Military building an appetite for commercial space services - SpaceNews

The U.S. Space Force is eager to tap into the vibrant commercial market for space services enabled by increasingly capable small satellites and cheaper access to orbit.

Commercial services of particular interest to the military include imagery, analytics, weather data and broadband from low-Earth orbit constellations.

“It’s really crucial that we figure out how to successfully integrate commercial data and services into our architectures and concepts of operations,” said Lt. Gen. John Thompson, head of the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), the procurement arm of the Space Force.

The Space Force already is a major consumer of commercial space launch services and geostationary satellite communications but it is now looking to “go bigger and bolder,” Thompson said, calling this a matter of national security.