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The NRO is planning to award new contracts for commercial satellite imagery, perhaps including that of other satellites, the spy-sat agency’s head of commercial operations, Pete Muend, said today.
“And make no mistake, distinguishing friendly from unfriendly behavior and space has become particularly important to us,” NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth told the GEOINT 2023 conference today.
From antennas that can only “talk” to one satellite at a time to much of the work in the control center being done by paper, operators told reporters on a rare tour of the ops center that they’re in dire need of modernization.
The effort, called Space Test Experiments Platform 2.0 (STEP 2.0), aims to set up a consortium of providers who have flight-proven buses via an indefinite delivery/indefinite quality (ID/IQ) contract, Lt. Col. Jonathan Shea, STP director, said Monday.
In a rare tour of the GPS ops floor, Lt. Col. Robert Wray, commander of the Space Force’s 2nd Operations Squadron responsible for GPS operations, described the mission and why timing, more than anything, is critical.
“The good news about this approach is this really fits my priority of speed, speed and speed,” Frank Calvelli, space acquisition czar at the Department of the Air Force, said of the plan to have NRO take the lead with Space Force oversight …
“OMB’s opposition to establishing a SNG and directive to transfer current National Guard space missions to an unestablished ‘Space Component’ will create a 7–10 year gap in the capabilities Air National Guard Space Units provide today…
“It’s challenging. It’s not the status quo. We’re pushing the envelope with the Space Force,” Millennium CEO Jason Kim told Breaking Defense.
If contractors are put on the Contractor Responsibility Watch List for failure to meet cost and schedule performance goals, the Space Force has “the ability at that point not to award them any new contracts.”
Col. Rich Kniseley, who will lead the newly created Commercial Space Office, told Breaking Defense, “At the end of the day, I want to be a customer in the commercial market.”