The Space Force’s Commercial Integration Cell, a program designed to integrate commercial space companies with US Space Force operations, has grown from ten to 15 companies, with plans to add two more early next year, according to a senior official.
Lt. Gen. Doug Schiess, who serves as commander of Space Forces-Space (S4S) and Space Command’s Combined Joint Force Space Component, said the program expands not only the number of participating companies but also its range of mission areas.
“What that means is that those companies already have a contract with the United States government. When we first set it up, it was mostly commercial (satellite communications), but it dug into imaging and domain awareness and other things,” Schiess said during the Mitchell event Institute on Wednesday.
“Because of their contracts that they already have, they have the ability to get top secret/sensitive union information cleared individuals, and then we have the linkage so we can provide them with threat information back and forth of ‘Hey, here’s what’s going on at top secret SCI level. They may also provide us with information. We have people on the Combined Space Operations Center floor, not 24/7 right now, but they have the ability to call into the CSpOC floor and they can say, ‘Here’s what I’m experiencing.’”
Launched in 2015 as a pilot program, CIC facilitates real-time information and threat sharing between military and commercial satellite operators.
Hughes Network Systems, Maxar Technologies, Eutelsat America Corp., SpaceX, Inmarsat, SES Government Solutions, Intelsat General Communications, Iridium Communications, Viasat and XTAR have long been members of the CIC.
Schiess said while there is no set limit on the number of companies that can join the CIC, the challenge is the Space Force’s ability to manage all of those connections effectively.
“Do we have the headcount? How many people does it take to do that? I don’t see an upper limit to the ability to hire companies. It’s just how do we handle those connections?” Schiess said.
CIC is located at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. All companies in the CIC sign confidentiality agreements to ensure that any information shared between CIC members is kept confidential and not used for competitive advantage or profit.
The program played an important role when an Intelsat satellite unexpectedly broke up in orbit – the company quickly notified the Space Command, allowing them to issue a public warning about the debris generated by the satellite breakup and warn other operators of potential collision hazards.
“We knew that information because that company talked to us directly. We also had our own people looking at it, and we were so much quicker to get that information out to other people than we were before because we were able to work together with our commercial units, says Schiess.
SPACECOM also launched the Joint Commercial Operations cell, formerly known as the Joint Task Force-Space Defense Commercial Operations cell, designed to integrate commercial space capabilities with military operations. The cell consists of a network of allies, partners, academia and industry that contribute to space operations 24/7 worldwide.
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