The space industry is waiting for the Space Force and intelligence community to come to an agreement over buying commercial satellite imagery and related analysis—a fight, some say, that is preventing troops from making the fullest use of orbital capabilities. Currently, the National Reconnaissance Office is in charge of buying intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance imagery from commercial space providers, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in charge of purchasing analytic products. But in the five years since the Space Force was created, the young service has increasingly for funds and leeway to work directly with commercial firms, arguing that it can more quickly get important information to combatant commands.
Earlier this year, Space Force a $40 million pilot program to show just how fast it could move information and insights from orbiting sensors to troops on ground. It began soliciting bids for “tactical surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking,” or TacSRT, through a “ ,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman told reporters last month.
“What TacSRT is doing with this pilot in particular is: we simply ask a question into the marketplace: ‘Hey, what generally does it look like around Air Base 201? Are there any items of interest, trucks, that are massing? Is there a huge parking lot? Do we see people milling around?’ We simply ask the question. And commercial industry provides us products that try to help us answer the quest.