WASHINGTON — To maximize its capabilities in space, the Pentagon needs to adapt its acquisition policies to more easily incorporate commercial technologies and practices in a rapidly evolving marketplace, a panel of space executives said Wednesday.
Kay Sears, president of satellite service provider Intelsat General Corp., said the space industry has a lot to offer the Department of Defense, but not under a slow-moving acquisitions process that takes years to develop and procure new platforms. Technological advances in the commercial space business move much faster and could offer cheaper solutions to the Pentagon's needs, she said. Rather than building a satellite program over 25 years, it may make more sense to buy the access and services the DoD needs when it needs it.
"We're a service based company," she said. "We can build great economics into [the Pentagon's] business as well, but you have to be willing to accept our model. Let's get an acquisition approach that allows you to take advantage of all this new technology that commercial is investing in."
Sears' remarks came during a panel discussion hosted Wednesday by the Atlantic Council on the space race in business.
Eric Thoemmes, Lockheed Martin's vice president of space and missile defense programs, noted that government and commercial development of space has largely converged over the last 30 years. Within the industrial base, workers may be building a commercial communications satellite one day and a military missile warning satellite the next.
"We have tried to take our products that we have either developed for the government and enable commercial markets to emerge as a result from that," he said. "Inversely, take commercial products and provide them to the government, [with] the idea being that there is a significant overlap in technology, in mission, and in the need. Also, from an industrial base, the people often have exactly the same skills."
Jay Gibson, a former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense who is now president and CEO of XCOR Aerospace, said the Pentagon has expressed interest in XCOR's engines and reusable spacecraft, which fit inside a C-130 aircraft. But he has resisted doing business with the Pentagon at this point, because he does not want XCOR's business model to become locked into the DoD's framework.
"We believe there's applications for our mission profile in a national security environment," he said. But he recalled telling Pentagon officials: "What we will do is be successful commercially, and then you can call us and buy all you want."
Clayton Mowry, president of Arianespace Inc., noted that commercial technology is evolving rapidly, and commercial companies have to respond quickly or risk obsolescence. Some of his firm's clients buy launch opportunities only 18 to 24 months before they need them, he said.
Artel CEO Paul Domorski said his company is the largest provider of satellite services to the DoD and Department of Homeland Security. His firm focuses on providing space-based IT and network solutions to problems instead of rather than selling equipment to the government, he said.
"While the satellite is important, to our customer it's all about applications," he said.
Sears told Defense News she is encouraged by the acceptance by military leaders and lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the Pentagon needs to broaden its acquisition methods.
"I think in their outreach to Silicon Valley, what the government is trying to grasp is how to change the business model," she said. "That's what really has to modernize in the government. Commercial is going to be there to meet a lot of the communication and imaging needs that the military and the government are going to have in the future. The key thing that's going to change is how they go about acquiring that."
Email: aclevenger@defensenews.com
Twitter: @andclev
