The agency in the U.S. Department of Defense that buys commercial satellite services for the military is working on a new acquisition strategy to centralize and consolidate dealings with commercial vendors, its chief said Wednesday at SATELLITE 2020.
“One of the primary challenges we have is the fragmentation of satcom,” said Clare Grason, head of the Pentagon’s Commercial Satellite Communications Office (CSCO). CSCO runs about 100 contracts at any given time and is negotiating 30 or so more. The new acquisition strategy aims to evolve from a “disaggregated basis to a smaller series of contracts whereby we are centralizing procurement with industry.”
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The move would replace one-off contracts with larger contracts designed to provide capability for multiple missions and customers. “In essence, we want to aggregate our collective buying power and do a central procurement and in turn distribute that capability through service level agreements with our customers,” Grason said. One model is CSCO’s existing arrangement with Iridium for narrowband satcom. “What we’re looking to do is replicate that model over the remainder of our purchasing.”
Meanwhile, Space Development Agency Director Derek Tournear said he was planning to rewrite the acquisition rulebook using “spiral development”: “I have minimum viable products that are very basic and I’m planning on fielding different tranches or spirals, generations if you will, every two years.”
Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch of Inmarsat Government said: “What I’m looking forward to, as the Space Force continues to exercise and define its roles and responsibilities … is that single authority that can ultimately govern and shepherd all these activities.” VS
