Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Space Force buyer fed up with excuses for late deliveries

View this email in your browser

National security insights for space professionals. Delivered Tuesdays.

In this week's edition:

• Space Force top buyer: No excuses for late deliveries

• Government agencies take steps to tap commercial satellite data

• Former Space Force chief Jay Raymond to advise startup

If this newsletter was forwarded to you, sign up for free here

Today's highlights:

The Space Force's top buyer has a message for defense contractors: no more hiding behind supply chain woes and the pandemic as excuses for late deliveries.

"There's two phrases I absolutely hate: 'Covid caused me to be delayed, and 'supply chain caused me delays,'" Frank Calvelli, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, said on Friday during a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He specifically cautioned large defense contractors to plan better and stop blaming supply chain disruptions, which are nothing new in the space industry's world of small, specialized components.
And with the pandemic having wound down, Calvelli said that continued references to Covid-19 ring hollow. "Covid has been over for a couple years now guys, so that's not excusable," he said.
Calvelli's advice to industry: "Buy your parts early, get your orders in, be organized, be effective," he said. "I can't stand when they come in with supply chain excuses for why they can't meet their schedule."

Meanwhile, the director of the Space Development Agency Derek Tournear on Friday cautioned satellite suppliers to not lose focus on their actual customers while chasing speculative new markets.

SDA, a Space Force organization, is building a network of hundreds of low-Earth orbit satellites for communications and missile tracking.

Speaking at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event, Tournear said he worries that the agency's consistent, multi-billion dollar annual budgets makes it an attractive customer that is sometimes taken for granted by suppliers.

With SDA's budget ballooning from $20 million in 2020 to over $4 billion requested in 2024, Tournear says the agency represents a stable market for companies.
However, he is concerned that some investors are pushing suppliers to chase more speculative opportunities in other sectors, causing them to lose focus on SDA delivery schedules.
"If you force companies to focus on those, at the expense of the market that is real, then you can actually hurt them and you'll hurt me in the process," he said.

1st Lt. McKenna Medina and Joseph Gerber, JCO Integration, discuss updates to the Illegal Fishing Operational Planning Products during daily operations. Photo credit: SSgt, Matthew Matlock

The U.S. intelligence community and the Department of Defense are taking steps to leverage commercial satellite imaging capabilities for national security purposes, officials said last week.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is making a major investment in commercial satellite imagery and analytics capabilities with a new program called "Luno" that could be worth up to $290 million over five years.
Devin Brande, director of the NGA commercial operations group, said Luno aims to harness the rapid innovation happening in commercial Earth observation to enhance the agency's global monitoring and intelligence analysis.

Meanwhile, there are efforts underway by the Space Systems Command to tap commercial imagery under a new "global data marketplace" that aims to accelerate purchases of commercial geospatial services to support military operations.

Lynwood Bishop, CEO of the geospatial data analytics firm MapLarge, said his company recently won a task order from SSC's data marketplace and he was impressed by the speed of the whole process.
Customers that sign up for the marketplace put in a request for data and analytics, and suppliers bid for those jobs.
"They put out a task order, we had 48 hours to respond and 24 hours later they issued an award. That's the fastest acquisition process we've ever seen," Bishop said on Friday at an industry event at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Don't miss:

Join us on Wednesday, March 6 at 11 a.m. for an exclusive online event with Derek Tournear, Director of the Space Development Agency, as we take a look back at SDA's remarkable journey over the past five years.

In other news 🚀

Impulse Space, a startup focused on space transportation and exploration, has hired retired Space Force general John "Jay" Raymond as a member of its board of directors.

The company is led by Tom Mueller, a founding member of SpaceX who helped design the Merlin rocket engine that powers the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles.

As a board member, Raymond will "support and advise the Impulse team in its work with government partners and customers," the company said.

Tony Frazier has been named chief executive of LeoLabs, a company founded in 2016 that specializes in tracking space objects using ground-based sensors.

Frazier is the former head of Maxar Technologies' Earth Intelligence business. LeoLabs has been led by founder Dan Ceperley who will remain at the company as chief operations officer.

LeoLabs is at an inflection point in its growth trajectory, Frazier tells SpaceNews.

Relative Dynamics, a Maryland startup focused on engineering services and optical communications, is growing rapidly thanks to recent government contracts.

"Since 2021 we have doubled in size annually in terms of people employed, projects and revenue, Kush Patel, Relative Dynamics founder and CEO, tells SpaceNews.

Thanks for reading ! Please send comments, suggestions and tips to serwin@spacenews.com