While work is ongoing to lower barriers, Defense Department officials "need to do better" to help non-traditional vendors overcome obstacles like overclassification and the "Valley of Death,” especially when it comes to space acquisitions, according to a top Pentagon official.
Speaking today during a panel hosted by the America’s Future Series Space Innovation Summit, Lindsay Millard, principal director for space in the office of the under secretary of defense for research and engineering, noted that greater effort is needed to partner with commercial companies.
“We need to do better to provide ramps for non-traditional vendors,” Millard said, whose office serves as a primary liaison on space research and engineering between the Space Force, White House, intelligence community and Congress.
“In some situations, the barrier for commercial solutions can be cultural,” he continued.
Specifically, Millard pointed to helping companies traverse the Valley of Death when it comes to rapidly awarding production contracts for promising prototypes. He also highlighted the need to overcome clearance hurdles that can exclude companies with limited experience working on classified projects.
According to Millard and other panelists, a hybrid space architecture shared by commercial vendors and the government is key to future warfighting, which includes expanded use of open-source information by service officials.
For example, Millard said, commercial vendors have more easily shared some information about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which DOD “has a harder time doing because of the way that we classify and work with the world.”
Those same vendors can also disseminate critical information on other events like human rights abuses, which Millard called a “force multiplier” for officials to build coalitions and engage with the public.
Open-source code is another critical resource officials need to continue tapping further into, Air Force Chief Information Officer Lauren Barrett Knausenberger said during the panel.
“We already have a pretty incredible open-source foundation forming in space,” Knausenberger said, highlighting that most major space systems use open-source Linux code.
A major turning point for the Defense Department was a memo issued by CIO John Sherman in January, Knausenberger continued, which provided guidance for officials to use open-source code in projects.
Officials are wary of two main risk areas, according to Knausenberger: One is unintentionally pulling in code that could compromise government systems, and the other is unwittingly divulging code that provides DOD a competitive advantage.
A leading challenge in using open-source code is the view that it is less secure, Knausenberger remarked, a “misconception” she quickly sought to dispel.
“In my humble opinion, it is absolutely just not less secure, it is more secure inherently as long as you’re not using that code that was maybe only touched by three people and perhaps not from sources I would trust,” Knausenberger stated.
Commercial vendors are also working collectively to identify threats and vulnerabilities to space systems, noted panelist Erin Miller, the executive director of the non-profit Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center, who cautioned that the rise of proliferated satellite architecture brings challenges as well.
Miller highlighted the increasing “threat landscape” and “attack surface” posed by growing satellite constellations, which requires vigilance from the government and commercial sector to protect.
However, Miller said that an even bigger challenge was a “lack of commercial sector awareness” of “different attack vectors” for in-orbit systems.
Turning to future areas where the commercial sector will play an important role, Space Force Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Lisa Costa underscored the growing need for in-orbit servicing.
Rather than current solutions that tend to either fix a satellite or destroy it if problems emerge, Costa pointed to a predictive maintenance approach as an alternative.
Using predictive maintenance, officials can add capabilities or provide additional power along with standard repairs, Costa said, enabling officials to harness software innovations to enhance current systems.
“I don’t expect DOD to be at the forefront of putting infrastructure into space,” Costa stated, listing efforts like cloud computing and performing “computationally heavy” artificial intelligence in space without having to download data to ground stations.
As for the code that will support space systems, Costa echoed comments of earlier panelists.
“Open source is exactly where it’s at,” Costa said. “It’s where industry is and we need to meet industry where they are.”