The Space Force plans to begin awarding Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve contracts early next year for space domain awareness services, a service official said today.
The initial contracts won’t necessarily be representative of future CASR contracts, as some of the details still need to be determined, Commercial Space Office senior materiel leader Col. Richard Kniseley told reporters today. The contracts will include baseline services to be provided during peacetime and a pre-set price for if or when the Defense Department needs to surge capability through the commercial vendors.
None of the contracts will work as a light switch from no capability provided to full capability provided, Kniseley said.
“This isn’t going to be like a zero to 60 moment,” he said.
The first CASR wargame is expected to take place in February, he said.
CASR businesses will need to provide some peacetime service, as operators will need to learn how to use the capabilities and the capabilities will need to be tested during wargaming scenarios.
“We have to get this integrated and put in the hands of the operator,” he said. “I kind of go back to, if I’m in a rush and somebody hands me a new toy and I don’t know how to use it. Yeah, it’s going to go in the back of my car, and I’m going to go with old faithful right in front of me, even though that commercial capability could be a lot faster and a lot more streamlined.”
In the past year, ComSO has assessed what a partnership with industry would look like during peacetime, how services could be scaled during conflict and how the U.S. government could become a priority customer during a national war, Kniseley said.
ComSO logged more than 80 responses to requests for information that have been released in that timeframe, he said.
Those capabilities likely won’t be cross-linked with military capabilities, he said, and DOD will act like any other customer of a CASR company.
“These are going to be commercially operated capabilities,” he said. “They provide their services to other customers as well. We are just going to be another one of those customers.”
The companies have an added supply chain-related incentive with signing on with CASR, Kniseley said.
As failures proved to be more persistent than disruption solely from the COVID-19 pandemic, DOD has put more of an emphasis on assured supply chains. ComSO could provide monitoring services for companies that otherwise wouldn’t have the bandwidth to keep an eye on their suppliers.
“Feedback from industry that we’ve gotten is some of these smaller companies don’t have the funds to monitor their supply chain,” he said. “It’s important for me to understand what’s going on, but then we can also relay that information back to them.”
Companies working with ComSO also have better access to threat-sharing information.