.”

Garrant pointed out that each company in the space sector will have different abilities to respond to and recover from aggressive cyber attacks. The Space Force aims to develop cybersecurity minimums in order to defend the space landscape as a whole.

“We recognize that different companies have different business models, and different companies can recover from aggressive acts in different ways, whether it’s kinetic threat or a cyber threat. So it will be a case by case basis. There will be some minimums,” Garrant said.