SPAR Institute Begins Latest Effort to Develop Nuclear Propulsion for Space

Maneuver Without Regret, In-Space Assembly and Manufacturing Among Potential Use Cases

In late 2024, the United States Space Force established the Space Power & Propulsion for Agility, Responsiveness & Resilience (SPAR) Institute with $35 million to develop nuclear-powered systems for spacecraft propulsion. The initiative demonstrates the latest effort by the Space Force, in partnership with the Air Force Reserarch Laboratory (AFRL), eight universities and 14 industry partners, to explore nuclear fission as an energy source in space. If successfully developed and deployed, nuclear-powered systems can unlock a broad range of capabilities: from ”maneuvering without regret” and in-space assembly and manufacturing (ISAM), to orbital clean-up and natural resource extraction. 

“Retired Lieutenant General John Shaw’s catchphrase ‘maneuver without regret,’ means we need to operate and maneuver satellites without compromising the satellite’s lifetime energy supply,” said Tom Cooley, PhD, partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy and former Chief Scientist at AFRL. “The current energy consumption costs of maneuvering space assets adversely affect the Space Force’s long-term capabilities. Nuclear energy has long been considered a potential solution, and the SPAR Institute will explore its viability.” 

Traditionally, maneuvering in space has been generated through electric or chemical propulsion. But both approaches have their respective limitations. 

“While electric propulsion is extremely efficient, it can’t generate enough power to change an orbit quickly, so it tends to be used for lower impulse per unit time activities like station-keeping,” said Brad Tousley, PhD, partner at Elara Nova and former director for the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). “Meanwhile, chemical propulsion rockets have greater impulse per unit time, but fuel is volume and weight-constrained by the spacecraft. So chemical propulsion requires the Space Force to address on-orbit refueling and logistical challenges.” 

Alternatively, nuclear fission carries both high-impulse thrust and low-consumption rate qualities. Nuclear fission works by splitting an atom’s nucleus within a controlled reactor to generate energy in a way that could revolutionize dynamic space operations.   

“Nuclear fission’s latent energy is simply far more per unit volume compared to electric or chemical power sources,” Dr. Tousley said. “Regulatory and safety issues still exist that can inhibit nuclear development and deployment. But from a physics and energy density perspective, nuclear power can change how we approach building resilient architectures and systems in space.” 

Therefore, nuclear-powered spacecraft are an attractive endeavor for both national security and civil space applications. 

“The Space Force is interested in nuclear energy because maneuvering to change orbits requires a lot of energy,” Dr. Cooley said. “Maneuverability can also enable in-space logistics, like on-orbit refueling or conducting maintenance repairs on a spacecraft. Then for NASA, human habitation on the moon requires a reliable source of energy, especially during the two-week lunar ‘night.’” 

Nuclear-Powered Systems vs. Nuclear Weapons 

Nuclear-powered systems are not nuclear weapons. Whereas a nuclear weapon splits an uranium or plutonium atom in an uncontrolled manner to maximize energy consumption, a nuclear reactor can house this same atom-splitting process in a way that generates a low-carbon, long-term energy source.  

It’s the same technological process leveraged by nuclear power plants and even the United States Navy. 

“There’s no better analogy for using nuclear power in space than how it changed the U.S. Navy’s global operations,” Dr. Tousley said. “The Navy went to nuclear-powered aircraft carriers because the infrastructure to supply carriers with conventional fossil fuels was burdened by long-distance deployments. So today’s Navy depends on nuclear energy for their global power projection.” 

To this end, developing and deploying similar nuclear reactor technology for space is legally within the bounds of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.  

“The 1967 Outer Space Treaty is clear that we must not put nuclear weapons in space,” Dr. Cooley said. “But a nuclear reactor simply uses nuclear technology to generate electricity. Some of the most successful NASA programs used radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which similarly leveraged nuclear technology for deep space or interplanetary exploration.” 

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Programs 

Historically, the United States has embarked on a series of research and development programs for nuclear energy in space. Nuclear-powered systems can be delineated in two ways, the first of which is nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP). In an NTP system, hydrogen fuel is used to split a uranium atom within a nuclear reactor to generate heat, which can create thrust. 

One of the earliest NTP efforts was the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA) program, overseen by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). 

“NERVA aimed to develop an upper-stage rocket engine using nuclear thermal propulsion, because the heat generated by a nuclear reactor is much greater than the heat you get from a chemical reaction,” Donna Dickey, Elara Nova partner and aerospace engineer, formerly of AFRL and now supporting DARPA. “The NTP process generates twice the efficiency, while maintaining the thrust levels of a traditional chemical rocket – so it’s the best of both worlds. The NERVA program developed several nuclear reactors to be integrated into a rocket engine, and even started testing before the program ended in 1973.” 

While the nuclear-powered rocket engine NERVA developed was never launched into space, the program has been considered a successful proof of concept for nuclear thermal propulsion.  

Today, similarly-inspired DARPA programs have emerged, like the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) and LunA-10 programs.  

“DRACO is focused on demonstrating nuclear thermal propulsion technology on-orbit,” Dr. Tousley said. “Effectively managing the excess heat a nuclear reaction generates continues to be a technical challenge that DARPA and NASA are working through, but the program is an effective example of how we can develop nuclear technology in a way that adheres to the Outer Space Treaty. Meanwhile, LunA-10 was a capability study of the lunar economy and how shared systems could benefit everyone, including nuclear power and propulsion.” 

Nuclear Electric Propulsion 

The second way to leverage nuclear energy is known as nuclear electric propulsion (NEP), which uses nuclear fission to create electricity that generates the magnetic fields used to accelerate and expel gas propellants like xenon and krypton. The NEP process provides a lower amount of thrust compared to its NTP counterpart, but it can still efficiently propel a spacecraft for extended periods of time.  

That’s been the focus of the Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-Orbit Nuclear High Power (JETSON) program, overseen by AFRL. JETSON emerged after the Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY) experiment, led by NASA and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, safely demonstrated NEP capability. 

“KRUSTY created a relatively small nuclear reactor and used that to generate electricity,” Dr. Cooley said. “Now, JETSON gets back to powering an ion thruster with that electric energy, but the hard part is getting the nuclear reactor into space safely.” 

Remaining Challenges and Terrestrial-Driven Solutions 

Launch presents one of many remaining challenges needed to be overcome before the government, with its industry and academic partners, can successfully adopt nuclear-powered systems for spacecraft propulsion. 

“The biggest concern is not launching the reactor structure, but rather the nuclear material itself,” Dr. Tousley said. “But launching the reactor structure on one rocket and the nuclear material on a smaller, more reliable rocket before assembling it in space is one example of how we can creatively reduce the risk of an accident or reentry. Although we would still need mission assurance during the system’s lifetime, and a means for appropriately disposing it at end of life.” 

But similar, land-based nuclear energy efforts may in turn facilitate solutions for getting a nuclear reactor to space. For example, the Strategic Capabilities Office’s Project Pele aims to develop a mobile nuclear reactor to power remote military bases.  

“It’s difficult to get fossil fuel sources to places like Eilson Air Force Base in Alaska, where winter limits opportunities to resupply,” Dr. Tousley said. So Project Pele’s investment in  nuclear research and development for terrestrial power purposes can advance similar technologies for space.” 

Land-based applications for nuclear power systems are also drawing the attention, and investment, of technology companies and their private equity partners.  

“Companies are developing small nuclear reactor concepts to meet the growing nationwide energy demands of data centers,” Dr. Tousley said. “So nuclear developments may not start with space, but the government is still going to benefit from private capital investments in developing advanced reactors and power systems for terrestrial purposes.” 

Enabling the Future of Nuclear in Space 

If successful, these programs could enable the development of other space-based capabilities, like in-space assembly and manufacturing (ISAM), orbital clean-up, recycling and even natural resource extraction in space.  

“Nuclear energy can solve two problems at once: building the future infrastructure in space, while cleaning up the old one,” Dr. Cooley said. “Nuclear power systems can maneuver space debris into remote orbits, or recylce and manufacture debris into new material. But all of these capabilities would require tremendous amounts of energy that nuclear-powered systems can uniquely provide, and the United States needs to take that risk and invest in these capabilities now if we are going to lead that change.” 

However, the government must also make the appropriate regulatory and policy changes if it’s to overcome the risk-averse mindset triggered by nuclear accidents like Three Mile Island. 

“Japan, France and the United States led the free world in nuclear power development for electric generation purposes before the 1979 partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island,” Dr. Tousley said. “That accident impacted U.S. public policy and set us back in nuclear development for decades, while Japan and France continued forward. Likewise, we need to be more risk-tolerant in order to make progress because the physics don’t lie – nuclear energy is incredibly efficient.  

The complex challenges facing the SPAR Institute and other nuclear energy programs require the type of intersecting technology, human capital, regulatory and policy-driven solutions Elara Nova partners are prepared to provide. 

“The SPAR Institute is funding graduate students to work in nuclear development, an area that is critical to the United States,” Dr. Tousley said. “These students will likely go on to work in industry or start their own companies in support of the U.S. government’s nuclear development efforts. That’s where Elara Nova can support them, by bridging the gap between policy and technical challenges to enable their company’s success.” 

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/. 

The Rise of Commercial Space in Christian Davenport’s “The Space Barons”

Washington Post Reporter to Release New Book, “Rocket Dreams,” in 2025

Christian Davenport, a space industry and NASA reporter for The Washington Post, has announced a forthcoming book: “Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race.” The new book, set to be released in the fall of 2025, picks up where his previous book “The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos,” concluded seven years ago. While his journalism career began as a metropolitan reporter and editor covering local politics in Washington, D.C., it was Davenport’s experience as an embedded reporter in Iraq and Kuwait that enabled him to recognize a unique story idea that led to writing “The Space Barons,” during a 2014 press conference. 

“I was assigned to cover the military-industrial complex when, in 2014, Elon Musk held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to announce he was filing a lawsuit against the Pentagon, specifically the Air Force, for the right to compete for national security launch contracts,” Christian Davenport said. “But Musk started the press conference by talking about building a re-usable launch vehicle that would bring the booster back by catching it. I wrote the story about the lawsuit, but during my research into SpaceX’s efforts to develop reusable rockets I found that Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin were trying to do that, too.” 

At the time, the idea of a re-usable launch vehicle that would return to Earth was unproven. But Davenport took to heart an old journalism mantra that harkens back to Watergate: “Follow the money.” 

“If the richest people in the world are investing their money in space exploration and advancing state of the art launch technology, then we should be paying more attention to that,” Davenport said. “So I interviewed Elon, Jeff, as well as Richard Branson and Paul Allen, for ‘The Space Barons.’ But while each of them approached their space companies with very different mindsets, there is a common thread through all of them: to lower the cost of access to space.” 

A Starting Point for Commercial Space 

The billionaires’ ambitions were diverse: Musk wanted to colonize Mars, Bezos wanted to reduce human impact on the Earth and Branson licensed technology from Allen’s StarShipOne to establish suborbital tourism. Each of them self-funded their space company’s efforts to varying degrees, but it was Allen’s original aspirations to win the Ansari X prize that today is viewed as a catalyzing moment for commercial space. 

“The Ansari X Prize was a contest to see if a commercial venture can send a vehicle to the edge of space and back – twice – without government money,” Davenport said. “When Paul Allen and Burt Rutan, the famous inventor and aerospace engineer, came up with SpaceShipOne and won the Ansari X Prize, it was heralded at the time as a breakthrough moment for commercial space. But while it showed it could be done, we don’t have regular people going to the edge of space like originally envisioned.” 

Davenport’s “The Space Barons” also takes readers inside a 2006 Valentine’s Day conference where the billionaires gathered together to brainstorm how to move the commercial space industry forward.  

“Back then, it would have been fair to look at these space barons and say, ‘Commercial space is never going to happen,’” Davenport said. “Space is such an expensive and difficult proposition that requires immense expertise. So there were a lot of skeptics who thought space was always going to be an exclusively government enterprise. Yet, over time, the space barons persisted.” 

The motives behind the Valentine’s Day conference meeting have clear repercussions that still resonate today. 

“In a sense, they posed a question: ‘Is there a commercial space industry?’” Davenport said. “Well, the next book, Rocket Dreams, answers that question with a resounding ‘Yes,’ because anytime you put human beings in a commercially owned and operated rocket is a big deal. Today, we’re seeing a proliferation of a space market and a space economy beyond just the billionaires.”  

The Government’s Role in Commercial Space Growth 

A key shift in making today’s space market possible, however, was the actions government agencies made to facilitate the commercial space industry’s growth.  

“There was a willingness from the government, from NASA and the Pentagon, to outsource some tasks and space missions to the private sector,” Davenport said. “Today, that outsourcing seems routine, but that was a revolutionary change to trust the private sector with vital space missions that had always been part of the national enterprise. That was a significant paradigm shift that enabled the space industry to take off.”  

It took key government figures like NASA’s Mike Griffin or DARPA’s Tony Tether and Steve Walker to advocate for the government to embrace what was – at the time – a budding space industry.  

“In the context of the time, there were two space shuttle disasters and the end of the space shuttle program, which meant the United States government would rely solely on Russia to get our astronauts to the International Space Station,” Davenport said. “So government officials began thinking about doing something radically different to access space. It started with industry partners flying cargo and supplies to the International Space Station before flying astronauts – but it was an incremental approach that developed over time.” 

The Modern Commercial Space Industry 

Today, that once-emerging commercial space market has established itself as a projected $1.8 trillion space industry by 2035. As such, government agencies will be looking more and more to their commercial partners for a variety of space missions. 

“We’re seeing the space enterprise understand that if the commercial sector can fly astronauts to the space station, then maybe they should be the ones who land astronauts on the moon and build uncrewed spacecraft for scouting missions,” Davenport said. “The government can also get investors involved to help subsidize the cost of these missions. However, the commercial sector works by experimenting to move faster, which means at times they’re going to fail. So it will be interesting to see what the government tolerance level is for that.” 

The balance of success and failure can perhaps be described by two recent commercial space endeavors funded by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. In early March, Firefly Aerospace landed their Blue Ghost spacecraft for a successful two-week mission, but Intuitive Machines’ Athena spacecraft had an imperfect landing that left much of its mission goals unfulfilled. 

“It’s a balance of how much risk are we willing to take, because whether it’s astronauts on-board or even the cargo and supplies needed to service those astronauts – the government requires success,” Davenport said. “Even SpaceX has recently had problems with its Falcon-9, Dragon and Starship spacecraft. So while we often celebrate the success of American innovation, some of these setbacks call into question how much government oversight there should be.”  

A New Space Race 

The government has a vested interest in the success of commercial space companies, primarily because the United States has once again found itself in a modern-day space race. 

“China has shown amazing progress for moon landings, as they are the first country to go to and bring samples back from the far side of the moon,” Davenport said. “They have a space station in low-Earth orbit and have operated a rover on Mars. But what many people don’t realize is there are no longer American flags on the moon. The flags from the Apollo era have been bleached white by the radiation and vacuum environment, meanwhile China has planted two flags: one made out of composite material specifically designed for space and another made with in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) technology so it can withstand the harsh space environment.” 

In “The Space Barons,” Davenport catalogued how the commercial space industry rose up to meet today’s space race needs by delineating the book in three sections: Impossible, Improbable, Inevitable. But now that the commercial space industry is well on its way, “Rocket Dreams” will showcase how these companies will reach their destinations and achieve their goals in the modern space race. 

“‘Impossible, Improbable, and Inevitable,’ encompass the narrative of ‘The Space Barons,’ but also the journey of space exploration in the commercial space sector,” Davenport said. “This next book, ‘Rocket Dreams,’ takes a more symbolic approach to its three sections: on the ground, on-orbit, and to the moon and beyond. The book ends more on ideas, because there’s a lot of questions being asked and certainly progress that is being made, but these unpredictable variables are what makes it an exciting time to be a part of the space industry.” 

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/. 

2024 Election Presents Promise and Peril for PPBE Reform to Deliver Space Superiority

Incoming Administration Must Implement Commission’s Recommendations, or Risk Losing Great Power Competition

China’s rapid rise in adopting and deploying innovative technologies has sparked a new “Great Power Competition,” particularly in the space domain. Meanwhile, the budgetary process the Department of Defense (DOD) uses to acquire military capabilities – Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) – is increasingly unable to keep up with the rapid innovations of modern technology. But now, after a Commission on Planning, Programming, Budget and Execution (PPBE) Reform delivered guidance for modernizing the budgetary process, the 2024 election presents both promise and peril for PPBE reform in acquiring the military capabilities necessary to deliver space superiority for the warfighter. 

“The doctrinal definition of space superiority is mission-oriented: to provide space capability at a time and place of your choosing,” said Shawn Barnes, partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy. “But in the context of budgeting and strategy, space superiority is about having the space capabilities that provide superior capability to support the warfighter across domains to deter or defeat an adversary.” 

According to DOD officials, China is having a “strategic breakout” in space that directly coincides with their adoption of innovative space technologies. Major General Gregory J. Gagnon, the United States Space Force’s chief intelligence officer, recently acknowledged China has over 1,000 satellites on-orbit and has demonstrated a capacity for launching 200 satellites a year.  

For added context, Maj Gen Gagnon noted that just 10 years ago China was capable of putting only 24 satellites on-orbit in a single year. 

“China has gone from being a potential near-peer competitor to an out-pacing challenge in areas like quantum computing, air and missile systems and space capabilities,” Barnes said. “Meanwhile, one of our nation’s greatest attributes is innovation in the private sector, but the PPBE process no longer serves us as well as it should.” 

PPBE From the Cold War to Today 

The PPBE process evolved from the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) originally introduced by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in the 1960s. By developing the DOD budget sequentially through four phases, PPBE brought discipline to the DOD’s budgetary process and enabled the United States to acquire the military capabilites it needed to project deterrence through the Cold War and maintain decades of military hegemony after the Soviet Union’s collapse.  

But in today’s Information Age, the PPBE process that once enabled military success is increasingly constricting the DOD’s capacity for keeping pace with technological innovation, most notably in space. 

“The cost of launch has been reduced dramatically, which enables cheaper and more frequent access to space,” Barnes said. “More capability can also be put into smaller satellites, which can be effectively networked to outperform larger satellites. These changes are accelerating innovation across the space ecosystem.” 

In response to this emerging Great Power Competition and the exponential rate of technological innovation, the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) mandated a Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform to evaluate PPBE and recommend policy changes to modernize the process. 

Then last spring, the Commission published its Final Report with 28 recommendations across five critical areas to overhaul the budgeting process across the DOD’s military services. But given the inherent interconnection of space and technology, along with the growing reliance on space for Joint Force operations, the Commission’s recommendations can have an outsized influence in delivering space superiority. 

The Imperative for Strategy-Driven Budgets 

The first critical area the Commission provided recommendations for is to: “Improve the Alignment of Budgets to Strategy.” To do this, the Commission recommends creating a Defense Resourcing System (DRS) to replace the PPBE process and consolidate the PPBE’s four phases into three: strategy development, resource allocation and execution. 

“It is absolutely critical that we have strategy-driven budgets, and not budget-driven strategies,” Barnes said. “The Commission proposed an ongoing discussion within the DOD to provide timely updates to strategy that would come before each service’s budget submission to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).” 

Key documents such as the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and National Military Strategy will continue to drive the strategy development phase. But significant changes exist in the resource allocation phase, where senior leadership forums informed by strategic wargaming and analytics would produce a Defense Resourcing Guidance (DRG) that would replace the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) document used today. 

“The Defense Planning Guidance is used as a grading mechanism after the services provide their budget recommendations to OSD, but the DPG doesn’t present difficult decisions for the OSD budget,” Barnes said. “So the new DRG would facilitate a more rigorous discussion upfront, where senior leaders across the DOD can evaluate budgetary risk in a more substantive manner.” 

The Commission also recommends replacing the Program Objective Memorandum (POM) and Budget Estimate Submission (BES) documents with a single, Resource Allocation Submission (RAS) proposal. This step would streamline what OSD submits as the DOD portion of the President’s Budget that will ultimately go to Congress.  

Balancing Discipline with Flexibility 

The second critical area identified by the Commission is to: “Foster Innovation and Adaptability.” To this end, the Commission aims to increase the availability of Operating and Maintenance (O&M) funds, which expire at the end of the fiscal year regardless of when those dollars are appropriated. 

In other words, if Congress does not pass a budget on October 1st – the first day of the fiscal year – but rather passes a Continuing Resolution (CR) until a budget is passed at a later date, the O&M funds still expire on September 30th of that fiscal year. 

“The DOD only has so much time to expend O&M funds,” Barnes said. “Sometimes at the end of the fiscal year, there is a mad rush to spend money as quickly as possible. So the Commission proposes that about five percent of O&M funding be eligible to roll-over as two-year or three-year money to make better use of taxpayer dollars.” 

The Commission also recommends the DOD be able to fund new programs and capabilities, known as “new-starts,” which is currently prohibited under a CR. The Final Report also suggests eliminating Below Threshold Reprogramming, or the amount of funds the DOD can transfer between programs without Congressional approval, to facilitate flexibility in responding to evolving military requirements. 

A Collaborative Relationship to Streamline Budget Development 

Each of these efforts, however, will still require a level of transparency with the Hill. That’s why the Commission emphasizes a need for transparency in its third critical area: “Strengthen Relationships Between DOD and Congress.” 

It’s for this purpose that the Commission recommends establishing enclaves for both classified and unclassified information exchanges between the DOD and Congress, which in turn may also promote greater cohesion between the authorizers and appropriators in Congress.  

“The Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee are the ‘Authorizers’ that write the NDAA, a policy bill that describes what money is available for certain requirements,” Barnes said. “But the four Appropriations Committees are more data-driven and focused on their oversight role. Sometimes, different views between the Authorizers and the Appropriators can create tension in the DOD when they receive authorization for a program, but aren’t appropriated the money to implement it.” 

The Commission concludes its report by recommending a single, common data system from which each service can build its budget under the fourth critical area: “Modernize Business Systems and Data Analytics,” and providing more education and training related to the budgeting process in its fifth critical area: “Strengthen the Capability of the Resourcing Workforce.”  

2024 Election Implications for PPBE Reform 

Since its release, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hick pledged to evaluate the Commission’s Final Report in collaboration with executive and legislative partners. At the same time, the DOD also published an Implementation Plan for the Commission on PPBE Reform’s Interim Report, which was previously released in August 2023. 

But the 2024 election creates both promise and peril for the Commission’s recommendations to reform the PPBE process. While a change in executive and legislative branches can facilitate an opportunity to implement these necessary changes, the Commission’s Final Report is also at risk of being neglected during the transition – thus, perpetuating the status quo.  

“The Implementation Plan signals that DOD is taking the Commission’s recommendations seriously, and they are willing to work with the Hill to implement it,” Barnes said. “A new Congress also creates an opportunity to adjust the budgetary process and the Commission’s recommendations add flexibility without removing the discipline. We live in perilous times, and space is not unique in suffering the budgeting challenges that the PPBE process has today, so it’s especially important to apply these changes to acquire the innovative commercial space technologies of the future.” 

Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy recognizes the significant role government policy serves in the acquisition process, and its’ experts are prepared to support not only the commercial space companies developing innovative technologies, but also the government partners seeking to leverage policy to exploit these technologies to deliver space superiority to the warfighter. 

“The breadth and depth of experience at Elara Nova is unparalleled,” Barnes said. “There are Elara Nova experts who understand the resource allocation process, and its relationship between the executive and legislative branches. But there’s also experts who have been program managers and program executive officers leading large acquisition organizations within the DOD. So when a company wants to work with Elara Nova, they get the benefit of all of that experience across the space security spectrum.” 

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/. 

Episode 18: 2024 Election Presents Promise and Peril for PPBE Reform to Deliver Space Superiority

The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security

Host: Scott King 

SME: Shawn Barnes, Elara Nova Partner 

00:02 – 02:24 

Over the past decade, China’s rapid rise in adopting and deploying innovative technologies has sparked a new “Great Power Competition,” particularly in the space domain. According to Major General Gregory J Gagnon, the chief intelligence officer for the United States Space Force, China’s “strategic breakout” in space is evident by the country’s more than 1,000 satellites on-orbit today, and a demonstrated capacity to launch over 200 satellites each year. 

To put into context just how rapid China’s rise has been, Major General Gagnon also noted that in 2014 – China was only able to put 24 satellites on-orbit in a single year. 

Meanwhile, the budgetary process for the Department of Defense (DOD) – known as the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution or PPBE – is increasingly unable to keep up with the rapid innovations of modern technology. And in the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act – or NDAA – Congress mandated a Commission on PPBE Reform to deliver guidance for modernizing the DOD’s budgetary process. 

Last spring, the Commission on PPBE Reform issued its Final Report – with 28 recommendations across five critical areas. And now, with the 2024 election underway, the inevitable change in administration – regardless of the election’s outcome – presents both promise and peril for PPBE reform. 

Welcome to the Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security. I’m your host, Scott King. And our guest today is Elara Nova partner – Shawn Barnes, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, Congressional Budget and Appropriations Liaison. In this role, Shawn successfully advocated for the Air Force and Space Force budgets for fiscal years 2023, 2024, and 2025, securing critical funding for future operations.  

Now, Shawn is here to discuss the Commission on PPBE Reform’s Final Report, and the implications for the next administration – regardless of the 2024 election outcome – to see their recommendations through and deliver space superiority to the warfighter.  

Shawn, welcome to the show! 

02:25 – 02:29 

Well, thank you very much, Scott. I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak with you today. 

02:29 – 02:43 

Of course, now, we hear the term “space superiority” used a lot these days. So first and foremost, I’d like to define what that is, in the context of this conversation.  

So can you describe what we mean by “space superiority?”

02:44 – 03:25 

Yep, absolutely. So, I think for the purposes of this discussion today, we ought not to focus on the doctrinal definition, which is really very mission-oriented and focused on making sure that you can provide space capability at a time and place of your choosing. 

But rather think about space superiority and having the space capabilities that provide us superior capability to both support the terrestrial warfighter as well as defeat any potential adversary and, of course, deter adversaries. So that’s when I think of space superiority for the purposes of this conversation today – that’s what I mean. 

03:26 – 04:07 

Thank you, Shawn. Now, the current budgeting process the DOD uses today is known as PPBE – or Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution – and it’s been in place for quite a long time. 

But last spring, the Congressionally-mandated Commission on PPBE Reform published its Final Report advocating for a new approach to the budgeting process for defense acquisition.  

I’d like to tie this into our need for space superiority – so can you describe why this commission was necessary in the first place? And in what ways might the PPBE process be restricting our budgeting process to acquire the military capabilities the DOD needs to maintain space superiority?

04:08 – 06:35 

Yep, as you said, the PPBE process, formerly known as PPBS, had been put in place by Robert McNamara back in the Kennedy administration in 1961 because, frankly, the defense budgeting lacked any sense of real discipline. And it was done, in a fairly ad hoc manner. Now, that ad hoc manner gave it flexibility, but it lacked oversight by the Hill and the Department of Defense. And so, McNamara’s approach was to take what was a fairly loose system and put a significant amount of rigor and discipline into it that I think served the nation pretty well for several decades. 

At that time, however, the pace of change was relatively slow. It was critical that we tie budget to strategy and clearly the nation had in mind, strategy to be able to defeat the Soviet Union and so, to have that PPBE process was important.  

As we have moved forward, and the world has continued to change – what we find is that that pace of change is now at a point where the PPBE process, as it currently exists, no longer serves us as well as it should.  

And space is not unique in suffering the challenges that the PPBE process has today, but because the pace of change is even faster in the space domain than it is in the air and the maritime and the terrestrial domains in general, and that pace on both the adversary as well as the technology, because that pace is so much faster in space, the impact of not being able to make those changes at an appropriate pace, is even larger. 

It typically on a well-oiled PPBE process is about two years from the time that the services begin their work to the time that money is actually appropriated and often it’s more like two and a half years. Well, frankly, the world changes a lot in two and a half years, and we need to be able to act more quickly. 

And so the Authorizers, in this case, the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, through the National Defense Authorization Act, put in place a Commission to look at the PPBE process and make a series of recommendations as to how that might be improved.

06:36 – 06:47 

So you described how the pace of change is accelerating, but can you put that into context with China’s advancements in space? And how does that factor into this need to re-assess our budgeting process? 

06:48 – 08:12 

Yeah, and it isn’t just the pace of our adversary. It’s actually the pace of technology and opportunities as well. And so there were really two – those two key factors that drove the need for this Commission. 

If you take a look at what China has been able to do over the last decade, it is truly remarkable. They have gone from being a country that was clearly following, but learning, to a country that is now, on the verge of leading in many, many different areas. Some of that is quantum computing, their air and missile systems and tremendous growth in their space capabilities. So China has gone from being a potential near-peer competitor to a pacing challenge – and I think some would argue – they are an out-pacing challenge and one that we need to take very, very seriously.  

At the same time, the pace of change in technology has also created opportunities that we need to be able to take advantage of and frankly, the United States’ greatest attribute is its innovation in the private sector and so being able to take advantage of that innovation in the private sector is absolutely critical to our ability to stay in front of a pacing challenge like China.

08:13 – 08:20 

And specifically on the pace of innovation for space technologies – how does this present both an opportunity and a risk for the DOD? 

08:21 – 09:36 

So there’s a couple of major things that have happened in the space industry. There’s several, but a couple of, I think, very important ones. One is the cost of launch has been reduced dramatically and that’s been driven by competition and that competition now allows us to be able to launch much, much, cheaper than we ever have been before. 

In addition to the cost of launch, the frequency of launch is now up at a very, very high pace and so, that part of it gives us access to space in a way that we hadn’t had before. That also drives the opportunity to launch things that are less expensive and launch more frequently because that cost of launch is down. 

The other side of that is the miniaturization. We have been able to frankly, stuff more capability into a smaller box and then put it onto satellites, which now allow us to be able to do things that heretofore have had to be done on very large, very heavy, very expensive systems and so having lightweight, small capabilities, that can be networked to outperform large satellites has been a significant driver and allows that innovation across the ecosystem.

09:37 – 10:18 

Now, I’d like to transition to the Commission’s Final Report itself.  

The Commission published 28 recommendations across five critical areas. And, I’d like to go through each of these five critical areas and have you provide some perspective on what the Commission is trying to achieve. 

The first critical area described in the report was to “Improve the Alignment of Budgets to Strategy.” 

To this end, the Commission recommends replacing PPBE with what they call the Defense Resourcing System – or DRS.  

In what ways might the current PPBE process have misalignment between budget and strategy? And how would the DRS present a solution for that misalignment? 

10:19 – 14:16 

So first of all, absolutely critical that budgets align to strategy and not the other way around. And frankly, as much as we say every year that we want to have strategy-driven budgets, in the end, what very often happens is that we figure out what our strategy is after we put the whole thing together, despite all the intentions to the otherwise. 

So today PPBE stands for Planning Program Budget and Execution and what the Commission is recommending is that we simplify that a little bit and so they wanted to describe it as the Defense Resourcing System. 

And they think about it in terms of Strategy Development, Resource Allocation and Execution. So sort of a three phase as opposed to a four phase, but they make recommendations for each of those parts to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of each of those three phases. 

So it kind of starts with the timing of some strategy documents: our National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, National Military Strategy – those will continue to be foundational documents. But coming out of that then is some guidance that today we call the Defense Planning Guidance and that document, typically is not particularly impactful for the development of the budget by the services. 

It is used as a grading mechanism once the services provide their budget recommendations to OSD, but it doesn’t fundamentally change the way that the services do that for a couple of reasons.  

First of all, it usually comes too late so that by the time the Defense Planning Guidance or DPG arrives on the services as a finalized document, the services are largely done with building their budget submission.  

And the second is, is the Defense Planning Guidance, frankly, does not make the kinds of hard choices that need to be made by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and I think that a more rigorous discussion upfront, that includes senior leaders across the Department of Defense, not just within OSD, then leads towards a document where those hard decisions about where we can accept risk can be made in a more substantive manner.  

And there’s a couple of things that the Commission has recommended that will assist with that. One is – is to have an ongoing strategy discussion within the Department of Defense that has periodic and timely updates to strategy, and by timely updates what I mean is that it would be in front of the main efforts to actually develop what today is called the “POM, the Program Objective Memorandum,” which is really the services’ submission to OSD for their budget and so the Department of the Air Force has a single POM, that includes both US Air Force and US Space Force and some other Department of the Air Force administrative housekeeping kinds of money in it and in the future has a different term to it.  

So, that’s an important part of what they’re looking to do is have that continuous strategy development and update that’s driven by things like wargames and senior level conversations, so that seniors understand the sort of expectations that would be put forth for when they’re developing their budget.  

A second part of that is to understand the budget in a way that you can show that it is related to strategy. So even when we do budgets that are highly-aligned to strategy, it is often difficult to explain that to Congress and to the public in a way that is compelling and so being able to adjust the way that budgets are explained, and displayed, and documented will be an important part of aligning to strategy. 

14:17 – 15:02 

You mentioned the POM – which together with the Budget Estimate Submission make up what the service submits to the Office of the Secretary of Defense – or OSD – for the DOD portion of what ultimately becomes the Presidential Budget. 

Now, the future term you referenced for this step in the process the Commission suggests calling the “Resource Allocation Submission” – or RAS – which would replace the POM and the Budget Estimate Submission by consolidating them into a single RAS document that will streamline the budget submission process.  

So if these changes were to take effect – how would a better alignment between budget and strategy help with adopting innovative space technologies? Particularly with respect to the pace of innovation that we were discussing earlier? 

15:03 – 16:30 

I think there’s a number of opportunities there. If you think about, displaying your budget material in terms of an overall capability. 

So let’s think about strategic missile warning as an example. Strategic missile warning is done through a combination of satellites on-orbit and large radars on the ground and the people that operate them and the connections between them all coming together to provide that warning of incoming, intercontinental ballistic missiles. Today, the way that the budget is displayed, it would show each of those piece parts as something different from each other and not be done in a holistic manner. 

And because of that, it makes it very difficult to make trades across different programs within a capability set. So now, if I have an innovative capability to – let’s just say that I’ve got some sort of new magic that allows for a much greater fidelity coming from satellites, maybe that means I don’t have to have the same sort of capability on the ground or from a different set of satellites. 

So it is difficult to take advantage of that innovation today in a way that allows the most efficient use of budgets in the future and so being able to pull all that together in a more holistic fashion allows the more effective on-ramping of technology.  

16:31 – 16:40 

The second critical area the Commission identified is to: “Foster Innovation and Adaptability.” 

How does the Commission recommend the DOD do this? 

16:41 – 20:23 

This really gets into sort of the Resource Allocation phase, by and large, although some of it is also in the Execution phase. Part of what they recommend is to increase the flexibility primarily in what we call “operations and maintenance funding, O&M,” which is, funds that are only good for a single year. 

So when they’re appropriated, ideally on October 1st of 2024. They expire on September 30th of 2025. If they’re appropriated on March 1st of 2025, they still expire on September 30th of 2025 and so you only have so much time to be able to expend those funds. And because of that, at the end of the year when you haven’t necessarily spent all funds in the manner that you had intended, there is a mad rush to spend money, as quickly as possible and not necessarily in the most effective manner. 

So one of the things that the the Commission recommends is to take a small portion of O&M funding, and they think about 5% to be able to say, “Let’s roll that over and make that two-year money or three-year money,” so that you don’t have a mad rush to spend every last dollar, even if you’re not buying the most important things and I think that that would make better use of the taxpayers’ dollars. 

Another thing that they talk about is, during the budget execution, the ability to move money around a little bit easier. There is something called, “Above Threshold and Below Threshold Reprogramming Authorizations.” 

And when something is Below Threshold, it means that the services can move money around and if it’s Above a Threshold, then they have to ask for permission from Congress and it goes to the two Appropriations committees and the two Authorization committees, and then sometimes also the intel committees depending on what that money is.  

And they have to get permission from all 4 or 6 committees to move money from one program to another program, or from one color of money to another color of money. And that is not necessarily the most effective way to do business, so if they were to raise the Above Threshold Reprogramming Threshold, then the Department of Defense could move more money around.  

They also point out, though, the need to be able to do that in a way that maintains transparency with the Hill because, frankly, absent that transparency, it is very, very unlikely that the Hill would approve changes that would be significant in that.  

A third is, the limits on Continuing Resolutions. So a Continuing Resolution goes into place almost always on October 1st, just like it has this year and what that means is you can spend on the same things that you spent last year and basically at the same rate that you were spending them. But it doesn’t take into account the new things that you want to be able to do and it also doesn’t take into account that you want to maybe stop doing some of the things that you were doing in the previous year. 

So we have now moved into a Continuing Resolution for Fiscal Year ’25 that is spending at the same rate and on the same things that we had in Fiscal Year ’24. What it doesn’t allow us to do is new things and those are called “new-starts.” Now there’s reasons to not want to have new-starts as part of that authority, but it does certainly reduce the flexibility and reduce the timeliness of being able to get new capabilities going. 

20:24 – 20:46 

Thank you, Shawn. And so this leads us to the third critical area, which the Commission defines as “Strengthening Relationships between DOD and Congress.”  

You just mentioned the need for more transparency, especially between DOD and the Hill. So what are the current communication gaps that often exist or sometimes exist between the executive and legislative branches?

20:47 – 22:16 

There is a bright line for discussions between the executive branch and the legislative branch, with respect to budget and the timing of budget decisions. And I think that that tends to lead to a relationship that is not particularly collaborative and I think that that is something that needs to be adjusted, quite frankly. 

I believe that early and more substantive discussions between the Department of Defense and the Hill on the kinds of challenges that are faced, both from a budgetary standpoint, but from a capability standpoint, a threat standpoint, as well as a sense of changes that the Hill should expect to see in future budgets would help with the transparency challenges that are there today. 

So when the Hill receives a budget and they’re surprised by what is in it, you’re starting an uphill battle. If, on the other hand, we could have some of those conversations early and often, then when a budget’s delivered, they would say, “Yes, we expected that you would be making these changes.” It doesn’t necessarily mean that they would be accepting of them, but it would mean that they’re not surprised by them and I think that that would go a long way toward a more collaborative relationship between the Hill and the executive branch. 

22:17 – 22:49 

And specifically as it pertains to classification – or even over-classification in some cases – this can complicate some of these communication efforts.  

So one recommendation the Commission is putting forward in this critical area – is to establish classified and unclassified communication enclaves.  

How would these enclaves, both in a classified and unclassified sense, help inform our congressional leaders so that there aren’t as many surprises when the President’s Budget is unveiled every spring? 

22:50 – 24:15 

So in terms of the over-classification. The challenges are a couple. One is, not everyone on the Hill would be clear to the most highly-classified material, whether that is threat material – what our adversary is up to – or, how we intend to address the threat with a set of capabilities that we have and when not everyone is cleared to that information, it gets stovepiped in a way that isn’t helpful sometimes and so being able to reduce the level of classification, prudently, will be important in the future. 

The second is that if you want to gain support from your constituency, the taxpayers are the congressman’s and the congresswoman’s constituents. They need to be able to explain things and so it’s got to be simple and they’ve got to be able to do that at an unclassified level. And so the more that we can talk about our capabilities and the adversary’s capabilities in an unclassified way, the easier it will be for the Hill to explain why it’s important to their constituents because they can’t very well just say ‘Just trust me. We have a problem that we need to deal with.’ 

Because that, frankly, doesn’t go a long way. We have a skeptical society and for good reason and so I think being able to explain in clear ways at an unclassified level will be very important. 

24:16 – 24:38 

Now, these communication efforts even extend to the varying roles of Congress and their respective relationships to the DOD. 

For example, different committees in Congress serve the role of “Authorizers,” while others serve the role of “Appropriators.” 

Can you describe why it’s important to understand the difference between Authorizers and Appropriators and how they relate to the DOD budget? 

24:39 – 26:26 

Authorizers – the HASC and the SASC –  House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, they’re the ones that write the National Defense Authorization Act, which is primarily a policy bill. It has numbers in it to authorize funding.  

But in the end, that authorized funding is not what actually gets put into a budget. So the Authorizers primarily are developing a policy bill that has dollars associated that give a sense of the sorts of money that would likely be available.  

The Appropriators build a budget and it is very light on policy. But they do focus very significantly on the specific dollar amounts by program, by budget line item. They are less concerned about whether or not the Department of Defense has the right requirements, as they are: “Are they making the right use of taxpayers dollars?” 

Because that’s their job. They are the appropriators that will appropriate budgets that eventually get spent. And so, their budget development and their oversight role is focused very clearly on that and so that’s a very data-centric demand. 

And it is, in the end, the money that’s appropriated that matters when it gets to be spent. And there are sometimes different views on, on things between the Authorizers and the Appropriators. And that can create some tension on the Hill, but it can also create some tension in the Defense Department when the Authorizers would say, “I want you to do A at level X,” and the Appropriators say, “Well, I want you to do B at level Y,” because in the end, you can’t do A at level X if you don’t have money to do that and you have to obey the appropriations law in the end.

26:27 – 26:44 

The fourth critical area evaluated by the Commission is to “Modernize Business Systems and Data Analytics.” 

Can you explain how the DOD currently manages its budgetary data? And how would a single, common platform the Commission is proposing improve decision-making for the DOD budget?

26:45 – 28:11 

I’d start by saying there is no single system that the Department of Defense uses today. 

What the Department of Air Force uses is different than what the Department of Navy uses, which is different than what the Department the Army uses. And, oh, by the way, it’s different from what OSD uses, and different from what OMB uses and so you’ve got multiple databases, and so just the challenge of moving information from one database to another lends itself to mistakes. 

And it lends itself to having funds go into the wrong budget line item and because those mistakes can, frankly, be pretty significant, we spend an awful lot of human time and effort to reduce those mistakes. Well, that’s not a very effective use of human beings. We should have humans do what humans are good at, which is making judgments and let machines do what machines are good at, which is transferring data from one database to another database. And even better yet, having a single database that we can all work off. That really only makes sense.  

So I think that there’s, some real opportunities there. And I think the data analytics would, both tie capabilities together and understand, “Oh, if I cut something out of a program, A, that will have significant impacts on programs B, C, and D, even though, they may not be tied in your head in the same way that, that they actually are implied.” 

28:12 – 28:25 

Moving to the last critical area, the Commission aims to “Strengthen the Capability of the Resourcing Workforce.” 

Why is it important to strengthen the knowledge base of personnel that are managing the budgetary side of acquiring space technologies?  

28:26 – 29:33 

So I like to use the terms ‘Recruit, retain and refresh.’ Because refresh, indicates that maybe, it’s time for changing some people in and out and it also means that they continue to be educated on what’s the latest in the greatest.  

In today’s world, we have financial management professionals. That is, an AFSC within the Department of the Air Force to be an FM professional. And obviously the civilians do the same things. They are FM professionals and they’re certified in the same way that we have acquisition professionals.  

On the other hand, the people that today build the POM may have gone through a few days training, and maybe they have some years of experience, but there’s not a certification program for developing a POM for doing that resource allocation piece. 

And so it’s something that comes with a lot of experience and there are some classes in it, but there’s nothing like the sort of professional piece to it that we have on the comptroller side of it. And so I think that there are certainly some opportunities for more formalized training for those folks that go into that – I think would be significant value added.  

29:34 – 29:55 

Thank you, Shawn. 

Since its release, the DOD announced an Implementation Plan for the Commission’s previously issued “Interim Report,” which came out in August of 2023. 

Now, based on both the Implementation Plan and the DOD’s response to the Final Report – what do these signals suggest about the DOD’s key takeaways from the Commission’s findings? 

29:56 – 31:57 

The reaction of the Department of Defense to the Report has been overwhelmingly positive, and overwhelmingly forward-leaning. 

The Dep. Secretary of Defense, Secretary Hicks, stood up a team to begin implementing as many of those things as were within the Department of Defense’s control as they could. That signals that the Department of Defense understands that there are significant limitations to the current system that we have. 

Now, there are many things that are outside the Department of Defense’s ability to implement on its own and will take collaboration with the Hill. And I think that the Department of Defense is very willing to engage in that collaboration and I think that there are portions of the Hill that are looking forward to that, and there are portions of the Hill that are somewhat resistant to that. 

And I understand that resistance. They want to ensure that they can provide the appropriate oversight that’s necessary and I think that that’s absolutely critical, it’s the way that the Constitution drives things. 

So I think it’s incumbent on the Department of Defense and the Hill to work together to understand how can that necessary transparency be put in place in a way that then allows some of the other changes that I think everyone agrees the goals for the changes, which is more rapid, and more agile, reaction to both the adversary as well as the opportunities of innovation. 

There is no one on the Hill that says we need to slow down. To a person, it is: “How can we adjust faster?” So the goals – there is great agreement on. How you get to those goals is going to continue to take some work. 

But I think the main signal from the Department of Defense’s Implementation Plan is that they take it very, very seriously and that they are more than willing to work with the Hill to implement as many of the recommendations as possible.

31:58 – 32:38 

At the time of this taping – we are in the heat of the 2024 election. And by law, the Presidential Budget – for the upcoming fiscal year – is presented to Congress on the first Monday in February. 

Regardless of election outcome, there will be a new incoming administration, as well as a new Congress. 

So, in order to make sure that the Commission’s Final Report and its findings don’t fall through the cracks, so to speak, and also considering the quick turnaround time from Inauguration Day in late January, to a Presidential Budget in early February – what key points from the Commission’s Final Report should the incoming administration consider as it prepares its next budget? 

32:39 – 34:31 

The first thing I would do is I would commend to the incoming administration – read the Report. The entire report’s fairly long, but the executive summary is 20-some odd pages. It is absolutely worth the, you know, half hour or 45 minutes to read the Report and understand the kinds of challenges that are there. 

The second is for the new administration to take a collaborative approach with the Hill, and to try to set that up as quickly as possible, and set up a relationship between the Department of Defense and OMB and the Hill – that is one that looks to collaborate on solving the nation’s problems. 

From a practical standpoint, talk to the commissioners, talk to the chair and the vice chair of the Commission about what their findings are and, frankly, behind closed doors say, “Is there more that you would do?” Because my view of the Commission’s Report is that, while there are some very, very positive, substantive recommendations. 

I think that they probably would have liked to have recommended more, but they knew that they were unlikely to be received as well. That’s what I would commend the incoming administration to do, whichever administration is elected. 

And by definition, as you said, the next administration is going to be a new administration. You’re going to have a new Congress. I expect that there’ll actually be significant turnover on both the House and the Senate side and so you’ll have a number of freshmen members that will be willing to take a fresh approach. 

And this will be a great opportunity to be able to say, “Hey, let’s maybe bury the hatchet in some cases. Let’s take a fresh approach. Let’s take into account the seriousness of the world that we face, and determine as a nation that we are willing to adjust some of the conventions that we’ve had in the past to address the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities that face us today.”

34:32 – 34:50 

What about the status quo? Despite this unique opportunity with a new President and a new Congress – what if the Commission’s findings are neglected and their recommendations aren’t implemented, or lost in the transition?  

Can you reinforce the imperative for why the Commission’s Final Report needs to be taken seriously? 

34:51 – 35:40 

I will tell you, I think we live in perilous times. And, I commented earlier that, I don’t think that China, in many ways, is a pacing challenge. 

I think it’s an out-pacing challenge. And I think that the sooner that our nation comes to understand that, and that’ll start with a new President reinforcing that. The sooner that that can happen, the sooner it will be easier to put in place the changes necessary to get after that. 

If we fail to take advantage of the innovation that the commercial world brings us and when I say the commercial world – industry in general – we will find ourselves playing second to China, within the next five years. And I don’t think that that’s a place that our nation wants to be, and it’s not a place that the rest of the world wants our nation to be. 

35:41 – 36:04 

It seems to me, the Commission’s findings seem to really be pushing for a delicate balance between maintaining the discipline needed for a budget, while also implementing some flexibility to adapt and innovate in the modern era.  

So can you tie these critical areas and these recommendations to that delicate balance between budgetary discipline and flexible adoption for innovative technologies? 

36:05 – 37:26 

I think you hit it spot on, Scott, that this is about that balance between discipline and agility or flexibility. And when you take a look at the 28 recommendations that are there, they generally are about adding agility and adding flexibility, but they do it in a way that doesn’t remove the discipline. 

There is great recognition and respect for the role of the legislative branch in this, and that the PBBE Commission was very smart to take that approach. 

It is in the main – their recommendation that we seek a more collaborative relationship between the executive and legislative branches, which would then facilitate the sort of agility and flexibility, because you have a relationship that at least has a modicum of trust that’s associated with it.  

There will always be a need for checks and balances and there will always be a need for oversight on the part of Congress. And there will always be a need for the budget to begin and end on the Hill. I mean, they are the ones that are responsible for doing that. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t tremendous opportunities for greater collaboration and a greater sense of trust between the executive and the legislative branches and that, in my mind, is really what the Commission’s Report is all about.

37:27 – 37:43 

Now, what role can Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy, and its partners such as yourself – not only support the commercial space industry developing these innovative technologies, but also the government partners looking to adopt them and deliver space superiority to the warfighter? 

39:49 – 38:44 

Listen, I was attracted and started working with the Founders of Elara Nova, based on their personal credibility. I’ve known the Founders for many years, and each of the individuals are fantastic human beings.  

As I got to know Elara Nova better and got to understand the 70-some odd consultants that are part of it. I’m amazed at the breadth and the depth of experience. You’ve got folks like myself that understand the resource allocation process very well, that understand the relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch very well. 

You’ve got other folks that have been, program managers and program executive officers, and leading large acquisition organizations within the Department of Defense. And then you’ve got folks that are experts at private equity and venture capital, folks that have started their own companies, and all of that has been kind of within the space ecosystem and so when a company wants to work with Elara Nova, they get the benefit of all of that.

38:45 – 39:22 

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in space security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge. 

Defense Science Board Offers Commercial Pathway to Integrated Deterrence

Study Recognizes the Value of Commercial Space Systems in Military Requirements 

In November of 2022, the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering commissioned the Defense Science Board (DSB) to study commercial space systems and how they can be leveraged in support of Department of Defense (DOD) objectives. As the Federal Advisory Committee to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the DSB engaged government and space industry stakeholders to assess the opportunities and challenges to integrating commercial space systems into military requirements. The study’s resulting document, “Final Report on Commercial Space System Access and Integrity,” was published nearly two years later with five recommendations toward what the DSB called its bottom line objective: “Integrated Deterrence Requires Integrated Operations.” 

“The bottom line of ‘Integrated Deterrence Requires Integrated Operations,’ means we must budget and plan in advance to provide maximum capability to the warfighter,” said Dr. Brad Tousley, partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy and a member of the Defense Science Board. “Economic power is a critical element to our military power. If commercial space capabilities exist that can support DOD objectives, they should be integrated into warfighter training now.” 

Dual-Use Technologies in Space 

The Defense Science Board’s findings come as an emerging commercial space market is increasingly developing “dual-use technologies,” or commercial space capabilities that can also be applied toward DOD objectives.  

“Commercial space systems bring the collection and distribution of information to the fight,” said Mike Dickey, Founding Partner at Elara Nova. “For example, the military needs satellite communications to transmit orders from commanders to troops in the field, ships at sea and airplanes in the air, which is the same technology that puts the World Series in every home. Further, commercial satellite images that support economic monitoring of crude oil movement through ports around the world can also find Russian convoys in Ukraine.” 

Commercial space systems have demonstrated their military value since the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022. However, the Ukrainian military’s reliance on commercial space systems was not planned in advance, but rather came as a result of the inherent responsiveness of commercial space technologies.  

Understanding Commercial Space 

Now, the DOD is looking to understand how the commercial space industry – and the institutional investors financially backing it – can similarly be factored into their own warfighting plans today.  

“Prior to the pandemic, commercial investment in space technologies peaked at about $15 billion a year, which was essentially the same as the Space Force’s budget in Fiscal Year 2021,” Dickey said. “Leveraging that commercial investment becomes a huge opportunity for the Department to double its financial resources toward space capabilities for military operations.” 

The Defense Science Board defined “commercial space,” across four elements: innovation, development, products and services. But the report prioritized the two elements that can provide immediate value to a modern or future conflict: commercial products and commercial services.  

“From a near-term standpoint, the Defense Science Board’s goal was to offer a set of recommendations for applying commercial solutions to immediate DOD needs,” Dr. Tousley said. “There are a variety of commercial space products or services the DOD can buy now, as demonstrated by the use of commercial space systems in Ukraine.” 

Planning for Commercial Integration 

To this end, the Defense Science Board offered five recommendations toward facilitating the growth of commercial space markets in ways that also align to fulfilling DOD objectives.  

The first recommendation calls on the government to “implement an end-to-end framework to better integrate existing and planned commercial capabilities into national security architectures.”  

This recommendation stems from opportunities to utilize commercial space technologies that have already matured, much like the commercial satellite communication (SATCOM) networks that exist today.  

“United States Space Command has a Commercial Integration Cell that sits at Vandenberg Space Force Base primarily supporting satellite communications,” Dickey said. “By sitting with Space Command, those satellite communication providers are aware of ongoing operations and threats to their commercial systems, so they can translate those potential issues into enhancements, upgrades or defensive cyber operations to guarantee resiliency against the threat before a crisis emerges.” 

While the Commercial Integration Cell at Vandenberg is an example of integrating a mature commercial space capability at the operational level, not all commercial space markets have reached the same level of maturity that makes this collaboration possible. However, the DOD can apply the same financial strategies it uses to buy services from the SATCOM market to support the growth of other emerging capabilities, too. 

Budgeting and PPBE Flexibility 

One of the significant advantages of a mature commercial space services market is the ability to respond to the ebbs and flows of supply and demand. Long-term budgeting for these variations, however, is difficult to predict. In the SATCOM market, the government has solved this by making use of a Defense Working Capital Fund as a funding tool. 

“The working capital fund basically creates a checkbook that the government can use each year in the commercial market to support a certain requirement,” Dickey said. “DOD users can transfer money into that checkbook and have the purchases made on their behalf. With a multi-year funding process and the working capital fund, the DOD can get better market pricing that will drive the cost down for a service, while providing transparency to companies and their investors about the government’s buying habits.” 

The Defense Science Board further addressed challenges in the DOD’s budgeting process directly in its second recommendation: “integrate evaluation of and provision for commercial space services into institutional processes.” 

The DOD currently develops its budget through an institutional process known as Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Evaluation (PPBE). But the long-established PPBE process lacks the flexibility needed to keep pace with the rapid developments of commercial space technologies. 

As such, the Defense Science Board advocates for more flexible funding measures within the PPBE process. In addition to the working capital fund model found in their first recommendation, the DSB also supports the flexible reallocation of operations and management (O&M) funds that were similarly recommended by a Congressionally mandated Commission on PPBE Reform earlier this year.  

“Program executive officers need flexibility to move funds between program elements year-to-year, because sometimes one program might under-spend on a service or product, while another might have a greater need,” Dr. Tousley said. “So if the government can adopt a multi-year acquisition reform and leverage working capital fund-like models, the commercial market will have clarity on market demand. Then as long as Congress can review a multi-year appropriation in the appropriations process, their equities are served.”  

Guaranteeing Resilience of Commercial Space Systems 

A greater reliance on commercial space systems, however, presents its own set of risks for the DOD’s military requirements. These risks influenced the Defense Science Board’s third recommendation: “incentivize trust and build resilience in commercial providers.” 

“The government can include resilience of a commercial space capability as a quality-of-service requirement, while acknowledging that quality assurance is going to cost more,” Dr. Tousley said. “But as long as the additional price is factored in as part of the economic model, then the vendors know what they have to do to ensure resiliency, and the government can rely on the enhanced capability as a function of the increased pricing.”  

Commercially available space technologies also present the risk of adversaries leveraging them against the United States and its Allies. The Defense Science Board acknowledges this likelihood in its fourth recommendation: “develop suite of capabilities to monitor, assess and respond to adversary use of commercial space capabilities.” 

“Commercial partners and the government have to acknowledge that adversaries will want to use the same commercial capabilities that we would want to use,” Dr. Tousley said. “So commercial vendors must ensure the U.S. government’s interest is best protected in a way that does not damage the commercial industry’s international growth.” 

Government as Regulator, Investor and Customer 

Navigating the complexities of the commercial space market may be a challenging endeavor, but the state of each market can inform how the DOD develops its policy. This dynamic created the Defense Science Board’s fifth recommendation: “account for maturity of the commercial market when making decisions on how it regulates, invests and buys commercial space services.”  

The Defense Science Board proposes the DOD do this by avoiding over-regulation, while investing for “market creation, not market monopolization.” As an example, Dr. Tousley points to how the DOD actively relies on the GEO commercial satellite communications market today, while understanding the more nascent proliferated Low-Earth Orbit (pLEO) and cislunar markets will require a more calculated investment to facilitate their growth. 

“Over-regulation can restrict a robust domestic market, while inhibiting commercial competition internationally,” Dr. Tousley said. “Competition in the commercial space market serves the DOD’s best interest in the long term with more competitive pricing, so the government must account for market maturity when it evaluates how it’s going to regulate, invest and buy these commercial space services.” 

This final recommendation highlights the key challenge for the DOD as it looks to engage the more nascent industries within the commercial space market.  

As an “anchor tenant,” the DOD can provide critical, early-stage funding for emerging space companies to grow their capability into a total addressable market. But the government’s influence can also inadvertently prevent other competitors from entering the market by creating “vendor lock” with a single provider, thereby also reducing the resiliency for a given military requirement. 

“There are ways to navigate the government’s role as an anchor tenant while avoiding vendor lock,” Dickey said. “The government can put down the first investment in an emerging space technology as its first and majority customer, but the government also needs to mitigate the risk of vendor lock by creating on-ramps for other providers into the market and off-ramps for those who fall short of mutually agreed expectations.” 

Achieving Integrated Deterrence 

With each of these recommendations realized, the DOD can apply the lessons learned in Ukraine to achieve “integrated deterrence.”  

“‘Integrated deterrence’ means the United States must integrate commercial capabilities into its military operations upfront,” Dr. Tousley said. “What happened in Ukraine demonstrates the agility and responsiveness of the commercial space market, but we must remember that wasn’t planned in advance. The government needs to plan for integrated operations now by developing contracts with the commercial space sector, because the DOD can’t just hope that a commercial space company is going to be there in an emergency.”  

Now, partners at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy, are positioned to provide their expertise to stakeholders similarly exploring solutions at the cross-section of military requirements and commercial space capabilities. 

“Elara Nova lives at the intersection of the government, industry and the investment market,” Dickey said. “Elara Nova partners have direct experience in each of these sectors of the space economy, so we offer a unique opportunity to support the implementation of the Defense Science Board’s recommendations.”  

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/. 

Episode 19: Defense Science Board Offers Commercial Pathway to Integrated Deterrence

The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security

Host: Scott King (SK) 

SME: Mike Dickey, Founding Partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy (MD)

Dr. Brad Tousley, partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy and Defense Science Board member (BT)

00:02 – 01:43 

SK: In November of 2022, the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering commissioned the Defense Science Board – or DSB – a Federal Advisory Committee serving the Office of the Secretary of Defense, to study the commercial space market and how their systems can be leveraged to support Department of Defense – or DOD – objectives.

The study came in direct response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier that year, when commercial space systems provided critical capabilities in support of Ukraine’s defense. The use of these commercial space systems in Ukraine, however, was not planned in advance – but rather occurred organically at the onset of the invasion.

Now, the DOD wants to apply the lessons learned and capitalize on similar opportunities to integrate commercial space capabilities into their own military requirements.

The study concluded in May of 2024, when the Defense Science Board published its “Final Report on Commercial Space System Access and Integrity,” which provided five recommendations toward what the DSB determined to be its bottom line objective: “Integrated Deterrence Requires Integrated Operations.”

Welcome to “The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security.” I’m your host, Scott King, and today we’ll be exploring the Defense Science Board’s Final Report and how its recommendations offer a pathway toward integrating commercial space capabilities into military requirements. 

Returning to The Elara Edge today is our first guest: Mike Dickey, Founding Partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy and the former Chief Architect of the United States Space Force. 

Mike, welcome to the show!

01:43 – 01:44  

MD: Well thanks, Scott. Glad to be back. 

01:45 – 02:01 

SK: We’re happy to have you.  

And our second guest today is Dr. Brad Tousley, who in addition to being a partner at Elara Nova, is a member of the Defense Science Board and directly contributed to the Final Report we’ll be discussing today.  

Dr. Tousley, thanks for taking the time to join us today.  

02:02 – 02:03 

BT: Thanks, Scott. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

02:04 – 02:29 

SK: Now, the Defense Science Board’s Final Report comes at a time when the budding relationships between the military and the emerging commercial space market is drawing more and more attention. 

I’d like to begin by understanding how we reached this point. Why are commercial companies – and the institutional investors financially supporting them – entering the space domain? And why has this development captured the DOD’s attention? 

Mike, let’s start with you. 

02:30 – 04:03 

MD: Yeah and it’s very interesting. This is what we call dual-use technology. Those technologies that the commercial world is maybe focusing for commercial purposes can be transitioned into military use and vice versa. 

Just a couple of examples, in the communications business, the military needs communications worldwide so that they can transmit orders from commanders to troops in the field, ships at sea, airplanes in the air. But it’s also the same technology that brings you the World Series, for instance.  

And in the imagery market, the imagery can be used to find Russian convoys on highways in Ukraine. And it can also be used to monitor crude oil movement through ports around the world, which has obviously important impacts on the market.  

PNT – positioning, navigation and timing. You use that to put bombs in very precise places to limit collateral damage. You also need that for precision farming, so farmers can increase yields in their crops by knowing where exactly to put fertilizer.  

So, all of these technologies have a whole bunch of markets they can address. So when you’re an investor, you look at total addressable market and, by doing both military and commercial things with your technology, you get access to much bigger markets and coupled with the reduced barrier in access to launch, has made it cheaper to get to orbit so now something that’s more doable from an investor’s capital.  

But those are the kinds of things that have driven the ability for commercial to come in and play in this world and not just sovereign governments. 

04:04 – 05:11 

BT: I would just add two minor points to that. 

Number one, there’s a physical attribute within space that’s a little bit unique here, and that is that in other, I’ll say, warfighting domains, you can separate capabilities, military and commercial capabilities. But in the space domain, because of orbital dynamics, everything is intermingled. So what that means is – if I already have commercial capabilities in space and they’re growing because of the market pull, like Mike talked about, those systems are going to be physically GEO-located with military needs. So I think that’s one reason why you’re seeing this growth.  

The other is the cost of launch, particularly in the last 15-20 years, has come down so much that as interest rates stay low, the private capital that’s always seeking the maximum return in a capitalist society – that return is going to be seen as promising. 

And I think space has seen that. And when the fact that when launch comes down by a factor of ten and interest rates drop, all of a sudden you see these opportunities, venture capitalists are going to take that money, they’re going to flow it wherever they think there is a return. And space has been really arguably the hottest area of growth the last five years and all of the market projections indicate it’s not going to slow down for 10 to 15, 20 years.  

05:12 – 05:52 

MD: In the government’s Fiscal Year of 21, which was kind of the peak of where commercial investment was before the pandemic and a bunch of other things, the commercial market was investing in those dual-use technologies about $15 billion a year. 

The Space Force’s budget in Fiscal Year 21 was $15 billion a year. So you literally had two Space Force’s worth of budget that you could apply to the problems that that the military had if you did that in the right way. And so that’s a huge opportunity for the Department of Defense to leverage that kind of investment. 

And we’ll talk about all the different ways that they can leverage it. So I think we’re still in a long period here of a lot of outside money coming into the space business. 

05:53 – 06:22 

SK: These market developments have sparked a series of commercial space strategies across various DOD organizations. 

But effectively integrating commercial space capabilities into military strategy also presents complex challenges, the first of which is the somewhat broad understanding of what actually defines quote – unquote “commercial space.” 

Dr. Tousley, can you explain how the Defense Science Board defined “commercial space?”  

And how does this understanding influence the government’s relationship with the commercial space market? 

06:23 – 07:12 

BT: Within the Terms of Reference and within that study, we really defined “commercial” in four buckets. We defined things as commercial innovation, which is more on the research end – which think of AFWERX and SPACEWERX and DIU and the things they are funding. 

Then the second bucket we kind of identified is commercial development. So think of commercial systems that are being built and the government is trying to buy them in bulk for government use.  

Then the third thing is essentially buying a commercial product, which means systems the commercial world is already building, and we just want to buy copies of it. 

And then the last is services. The commercial world always builds things and offers them to customers for services, in this case the Department of Defense, the Space Force, the intelligence community.  

They want to be acquiring these services, so we think of them in terms of those in bulk: innovation, development, products and services.   

07:13 – 08:26 

MD: The language here is really important because companies will come in and say, ‘Well, I’m a commercial company.’ So they think that that opens up a new world for them. But again, the language is important. What makes you a commercial company? If the government wants to think that when you say you’re a commercial company, you have something with a big market and you want the DOD to be one extra buyer in that market, and so you can just kind of buy at the margins. 

That’s typically not been the case with some of these space companies, because the commercial markets in space have still not truly matured except in communications, probably, you can say that that’s a mature market.  

But all the other markets, it’s still not mature. So really what these companies typically want is for the government to kind of be an anchor customer, to be their first customer, to be the biggest buyer of that product or that service. 

And then allow that to be a demand signal to the rest of the world that a commercial market is possible through these products and services. So, it really starts the conversation, perhaps in a bad place because you can be one of those where you’re just one of many buyers or you could use the Federal Acquisition Regulations to buy in a commercial way and I think a lot of times that conversation will kind of spiral and slow down the progress between the commercial companies and the government.  

08:27 – 09:33 

BT: With the emergence of this robust commercial market. We think it’s important for the government as a wise customer to understand how they can affect the market in a good way or a bad way. 

You have these companies, they want to grow into all these addressable markets. And yet the government what you really want long-term is you want a good, robust ecosystem of competitors. 

So the prices stay in a margin range that’s acceptable. You can understand it. And so as some companies succeed and some fail, you aren’t totally reliant on one company. So the concern is that depending upon how the market unfolds, the government needs to be careful not to get themselves locked into a vendor lock.  

Now, if I’m a commercial vendor, I want vendor lock. I want you to buy everything I have and don’t buy anything from my competitor. That’s capitalism. That’s my market drive.  

But on the government side, when you’re supporting the warfighter and delivering operational capability. You want the capability, you want the best, but you also don’t want to be dependent on one vendor because you don’t know what will happen down the line. 

You want prices to stay in control, and you want competition. I mean, that’s good. So there’s that balancing act that the U.S. government has to be concerned about and that’s kind of what we call out in terms of being careful of vendor lock. 

09:34 – 10:40 

MD: There are ways to navigate through that. It can get complicated and it’s tough, but an anchor tenant really means that, ‘I’m going to go in and I will put down the first investment in this technology. I’ll be the first customer. You know, I’ll be 51% or more of what you’re doing with the anticipation that other markets, the other markets are going to mature, other customers will come and you’re part of that customer pie will reduce over time.‘ 

You know, the government’s been bitten by this a little bit. And even in space with the first commercial imagery contracts, there were a couple of providers for that. As the government’s fiscal situation changed over time, the government couldn’t be anchor tenants for two. That sort of reduced to one and then now you get into this conversation, well have I created vendor lock because I was an anchor tenant? 

So there’s a real concern, I think some of that gives the government pause on wanting to do that again. But I think they can find ways to back out of that. 

You can have on-ramps for other vendors. You can switch to a different type of a model where, ‘Okay, the government’s going to have to start just defining requirements,’ kind of like we used to do back in the day. But those things are all sort of painful for all parties, but it’s a necessary part of maturing what it is we’re trying to do here.

10:41 – 12:49 

BT: One of the other things that we discovered in the course of this study was there is not unanimity of understanding across the Department, and I mean all the services of what the law and what the policy allows the United States government to buy or to leverage. 

And what I mean by that is we actually went to some of the general counsels of the services and said, ‘What do you understand as inherently governmental functions in space? And you did not find agreement across the board. And specifically what we discovered was it was very explicit in the law, in that pretty much the only thing required for the U.S. Air Force, I’ll say with the Air Force is nuclear command and control is a military and a government function. Period. 

That will never, ever be commercial. But there are a host of other things that said, ‘No, that could be commercial, no it can’t.’ And what we discovered was that the difference in interpretation comes down to what’s the law say versus what is your policy. And unfortunately right now there’s not complete concurrence across the Department that’s causing part of the concern. 

For example, is missile tracking, is that only military or could there be elements of that that could be commercial? Well, in fact, there are elements of that could be commercial. The law doesn’t specify missile tracking as being only military, and but the policy does. And so if there’s commercial entities out there, for example, that are developing infrared sensors for crop monitoring – is that commercial? Well, no, that’s only military.  

So the reason I bring it up is that it’s important in understanding the emerging market dynamics for the government to be able to understand and operate that way. And unfortunately, we’re not there yet. But one of the things that we recommend is that there being careful look at the integration of capabilities. 

And the other term we came up with was, integrated deterrence, which means that capabilities of the entire United States between military and commercial requires integrated operations early on. 

We’ve identified that integrated operations are not happening in the planning phase upfront. So what happened in Ukraine. It wasn’t planned in advance. Our recommendation is these sorts of capabilities are emerging quickly now. Let’s think about integrated operations, upfront integrated contracts, all that. Get that laid out now and not try and have to respond later. 

12:50 – 13:05 

SK: And within those four definitions to “commercial space,” the Defense Science Board placed a specific emphasis on what it described as the more near-term elements: commercial products and commercial services.  

Dr. Tousley, can you explain why this emphasis was necessary? 

13:06 – 14:12 

BT: Frankly, when we started digging in on it – in those four buckets we identified from a near-term standpoint. There’s tremendous opportunities, particularly in commercial satellite communications and communications as a service. 

There’s particular opportunities there right now. There’s still questions about how that service model operates and how much the Department should leverage. There was concerns about essentially multi-year funding and color of money and working capital funds in terms of how those models could be implemented.  

The second was there was a variety of products that you can buy right now. And in fact, whether you consider it a product or a service the, you know, what was going on in Ukraine was very clearly something – it’s happening quickly – so from an near-term standpoint, helping the Department arrive at a set of recommendations to implement that right now, you could think, ‘Well, why didn’t you go into more refined evaluation of Space Development Agency with commercial development or DIU and SpaceWERX and innovation’ like that’s already going on quickly. 

We’re not necessarily going to stop or change any of that or we don’t have major recommendations at the moment. But on the services and the product side, there’s stuff already happening and we thought the Department needs to address that quickly.

14:13 – 14:40 

SK: Now, to this end, the Defense Science Board – led by retired General Ellen Pawlikowski and Mandy Vaughn – published five recommendations toward integrating commercial space capabilities into military requirements. 

The first recommendation calls on the government to “implement an end-to-end framework to better integrate existing and planned commercial capabilities into national security architectures.”  

Dr. Tousley, can you elaborate on how the DOD can do this? 

14:41 – 16:05 

BT: The most direct one is to work within a working capital fund within a commercial services market – do the integrated operations upfront and tie those into the warfighting Combatant Commander’s plans – those are not done today. 

When a commercial company wants to set up a service-based contract, that’s typically a multi-year process. Yet within the, you know, Plan, Program, Budget, Evaluation process. We do that every year. There’s colors of money, there’s appropriations within Congress, all that’s very carefully prescribed by law. The problem is when the law sets it up this way. 

But the commercial world operates in a multi-year service contract. How in the heck do you make that work out? General Pawlikowski was very explicit that that has been worked in the past. She had to work that in her time as the head of acquisition for the Air Force and the phrase she uses is ‘working capital fund.‘

There are working capital funds that have been set up across various parts of the Department of Defense that are used for just this purpose: to establish, essentially, funds that allow services to be executed in a multi-year process where the equities of the government’s appropriation process are respected.  

And her recommendation is that – the Board’s recommendation is that – it more broadly gets adopted by the Department and really robustly attack the working capital fund as a model to operate that. But it’s color money, color money, it’s appropriations. It’s the way our government operates, the commercial world just doesn’t operate that way. How do you get the benefit of both? 

16:06 – 16:27 

MD: So General Pawlakowski is certainly right. I mean, in space, the commercial, the communications market over which 80% of the Department of Defense communications travels is all done under a defense working capital fund that in the last few years, that’s been on the order of $8 billion for a bunch of different communications services, so that model is there and it’s a good way to proceed.  

16:28 – 16:54 

BT: And I think part of the reason that we we picked up on the near-term challenge and opportunity in SATCOM because as Mike said, the commercial SATCOM leveraged by the Department of Defense is such a dominant point, that getting that more integrated upfront is, to us from a model standpoint, that’s the number one recommendation we came up with. 

Can be done, should be done. There’s an example of how it works financially. It will leverage the most out of the commercial market and it will provide the biggest benefit to the Department of Defense. 

16:55 – 17:14 

SK: The second recommendation is to “integrate evaluation of and provision for commercial space services into institutional processes.” 

This recommendation ties back to the PPBE process that Dr. Tousley – you referenced earlier – so in what ways might commercial space services be factored into the DOD’s budgeting process? 

17:15 – 18:26 

BT: Part of what’s happening is from a Combatant Command perspective. That is not necessarily done upfront. It’s done after the fact. And so from an annual standpoint, if they’re going to budget within the support of working capital fund, that it needs to be prescribed by law in a way that the Department recognizes it as part of the Space Force budget. It’s identified appropriately. It’s also clearly understood by the commercial market as an addressable market. 

Part of how you get the best out of the commercial marketplace is to make sure that the addressable market, which is how they evaluate what they’re going to spend money on, make sure it’s clear to them what the addressable market is. In many cases, there have been not necessary communications, but in other, I’ll say, remote sensing, sometimes the commercial markets, like I don’t actually know what the Department’s going to spend. 

Or they’ll say one thing and then six months later, when the actual budget actions go through, it’s one-tenth of what they said. And so that lack of transparency makes it difficult for public or private investors to figure out just how big is the market going to be and how much capital can I deploy. 

Given that this is an emerging market and the United States has a tremendous amount of private and public capital that can be brought to bear. It’s the government’s interest to leverage that to the maximum effect. 

18:27 – 18:57 

SK: Now, the PPBE process was the topic of our previous episode on The Elara Edge, when Elara Nova partner Shawn Barnes discussed the findings of a Congressionally-mandated Commission on PPBE Reform. 

The Commission on PPBE Reform advocated for the creation of a new budgeting process it called the “Defense Resourcing System.” But whether or not the Commission’s findings are implemented, how do the recommendations similarly coming from the Defense Science Board remain relevant to whatever budgeting process the DOD adopts? 

18:58 – 20:22 

BT: So I’ll be going on a limb here because we didn’t actually look at that. But here’s one way to think about it: If they’re able to adopt a multi-year acquisition reform and they’re able to tie into working capital fund-like models, I think it’ll be great because I think coming back to the point, the commercial market just needs clarity of what the market is. 

So that’s their interest here and you always want to think of this in terms of constituencies within our system of government. So, the industry partners would like the clarity. So if it’s able to be laid out as a multi-year approach, it’ll more carefully align with services. From a Congress perspective, as long as the appropriations process, they get to review it and look at it as a multi-year appropriation. 

And they get to assess and evaluate it. I think their equities are served. The Department’s equity is going to be served. If we can set up a working capital fund model, because that means they’ll understand year-over-year what’s the burden on their budget.  

And you know, from a Combatant Commander’s perspective, or the supporting command’s perspective, if they know what’s going to happen over a multi-year process, it allows them to support the operations plans better. 

I’m sure they don’t want to go through the process wondering every year, ‘Well, Congress appropriated this, but not that. How does that support my need? I don’t have it.’ So I think it’s great all around.  

I just I think the PPBE annual process was set up long ago when technology did not innovate as quickly, but now the technology, particularly in space, is innovating so quickly. 

How do we respond to that? So I think it’s great.  

20:23 – 21:00 

MD: And I’ll say another aspect of the multi-year. So we talk about working capital funds. So the working capital fund basically creates a checkbook that the government can use each year, but it’s using at, in the spot market basically. So a requirement comes up. And now, we go ask the commercial servicing providers to give bids and then we select one. 

But that bid is for today and you don’t get the best pricing. If you can say, ‘Look, I’m going to do this, but I’m going to, I want to do it for two or three years.’ You’re going to get much better pricing. The cost will go down for that service to the government and it provides the benefit of giving transparency and clarity to the investors and the companies. 

21:01 – 21:40 

BT: Scott one other thing I think was in, in our recommendation, in terms of working more effectively within PPBE, was the ability to allow program executive officers to move funds in between program elements year-to-year, because sometimes one program might under-spend on a service or product, the other might have a need. 

And so that was one of the things we recommended that within a broader portfolio, the Department go to Congress and say, ‘We’d like to have more latitude of shifting funds from one to the other, because in many cases, the funds were underneath the program executive officer in total, but not within specific elements, because some programs are doing better than others.’ So we recommended – provide that flexibility. 

21:41 – 21:59  

SK: This leads us to the Defense Science Board’s third recommendation: “incentivize trust and build resilience among commercial providers.” 

How does trust factor into this budding relationship between the military and its commercial space partners? And are there any examples of how the DOD can effectively do this? 

22:00 – 23:05 

BT: We identified a few things. 

Number one it’s kind of a top level framework on the resilience and trust. The government has concerns about whether or not they can trust the performance and the security and the reliability of a commercial system. On the other hand, the commercial world knows that they depend on the government to help provide some clarity about the threat situation. 

So there’s a need to work together on both sides. And we thought that one way of thinking about it is from a market perspective, include resilience as a quality of service requirement. The government and the contractors acknowledge it’s going to cost more for that. But as long as that’s priced in and considered a part of the economic model, then the vendors know what they have to do. 

The government knows, ‘Okay, I’m going to get this enhanced capability as a function of increased pricing.’ I think that’s good and that’ll establish that market for premium pricing, which doesn’t exist today. There’s – it’s a gap in understanding. 

And then I think, you know, without getting into further specifics, just to improve sharing of indications and warning, because the government has an awareness from a rapid timeline of what’s happening more than the commercial world does. Having said that, as proven in Ukraine, many aspects of the commercial world, once they know the situation, they can respond very quickly.

23:06 – 24:36 

MD: The Department specifically, U.S. Space Command has a commercial integration cell that sits at Vandenberg that’s been very focused, for obvious reasons on SATCOM over the years it’s been in existence. 

And in that case, there are representatives from some of these commercial communication providers that sit with the U.S. Space Command and are aware of ongoing operations, are aware of threats. They have clearances and so they are able then to go back and translate those potential issues into enhancements or upgrades or defensive cyber operations or whatever on the commercial side to be able to continue to provide the service.  

That has got to grow and they recognize that has got to grow. There’s now, I think some remote sensing providers in that, as well. 

In addition to that, which is probably the deepest level of integration, there’s also the Space ISAC. There’s a set of these ISAC information sharing organizations across a bunch of different infrastructure elements within the U.S.  

Space is one of those – the Space ISAC is the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center – and they share things that they’re seeing amongst themselves, at an unclassified level to help everybody sort of up their game in defense and understanding what’s, what’s coming at them so they can provide a more robust product. So there’s a lot of data-sharing that has to go on. 

It is happening and, U.S. Space Command is going to expand as the markets expand for more access to these different mission sets with remote sensing, PNT, whatever else we get, is going to expand to commercial integration cell, too, in response.  

24:37 – 25:04 

SK: Now, the fourth recommendation requests that the government: “develop a suite of capabilities to monitor, assess and respond to adversaries and adversaries’ use of commercial space capabilities.” 

This recommendation explicitly acknowledges that just as the DoD wants to leverage the commercial space capabilities available today, there is a risk that our adversaries can do the same.  

Why is this acknowledgement important and how can the DOD mitigate that risk? 

25:05 – 25:57 

BT: Yeah. So this is one where most of our discussions and recommendations are not in the open document. There’s some classified stuff, but, I’ll put it this way. The commercial world and the U.S. government acknowledge that adversaries will also want to use some of the same commercial capabilities that we would want to use.  

That’s pretty obviously known because if part of the commercial market for a commercial capability happens to reside over a foreign territory of concern to the U.S. government, then you have to know that multiple parties are going to try and use that capability, so that was an acknowledgement – everybody knows it. And yet the commercial vendors, particularly those in the United States, are very concerned about making sure the U.S. government is happy – happy in general. 

So I think other than that, we’ve acknowledged that and there were a variety of discussions happening behind the scenes about how to best protect the U.S. government’s interest in this area and not damage commercial industry. I’ll just leave it at that. 

25:58 – 26:21 

SK: The fifth and final recommendation of the Defense Science Board’s report states the government must: “account for maturity of the commercial market when making decisions on how it regulates, invests and buys commercial space services.”  

In what ways can the maturity of a given space capability influence how the government approaches its relationship with those relevant commercial partners?

26:22 – 29:02 

BT: This is all in the vein of how can the U.S government leverage this capability while not damaging it and at the same time support the robust growth in the commercial sector?  

I think the first thing is the DOD has got to account for maturity. And I’ll give you an example of the commercial market: the GEO commercial SATCOM market. It’s pretty mature. I think the government knows that. The government relies on it. pLEO market a little less mature. Cislunar market, very immature.  

So my point in making those three comparisons is that when the government is making decisions on how it’s going to, you know, regulate, invest and buy these services, the government as a wise consumer of the commercial market needs to account for the maturity of those systems. 

It’s just important for the government to constantly do that maturity assessment of these different markets to figure out if it’s going to regulate, invest or buy because the government is a dominant player. As Mike said, if the government’s 51% of your customer, that’s very important to the commercial sector. So that also means the government can be a damaging influence if it’s not careful. So I think that’s the first thing – account for maturity. 

The second is I think just to avoid over-regulation, the commercial sector is always going to complain about regulation and anything that can inhibit their approach to work to obtain as much of the addressable market as they can because that’s their capitalist tendency. But avoid the over-regulation because a lot of commercial entities in the United States are concerned about over-regulation inhibiting their competition internationally. 

You know, because if the government’s concerned about over-regulation, because there’s a perception of, ‘I got to do this, I go do that to protect my own equities,’ but then you damage the very commercial company you need to depend on. 

Then at the end of the day, you’re left with an international company and nothing domestically. And I’ve talked about this with the vendor lock. Invest for market creation – now that’s a very sensitive statement. Not market monopolization. You don’t want market monopolization, not because of any particular vendor, I don’t think and I don’t think anybody the DSB believes that a dominant vendor is – without competition. 

I don’t think anybody would think that’s in the best interest of the Department of Defense in the long-term. Maybe in the very short-term – it’s fine. But long-term, I don’t think anybody would think this ever works out well where you have a monopoly. It isn’t. So I think the government as a wise consumer and customer needs to think about ‘How do you invest for market creation and not market monopolization?’ 

And then the last thing is, this gets back to the law-policy, ‘what’s inherently governmental?’ Be careful and try and minimize unique requirements when you’re buying commercial services. In order to maximize the commercial service, you’ve got to keep the requirements within what’s feasible, as close as possible to that commercial product, or the commercial service, because that allows you to keep the costs down. 

29:03 – 29:18 

SK: The Final Report concluded with a specific emphasis on what it viewed as its bottom line: “Integrated Deterrence Requires Integrated Operations.” 

Dr. Tousley, how do each of these five recommendations align to that bottom line objective?  

29:19 – 30:39 

BT: The bottom line about ‘Integrated Deterrence Requires Integrated Operations’ means I’m gonna put myself in the Combatant Commander’s shoes. In order to do an effective job of planning in advance, because you always want to have your plans all set to deal with potential contingencies. 

If I’m going to have my plans well-crafted and articulated in advance, the commercial sector, if I plan on using them, needs to be a part of that plan upfront. It can’t simply be something I’m going to respond to.  

For example, in Ukraine, that only happened as a happenstance. That was not planned in advance. The whole point of integrated operations and integrated deterrence means all kinds of capabilities like that. We ought to be doing plans, the budgeting and the work in advance, to provide the maximum capability to the warfighter.  

The way I view it is, economic power is a critical element of our national and our military power. And if the commercial sector has capabilities that can support the United States Department of Defense and the intelligence community, we’re going to want to do all this planning and the work upfront to have the capabilities integrated.  

You should be doing warfighter training right now. I don’t believe that we do a lot of training with the warfighter on the leverage of commercial communications in all of our war games today. But we should. So that’s kind of the foot stomp. Let’s get to work. Let’s we’ve got a lot of capabilities that could be integrated today. Let’s get to work and do it. Let’s do all the work upfront. And let’s not just wait for the next conflict to figure it out on the fly. 

30:40 – 31:01 

MD: Yeah, kind of the bottom line is that several of the military leaders have expressed is you want the adversary to look up into space and say, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of stuff I have to deal with and it’s frankly too hard. I’m gonna have to pursue my objectives in other ways and not take the fight to space.’ That’s the integrated part of this. We could have the same conversation about partnering with Allies as well.  

31:02 – 31:25 

SK: Going back to the purpose driving the Defense Science Board’s study, to facilitate the DOD’s understanding of the emerging commercial space market and how it can serve national security objectives – how does this also pertain to the expertise found at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy? 

And how can Elara Nova partners support these efforts at the cross-section of commercial space capabilities and military requirements? 

31:26 – 32:09 

MD: Elara Nova lives at the intersection of the three things we’ve been talking about here today: the government, the industry and the investment markets. And also with international partnerships is another part of integrated deterrence. The people that we have on the Elara Nova team and all of our partners, Doctor Tousley and many others. 

They spent time in government and or they’ve spent time in industry and or they’ve spent time in the investment markets and that expertise, all of that expertise doesn’t exist in any one place, either in the government or the industry. And so we offer an opportunity for those different players in this space, to have that conversation to mature the discussion to come up with specific recommendations and I think that’s where we can help out. I hope Brad sees it the same way.  

32:10 – 32:25 

BT: Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think that Elara Nova, we’re a bunch of like-minded people that really want to see us, know U.S. capability pushing forward for integrated deterrence. We want to support the marketplace. And obviously, in order to do that, we are laser-focused on helping our customers achieve maximum success in doing that.

32:26 – 33:02 

SK: This has been an episode of The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in space security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at The Elara Edge.

Defense Civilian Training Corps, Certificate Programs Emerge to Develop Space Workforce

Academic Institutions Prepare to Meet Space Force’s Accelerating Human Capital Needs

Ms. Katharine Kelley, the Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Human Capital with the United States Space Force, recently announced the military’s newest service was engaged in a pilot program called the Defense Civilian Training Corps (DCTC). While similar to the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), the DCTC is a congressionally mandated initiative to streamline university graduates into civilian careers at the Department of Defense (DOD). While the DCTC exemplifies how the government is initiating partnerships with academia from the top down, grassroots efforts like certificate programs at engineering schools are preparing to engage the Space Force from the bottom up. All together, these initiatives demonstrate how the Space Force can engage academic institutions to foster the workforce it needs among its civilian employees, active-duty Guardians and industry partners. 

“The Defense Civilian Training Corps program looks to increase the available pool of applicants for defense acquisition programs by partnering with civilian universities,” said B.T. Cesul, Ph.D., partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy. “DCTC students receive a curriculum on defense acquisition that’s developed by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, while also facilitating an accelerated security clearance process and preferred access to civilian DOD positions upon graduation.”

According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly 770,000 civilians work in the DOD. But while these civilians make up around one-third of the DOD’s total workforce, they provide an outsized role in enabling military effectiveness. 

“Active-duty leaders inherently serve rotating positions to broaden their skills and facilitate career advancement, which makes them more effective leaders in higher positions of authority,” Dr. Cesul said. “The civilian workforce serves in roles like program managers and chief engineers to backstop the rotational leadership process with the continuity of processes, philosophy, strategy and technical competency that makes the DOD the premier warfighting force of the world that it is today.”

On-Boarding Challenges for Civilian Employees

Students interested in pursuing a national security career, however, often face challenges understanding the vernacular and technical jargon of the DOD and its bureaucratic processes.  This challenge extends to the DOD’s industry partners as well, as the on-boarding process can be a burdensome and time-consuming endeavor for students entering the workforce. 

But now, the DCTC program is streamlining the learning process for students at four universities: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Purdue University, The University of Arizona and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. 

“The DCTC program integrates the defense acquisition process into the curriculum,” Dr. Cesul said. “This gives students the equivalent experience of the full-time training typically found when on-boarding to a job with the DOD. Students also get first-hand experience working in DOD offices through a summer internship opportunity, all while receiving scholarships and a stipend that offset the cost of tuition.”

Further, the DCTC program enables students to get a head start on receiving the clearance credentials relevant to their career. For the Space Force, which has inherited classification policies that the service is looking to modernize, the opportunity to jump-start the clearance process is also an advantage.

“There is a heavy demand signal for a cleared workforce to support the Space Force, because most of their activities are inherently classified based on legacy classification rules,” Dr. Cesul said. “Students entering the workforce want to be productive right away, and a security clearance process that takes months to years to complete may motivate highly qualified candidates to look for other career opportunities outside of the Space Force or in other industries. So the DCTC program presents a contractual relationship between students and the government to initiate the security clearance process without a defined billet or a designated employer.” 

Accelerating Space Workforce Demands

The streamlined clearance process for students will inevitably support the DOD’s industry partners, as well. Typically, commercial companies in the defense industrial base often favor hiring retired or former active-duty service members for their workforce to better position themselves for government contracts. 

“Commercial companies responding to proposals require a cleared, experienced and trusted workforce to win that government contract,” Dr. Cesul said. “But that also means there is a smaller pool of available candidates that meet this requirement for a clearance-credentialed workforce that is also familiar with the DOD’s acquisition process.”

Meanwhile, the demand signal for a space workforce continues to accelerate.

“We are going to have a shortfall in the space professional workforce, probably between 50,000 to 75,000 people per year starting in around 2030, based on the current graduation numbers and the current estimated job requisitions from both government and industry,” Dr. Cesul said. “This is going to create a cycle of competition over smaller human capital resources against an increasing number of problems – which will inherently raise costs for space programs.”

Certificate Programs for Space Operations

But efforts to develop the space workforce of the future go beyond the DCTC and other government initiatives, as grassroots efforts like space-relevant certificate programs are emerging at small universities.  

Before on-boarding as a partner at Elara Nova, Dr. Cesul helped initiate one such pilot program at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. 

“The Space Mission and Operations Certificate program aims to develop pragmatic skills for space operations requirements,” Dr. Cesul said. “The program introduces students with a technical engineering background to a fundamental understanding of space operations through labs on orbital mechanics, satellite orbit determination and digital twinning.”

To facilitate an experiential learning environment for its students in the certificate program, Lake Superior State University engaged the Homestead Mission Operations Center – a satellite ground station developed to support commercial and government research activities for space communications. 

“We used state of the art digital simulators to give students the opportunity to experience satellite communications with Homestead’s live satellite antennas,” Dr. Cesul said. “This lab experience parallels what a government employee experiences in places like the Air Force Lifecycle Management Center or Space Systems Command. Furthermore, a student can point to this certificate as a complement to their engineering degree, which will be an attractive narrative for potential employers in the commercial space industry.”

These pilot programs can also provide a valuable workforce counterpoint to the engineers and designers that traditionally come out of aerospace engineering programs at legacy four-year institutions. 

“These students without a traditional space background want more hands-on work at a terminal or ground station, operating a satellite or conducting field maintenance on a remote system,” Dr. Cesul said. “This certificate program provides a bridge between the system designer to the field technician necessary to actually operate these systems for defense programs, which is also a huge need in the Space Force right now.” 

The Need for Alternative Space Education and Training Programs

Now, the Space Mission and Operations Certificate Program is seeking to engage with the Space Force’s Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM) to evaluate opportunities for integrating their program into existing Basic Military Training programs. 

“We designed the curriculum to replicate other training environments, and the ultimate goal for the certificate program is to get recognition from STARCOM that this program could be equivalent to one of their other introductory training programs,” Dr. Cesul said. “Then by replicating programs like this at other universities, we can increase the volume of students receiving relevant basic training. This opportunity demonstrates how the Space Force can address workforce needs through a variety of partnerships with civilian institutions, while not overwhelming the traditional training programs at Vandenberg or Colorado Springs.”

While Elara Nova is already embarking on support at the various elements of space: government, industry, financial and international partnerships, the space consultancy can also provide expertise to academic institutions developing the space workforce of the future.

“Elara Nova brings experience and expertise to the fight,” Dr. Cesul said. “The value proposition for these education programs is the ability to link real-life experience and expertise to program and curriculum development. Elara Nova can provide those pragmatic links from academia to training, so the government recognizes that there’s a trusted path to on-boarding a productive employee in a government office from day one.”

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/.

LITTLETON, Colo., Jan. 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy is excited to announce a new division, Elara Nova Capital Advisory Services (ENCAS), to advise and connect its clients with financial opportunities in the dynamic and fast-growing space industry. Elara Nova appointed Jim Sullivan as Managing Director to lead this new initiative. Sullivan is a highly experienced corporate finance and capital markets operating executive with a distinguished career in private equity and venture capital in working with portfolio companies to maximize growth, profitability and ROI on their investors’ behalf.

The ENCAS team offers a range of investment-related services, informed alongside the core strategic and technical expertise of the world’s leading space-focused consultancy, to facilitate client growth through:

1. Strategic Capital Planning
2. Investment Readiness and Preparation
3. Market and Investor Mapping
4. M&A Exit Strategy Advisory
5. Due Diligence Support
6. Financing Strategies

“Investor interest and national security priorities are converging in the space domain, with billions of dollars flowing into transformative dual-use technologies,” said Major General (Ret) Roger Teague, Founding Partner at Elara Nova. “With Jim’s leadership, ENCAS will enable clients to receive strategic business guidance and connect with the capital resources necessary to achieve their growth objectives. We are thrilled to have him aboard!”

Sullivan brings over thirty years of experience leading business transformations across several industry verticals, including aerospace/defense, technology, communications and consumer services. He has also served as Partner—Capital Markets at Elara Nova since 2023, uniquely positioning him to guide Elara Nova’s clients entering or expanding their presence into space.

“ENCAS empowers space companies to define, refine and communicate their true value proposition to the investment community,” Sullivan said. “Our goal is to provide tailored advisory solutions that address immediate capital needs that coincide with our client’s long-term strategic objectives. It’s an exciting time for the space industry, and I am honored to lead this expansion of Elara Nova’s services.”

ENCAS marks a natural extension of Elara Nova’s mission to provide world-class expertise in commercial and national security space. It will reinforce the firm’s international reputation as a trusted partner in the space enterprise.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Scott King
Manager, Strategic Communications
Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy
scott.king@elaranova.com

About Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy

Elara Nova is a global professional services firm that advances business and government agencies to maximize their strategic advantage in national security space. The firm creates unparalleled value for its clients and the warfighters, allies, and partners it serves. The team comprises Senior Leaders with decades of government and private sector experience in space strategy, operations, acquisitions, engineering, technology, and policy to build comprehensive solutions that support our clients’ success.

For more information about Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy and its services, please visit www.elaranova.com or contact info@elaranova.com.

NASA's CLPS Program Carries National Security Implications

Recent Lunar Landings Highlight Role of Commercial Companies in New Space Race

A single week in early March saw two commercial companies, Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace, land their respective spacecraft on the Moon’s surface to deliver scientific payloads on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The companies were contracted as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which aims to facilitate rapid acquisition of lunar delivery services that both enable scientific exploration and commercial development of the Moon. These sequential landings demonstrate not only the substantial progress made by commercial space companies since the program’s inception in 2018, but also highlight the role commercial partners will serve in a new “space race” that carries both civil and national security implications. 

“We are in a new space race for natural resources, scientific knowledge and prestige,” said Lt Gen (Ret) Bill Liquori, Elara Nova partner and board member at Intuitive Machines. “Space has become central to our American way of war and our American way of life. This is evident in the National Space Strategy of 2018, which declared that unfettered access to and the freedom to operate in space was vital to advancing our national security, economic prosperity and scientific knowledge – all key elements of this new space race.” 

The first space race, a key feature of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, led to significant national security, economic and scientific advancements. But in the decades since the Apollo program first placed American astronauts on the Moon, a commercial space industry has emerged as an alternative solution to returning astronauts to the lunar surface.  

“There is a unique opportunity for NASA to leverage commercial services for the CLPS program: innovative space companies, decreasing launch costs, growing interest from space investors and a recognition of the critical role space plays in the American way of life,” Liquori said, who also serves on advisory boards with the Space Force Association and True Anomaly. “So rather than deliver payloads through a traditional government approach or procurement, which is often slower and more expensive, this new approach enables NASA to achieve rapid acquisition of lunar delivery services from commercial space companies. Now, NASA gets the benefit of a cheaper commercial approach, and the companies get the benefit of receiving NASA contracts.” 

A Sequence of Lunar Landings 

The CLPS program first made history in February 2024, when Intuitive Machine’s Odysseus spacecraft became the first commercial lander to reach the lunar surface. While Odysseus’ sideways landing left a few mission objectives unfulfilled, its landing marked the first American presence on the Moon since the end of the Apollo program over 50 years ago. 

“Odysseus’ landing validated NASA’s decision to contract commercial space services and opened the door to what can be a thriving lunar economy,” Liquori said. “Odysseus not only landed farther south on the Moon than any other spacecraft in history, it also traveled over 600,000 miles and touched down within a mile of its intended target. The mission proved the commercial industry’s ability to transmit over 350 MB of scientific data from the Moon and the first deep space firing of a proprietary liquid methane / liquid oxygen engine. This achievement will be foundational to future Artemis missions that aim to return humans to the lunar surface.” 

Earlier this year, the CLPS program made headlines again when two more commercial landers successfully reached the lunar surface: Intuitive Machine’s Athena and Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, respectively. While each spacecraft achieved their missions to varying degrees of success, their landings validate the innovative capabilities and accelerating timelines available in a maturing commercial space market.   

“It’s important to understand that there were no commercial landers in development when Space Policy Directive One was signed back in 2017,” Liquori said, referring to a policy that re-focused NASA’s space exploration efforts to the Moon and beyond. “NASA approved the CLPS program a year later in 2018, and in less than five years we’ve got three commercial landings reaching the lunar surface. These achievements demonstrate the viability of NASA’s approach because commercial companies have proven they can move faster and cheaper than traditional government programs.” 

Varying Degrees of Success 

The CLPS program is currently designed to contract with 14 possible commercial space companies. To date, five of those companies have been awarded CLPS contracts. This approach affords NASA the flexibility to uniquely tailor the goals and objectives of each individual mission. 

“Firefly’s Blue Ghost landed near a volcanic feature on the near side of the Moon and performed 14 days of surface operations,” Liquori said. “It transmitted hundreds of gigabytes of data on the Moon’s regolith and geophysical characteristics, as well as the interaction of solar winds with Earth’s magnetic field. Meanwhile, Intuitive Machine’s Athena landed near the south pole and focused on the search for chemical elements that might exist in the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions.” 

While Athena, like Odysseus, experienced a compromised landing, Intuitive Machines was still able to prove basic instrument functions and collect half a gigabyte of data in 13 hours of lunar surface operations. But although some mission objectives remained incomplete, the lessons learned from both landings are being shared with government partners to better inform and prepare future efforts. 

“The Intuitive Machines team is already in the midst of a comprehensive hot wash that is driving toward understanding the root cause of these issues and addressing other areas for improvement on future missions,” Liqouri said. “The hot wash also includes external participants like NASA, the European Space Agency and the Jet Propulsion Lab. This collaborative approach not only builds an individual company’s knowledge, but it also broadens the commercial industry’s collective knowledge which will enable greater success in subsequent missions.” 

A Race for Lunar Resources 

However, it’s not just American commercial companies that are making lunar landing attempts ahead of greater ambitions. Adversaries like Russia and China have made their own individual lunar attempts and have future, joint ambitions for human presence on the lunar surface.  

“The Moon is a key piece of China’s overall space aspirations,” Liquori said. “In 2021, China announced plans for their International Lunar Research Station in a partnership with Russia, but they have also opened the program to other interested parties. The ILRS seeks to establish a robotic lunar base by the 2030s with an eventual human presence, as well.” 

China hopes to involve as many as 50 other countries in its International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, with 10 countries having already signed on to participate. The ILRS stands in direct contrast to the United States’ Artemis program, which also seeks to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon.  

However, the Artemis program will be conducted in accordance with the broader Artemis Accords – a multilateral framework that establishes a common set of principles for international cooperation in civil space exploration. As of mid-May, the Artemis Accords has been signed by 55 countries and reaffirms space-faring nation’s compliance with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.  

The Artemis Accords stems from the wide-ranging recognition that collaboration and cooperation with international partners is a prerequisite to preserving a peaceful space domain.  

“The United States can simply do more when international partners are involved, particularly through programs like the Artemis Accords and other multilateral forums,” Liquori said. “Inherent benefits include shared funding for technology development and academic research, as well as building an international consensus of like-minded partners that make it easier and oftentimes more effective to call out any irresponsible behavior from others in the space domain. No country can go it alone in space, and the right international partnerships often prove to be force multipliers.” 

But to date, only one country has signed both the Artemis Accords and declared their intentions to participate in ILRS: Thailand. This calls into question what ulterior motives, if any, exist for the ILRS. 

“Are China and Russia only interested in international scientific cooperation through ILRS, or are there some other goals that they might have for the Moon from a security perspective?” Liquori said. “China has already successfully completed robotic missions to the far side of the Moon and even returned lunar samples to Earth. Meanwhile, we currently don’t have an effective way to monitor activities on the far side of the Moon, so it’s important for us to pay attention to China’s progress and their lunar ambitions.” 

National Security Implications of Civil Space Programs 

That’s why the success of civil space programs, like CLPS, also carry national security implications for the United States Space Force. 

“There is an opportunity for the Space Force and others to leverage the CLPS program to improve our space domain awareness capabilities in and around the Moon,” Liquori said. “China and Russia are equally interested in potential lunar resources, and human history has proven that resource competition often leads to security concerns and requirements. So programs like CLPS offers the Space Force an affordable opportunity to host a sensor, or a communications or navigation payload through commercial services, without the expense of a traditional large acquisition program in the face of China’s sustained, steady and oftentimes opaque space ambitions.” 

Now, the new space race, like the previous Cold War-era space race before it, stands to benefit humanity beyond its national security implications.  

“The first space race was driven in part by the need to see beyond the Iron Curtain and understand what the Soviet Union was doing. Since then, we have realized great military and economic benefits from our space activities: there are few military operations that don’t involve space capabilities, and space systems like the Global Positioning System help us navigate to different places and provide an accurate timing source for banking transactions across the global economy.” 

A key, distinguishing factor for the new space race, however, is that success relies on the capabilities of the United States’ partners in the commercial space industry. But even commercial companies, like sovereign governments, require expertise to achieve their lunar ambitions. 

“Companies and government organizations cannot grow this level of expertise overnight,” Liquori said. “The Elara Nova team is a great choice to help augment government or industry teams with expertise across all space mission areas: strategy and policy development, market engagement, technology and capital investment, mergers and acquisitions, legal and regulatory issues, as well as inter-agency and intergovernmental cooperation. The co-founders recognized the need to coalesce a wide-ranging set of space expertise and experience that any government or organization can benefit from.” 

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/. 

From GSSAP to RG-XX: Space Force Bringing “Solution-Diversity” to Space Domain Awareness 

Commercial SSA Data to be added to the SDA Mission 

The United States Space Force is looking to add commercial capabilities to its space domain awareness (SDA) mission. For decades, the SDA mission was driven by space situational awareness (SSA) data from military-operated constellations like the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) and the Space Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) system. These legacy programs leveraged space situational awareness data to support a space domain awareness understanding of the evolving threat environment in space. Now, the Space Force is engaging commercial space companies to develop a new program, currently known as RG-XX, which is widely viewed as bringing solution-diversity to the space domain awareness mission. 

“SBSS and GSSAP are two of the earliest programs to operationalize space situational awareness data from on-orbit capabilities,” said Col (Ret) Ken Bowling, a partner at Elara Nova. “Space situational awareness is knowing where a space object came from the day it was launched, and maintaining track custody for the entirety of its lifetime. Meanwhile, space domain awareness is overlaid against the kill chain concept: it’s about understanding the behaviors and intent of space objects across all orbital regimes, which is especially important when you’re attributing the source of an attack and enabling your warning systems.” 

An Evolving Threat Environment in Space 

SBSS and GSSAP essentially function as a “neighborhood watch” in both geosynchronous and sun-synchronous orbits, respectively. Together, they help the Space Force develop a space domain awareness picture that tracks and characterizes man-made objects operating in space.  

But the same evolving threat environment in space that triggered the founding of the Space Force, also means the Department of War’s newest military service must expand its resources to better understand, prepare for and respond to, existing and emerging threats.  

“Previously, your satellite only had to survive a tough but relatively benign environment: temperature changes, radiation, micrometeorite hits, etc.,” Bowling said. “But almost no thought was put into your satellite operationally surviving a kinetic or even non-kinetic attack. Programs such as GSSAP and SBSS play a role in that warfighting construct. Now, RG-XX could become something different, but it will be a space domain awareness tool that includes the potential for commercial vendors to provide that capability.” 

The evolving threat and counterspace landscape include kinetic threats like direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons (ASATs) and non-kinetic threats like cyber and electromagnetic warfare attacks that can compromise a satellite’s operations. As a result, the Space Force and its commercial partners are beginning to think differently about how they build and manufacture their satellites to ensure resilience against these emerging threats.  

“The commercial space industry has a business model predicated on satellites succumbing to the environmental effects of space, particularly the radiation,” Bowling said. “When their satellites fail, that’s an opportunity to upgrade the next replacement satellite with new technology. But that’s an operating mindset for a benign environment, like changing a tire. When my car’s tire wears out, I’ll just put on a new tire. But that does not translate into military operations.” 

Changing Requirements for Space Acquisition 

Now, Bowling acknowledges that the analogy of changing a car tire is a loose one. But nonetheless, the point remains that the Space Force is similarly developing and implementing its own DOTMILPF, a framework known as Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and Education, Personnel, and Facilities. DOTMILPF is a policy approach that other military services have leveraged effectively to procure and acquire weapons systems for military operations.  

“When the Army, Navy and Air Force design weapons systems, they know those weapons systems are going to be engaged by hostile forces in their natural environment,” Bowling said. “Now, in space we not only have to consider operational satellites attacking other satellites in space, but also adversary effects coming from one domain into the space domain, like a ground-launched ASAT.” 

That’s why the Space Force is exploring new ways to better protect its assets on-orbit, similar to how tanks and mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPV) are designed to withstand attacks on land.  

“In a best-case scenario, a car tire can run on a flat, but tank treads and MRAPVs can take a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) round and still keep going,” Bowling said. “That’s the difference between the drive mechanisms built for military uses, versus commercial or personal use. Today, our satellites are not much more hardened than a car tire. We have very little defensive mechanisms to protect them, other than to attribute an attack to a specific adversary because we had custody of that object until it attacked us.” 

While the challenge of hardening space technologies from attack is far more complex than simply reinforcing a car tire to withstand an RPG round, the analogy still reinforces that as it stands today, SSA and SDA data is one of the few tools available to protect and defend Space Force assets on-orbit.  

However, the wide-ranging set of threat vectors in space is further challenging the Space Force and its partners about how to design and manufacture the next generation of satellites.  

“You could theoretically put armor on a satellite to protect it from a kinetic strike, but even that would be difficult because even a paint fleck traveling seven kilometers per second in low-Earth orbit can cause significant damage,” Bowling said. “Then there’s non-kinetic effects: how do you protect your satellite’s sensors from electromagnetic effects? These are just some of the threat vectors the Space Force is exploring as part of the requirements process.” 

Other solutions are being considered, as RG-XX will be the first Space Force program to require a refueling capability. But even then, developing similar solutions are uniquely challenging in the space domain.  

“Satellites carry fuel on board to adjust their orbits, but what if they have to maneuver to avoid a collision or to avoid an adversary?” Bowling said. “There’s a lot of talk about on-orbit refueling. But if satellites are designed to be refueled, then they have to have a common interface standard like a KC-135’s refueling probe. Otherwise, you have to think about launching another satellite to repair a damaged one or replenish the capability altogether with a whole new satellite.” 

Consequently, as the Space Force develops its warfighting mindset for the evolving space domain, the military service is re-evaluating how it optimizes the development and procurement of its assets.  

“Weapon system acquirers are trained to optimize for three pillars: cost, schedule and performance,” Bowling said. “Space systems are expensive and take a long time to develop because they’re simply too important to fail. But we’ve realized that some space technology is already becoming obsolete by the time we’re even putting it on-orbit. So Moore’s Law, which says technology rapidly changes every couple of years, is a persistent challenge.” 

Engaging Commercial for Solution-Diversity 

The imperative to adapt is driving the Space Force to further engage commercial partners for new and innovative solutions. Despite having unique needs for maintaining SSA data around on-orbit assets, there are opportunities for the Space Force to benefit from the information a commercial space company can provide.  

“A commercial satellite might have three or four cameras documenting what’s going on around them for potential insurance liability claims,” Bowling said. “Now, the Space Force doesn’t care about insurance liabilities, but they care about whether a satellite’s failure is the result of an adversary’s attack or threatens the freedom of operations in space. So if a commercial company can provide SSA data to the warfighter on-demand, then the warfighter may benefit from that.” 

Now, the Space Force is actively engaging with commercial space companies to gauge their interest in providing SSA data to the broader space domain awareness mission. In August, the Space Force held an industry day that brought out over 150 companies who expressed interest in RG-XX, which aligns well with Major General Stephen Purdy’s publicly-expressed intention of taking a multi-vendor approach to the program. 

“It’s dangerous for the Department of War to be solely dependent on a single vendor for any critical technology, and so industry days are set up to get feedback about different approaches, trade-offs or requirements,” Bowling said. “If you have multiple vendors, the inherent competition hopefully drives better price solutions for the Space Force. But this solution-diversity also complicates the adversary’s decision-making by driving up their cost for a more advanced offensive capability.” 

While the specific details of RG-XX remain to be determined, Bowling asserts that the Space Force’s approach to the space domain awareness mission is evolving in two distinct ways. 

“One: the Space Force knows that the information GSSAP provides is critical to the warfighting capabilities they need moving forward. Two: the Space Force is going into this RG-XX program with the notion that it is both possible and reasonable for commercial capabilities to be included in the pursuit of space domain awareness.” 

Now, as more commercial space companies enter the emerging space economy and present their own solutions to the Space Force for programs like RG-XX, Elara Nova stands as an interlocutor to help both the military service and its commercial partners develop the necessary space capabilities of the future.  

“Elara Nova has over 90 partners, many of whom have space backgrounds ranging from rocket launch to command and control; payload and satellite development; and operations and sustainment of space capabilities,” Bowling said. “So Elara Nova can provide expertise across the entire spectrum of space operations, from inception to operations and even disposal.”  

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space and aeronautics domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/.