Defense Industry Weekly: Major Shifts in Military Tech, Procurement, and Security

This past week brought sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments across the defense indus­tri­al base, from rev­o­lu­tion­ary mis­sile defense ini­tia­tives to con­cern­ing secu­ri­ty rev­e­la­tions about our cloud infra­struc­ture. As some­one who’s spent decades ana­lyz­ing the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and nation­al defense, I’m see­ing pat­terns that demand our imme­di­ate attention.

Missile Defense Revolution: Speed at Any Cost

The Mis­sile Defense Agen­cy’s indus­try sum­mit revealed an urgent real­i­ty check. With adver­saries advanc­ing their mis­sile capa­bil­i­ties, MDA lead­er­ship made it crys­tal clear: we have rough­ly 1,020 days to deliv­er ini­tial mis­sile defense capa­bil­i­ties. That’s not a sug­ges­tion – it’s a sur­vival timeline.

Admi­ral Williams deliv­ered the blunt truth about our test­ing phi­los­o­phy need­ing a com­plete over­haul. The old mod­el of tak­ing 14 months for six major flight tests? Dead. The new man­date: com­press six months of data analy­sis into six min­utes using dig­i­tal tools and satel­lite links. This shift of men­tal­i­ty isn’t just about effi­cien­cy; it’s about match­ing the pace of threats that evolve faster than our tra­di­tion­al pro­cure­ment cycles can handle.

What struck me most was the call for “orders of mag­ni­tude” improve­ments in afford­abil­i­ty. We’re not talk­ing incre­men­tal changes – we need rev­o­lu­tion­ary cost reduc­tions while accel­er­at­ing deliv­ery. The mes­sage to indus­try was clear: bring your A‑game or get left behind.

Army Transformation: Streamlining for Future Warfare

The Army’s trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tive is reshap­ing how we orga­nize and acquire capa­bil­i­ties. At Tech­Net Augus­ta, offi­cials con­firmed a major reor­ga­ni­za­tion of Pro­gram Exec­u­tive Offices (PEOs), poten­tial­ly con­sol­i­dat­ing from 13 to 9 offices. This move isn’t bureau­crat­ic shuf­fling – it’s recog­ni­tion that our acqui­si­tion struc­ture must match our evolv­ing requirements.

The new Mod­u­lar Mis­sion Pay­load (MMP) for elec­tron­ic war­fare exem­pli­fies this shift. Instead of ded­i­cat­ed EW vehi­cles “look­ing like por­cu­pines” with anten­nas, the Army wants plug-and-play capa­bil­i­ties that work across plat­forms. Col. Scott Shaf­fer empha­sized COTS/GOTS solu­tions that deliv­er 60% of the capa­bil­i­ty quick­ly, rather than per­fect sys­tems years late.

Bran­don Pugh, the Army’s new prin­ci­pal cyber advi­sor, high­light­ed anoth­er crit­i­cal gap: we need AI for cyber oper­a­tions at the tac­ti­cal edge, not just enter­prise IT. His vision of AI detect­ing mali­cious code in real-time while keep­ing humans in the loop rep­re­sents the bal­anced approach we need.

Security Breaches and Supply Chain Vulnerabilities

The most alarm­ing news came from ProP­ub­li­ca’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Microsoft­’s Defense Depart­ment cloud oper­a­tions. The rev­e­la­tion that Microsoft used Chi­na-based engi­neers with “dig­i­tal escorts” to main­tain DoD sys­tems rep­re­sents a cat­a­stroph­ic secu­ri­ty fail­ure. For­mer DoD CIO John Sher­man called it right: this prac­tice does­n’t pass the com­mon sense test.

Microsoft­’s secu­ri­ty plan sub­mit­ted to DISA con­ve­nient­ly omit­ted any men­tion of for­eign engi­neers or Chi­na-based oper­a­tions. The com­pa­ny buried vague ref­er­ences to “escort­ed access” deep in a 125-page doc­u­ment. At the same time, Defense offi­cials expressed shock when the prac­tice came to light. Microsoft has since stopped using Chi­na-based engi­neers for DoD work, but the dam­age to trust is done. The con­tin­ued breakdown

Microsoft con­tin­ues to expe­ri­ence a series of mis­steps, which are con­nect­ed to broad­er sup­ply chain con­cerns high­light­ed by the DHS’s expan­sion of the Uyghur Forced Labor Pre­ven­tion Act. Adding steel, cop­per, and lithi­um to import restric­tions acknowl­edges that our defense indus­tri­al base faces both secu­ri­ty and eth­i­cal chal­lenges. With over 16,700 ship­ments worth $3.7 bil­lion already blocked, we’re see­ing real enforce­ment of these concerns.

Economic and Strategic Implications

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s Intel deal rep­re­sents a new mod­el for secur­ing domes­tic chip pro­duc­tion. Con­vert­ing $8.9 bil­lion in CHIPS Act grants into a 10% equi­ty stake (with options for anoth­er 5% at $20/share) gives tax­pay­ers actu­al own­er­ship rather than just sub­si­dies. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s jour­ney from “high­ly CONFLICTED” to “High­ly Respect­ed” in Trump’s eyes shows how quick­ly dynam­ics shift when nation­al secu­ri­ty meets busi­ness reality.

Pen­ta­gon pro­cure­ment data reveals inter­est­ing trends: Q2 spend­ing reached $14.3 bil­lion in one week fol­low­ing the pas­sage of the con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion, with pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices account­ing for $15.4 bil­lion in total. Northrop Grum­man’s $700 mil­lion ground-based strate­gic deter­rent con­tract led the pack, show­ing where pri­or­i­ties lie.

Technology and Innovation Drivers

Chi­na’s graphite bomb rev­e­la­tion deserves seri­ous atten­tion. This “soft-kill” weapon can dis­able pow­er grids with­out destroy­ing infra­struc­ture – per­fect for “pres­sure not con­quest” strate­gies. The abil­i­ty to scat­ter 90 sub­mu­ni­tions across 10,000 square meters, caus­ing wide­spread elec­tri­cal fail­ure with­out vis­i­ble destruc­tion, rep­re­sents a new form of war­fare that tar­gets civil­ian con­fi­dence as much as mil­i­tary capability.

On the pos­i­tive side, the admin­is­tra­tion’s Nation­al Design Stu­dio ini­tia­tive aims to mod­ern­ize fed­er­al dig­i­tal ser­vices by July 4, 2026. With only 6% of fed­er­al web­sites rat­ed “good” for mobile use and less than 20% uti­liz­ing stan­dard­ized design sys­tems, there is a mas­sive room for improve­ment. The three-year tem­po­rary orga­ni­za­tion mod­el mir­rors DOGE’s approach to dri­ving rapid change.

Looking Ahead

Sev­er­al trends demand our attention:

  1. Speed Over Per­fec­tion: From mis­sile defense to Army EW sys­tems, the mes­sage is clear – deliv­er 60% capa­bil­i­ty now rather than 100% capa­bil­i­ty never.
  2. Secu­ri­ty Through Own­er­ship: The Intel deal sig­nals poten­tial new mod­els for secur­ing crit­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties through equi­ty stakes rather than just contracts.
  3. Trust Deficit: The Microsoft-Chi­na rev­e­la­tion is like­ly to trig­ger a deep­er scruti­ny of all defense con­trac­tors’ for­eign oper­a­tions and secu­ri­ty practices.
  4. Inte­gra­tion Imper­a­tive: Army PEO con­sol­i­da­tion and mod­u­lar sys­tems reflect the need for inte­grat­ed capa­bil­i­ties rather than stovepiped programs.

The defense indus­tri­al base faces a fun­da­men­tal ten­sion: we need to move faster while main­tain­ing secu­ri­ty, reduce costs while increas­ing capa­bil­i­ty, and embrace com­mer­cial tech­nol­o­gy while pro­tect­ing mil­i­tary advan­tages. Suc­cess requires indus­try part­ners who under­stand that busi­ness as usu­al is a lux­u­ry we can no longer afford.

As we nav­i­gate these chal­lenges, remem­ber that every deci­sion impacts our abil­i­ty to deter and defend. The 1,020-day count­down Admi­ral Williams men­tioned isn’t just about mis­sile defense – it’s about trans­form­ing how we think about defense acqui­si­tion and indus­tri­al base resilience. The ques­tion isn’t whether we can afford to change; it’s whether we can afford not to.

August 27, 2025  Leave a comment

DoD Industry Weekly: Procurement Trends and Strategic Shifts Shape Defense Landscape

As we nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ties of the defense indus­tri­al land­scape in August 2025, sev­er­al key devel­op­ments are reshap­ing how the Depart­ment of Defense approach­es pro­cure­ment, indus­tri­al base man­age­ment, and strate­gic part­ner­ships. This week’s analy­sis reveals crit­i­cal trends that every defense con­trac­tor and indus­try stake­hold­er should understand.

Procurement Spending Patterns Signal Strategic Realignment

The lat­est Bloomberg Gov­ern­ment data reveals a fas­ci­nat­ing shift in Pen­ta­gon pro­cure­ment pat­terns that deserves our atten­tion. For only the third time in a decade, we’ve wit­nessed a quar­ter-over-quar­ter decrease in Defense Depart­ment spend­ing, with Q2 FY2025 oblig­a­tions drop­ping to $104.6 bil­lion from high­er Q1 lev­els. This quar­ter brings total agency spend­ing to $212.4 bil­lion for the first half of the fis­cal year.

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy is the tim­ing of this trend. Spend­ing surged dur­ing the sec­ond week of March, coin­cid­ing with Pres­i­dent Trump’s sign­ing of the con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion (Pub­lic Law 119–4) that extend­ed stop­gap fund­ing through the fis­cal year’s end. This spike, reach­ing $14.3 bil­lion in unclas­si­fied pro­cure­ment from March 10–14, rep­re­sents the quar­ter’s high­est week­ly spending.

The con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion’s impact can­not be under­stat­ed. Unlike typ­i­cal stop­gap mea­sures that restrict new project ini­ti­a­tion, this res­o­lu­tion pro­vid­ed the Pen­ta­gon with increased pro­cure­ment fund­ing and cru­cial flex­i­bil­i­ty to launch new ini­tia­tives. This devel­op­ment sig­nals a more strate­gic approach to defense spend­ing, mov­ing away from the tra­di­tion­al end-of-fis­cal-year rush we’ve his­tor­i­cal­ly observed.

Professional Services Market Dominates Defense Spending

A sig­nif­i­cant trend emerg­ing from Q2 data shows pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices lead­ing defense pro­cure­ment at $15.4 bil­lion. This data con­trasts sharply with civil­ian agency trends, where pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices con­tracts faced high ter­mi­na­tion rates due to Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy ini­tia­tives dur­ing the same period.

The stand­out con­tract in this cat­e­go­ry was Northrop Grum­man’s Air Force ground-based strate­gic deter­rent con­tract, val­ued at near­ly $700 mil­lion. This award under­scores the Pen­tagon’s con­tin­ued invest­ment in strate­gic mod­ern­iza­tion capa­bil­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in nuclear deter­rence infrastructure.

For firms that offer pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices as part of their offer­ing (this includes VARs, OEMs, and, of course, the FSI Com­mu­ni­ty), this trend rep­re­sents both oppor­tu­ni­ty and com­pe­ti­tion. The defense sec­tor’s appetite for pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices remains robust, but con­trac­tors must demon­strate clear val­ue propo­si­tions that align with effi­cien­cy ini­tia­tives while sup­port­ing crit­i­cal mis­sion requirements.

Industrial Base Vulnerabilities Under Congressional Scrutiny

Con­gres­sion­al atten­tion to defense indus­tri­al base resilience con­tin­ues to inten­si­fy. The Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Office’s recent report (GAO-25–107283) high­lights ongo­ing con­cerns about for­eign sup­pli­er depen­den­cies and their risks to nation­al secu­ri­ty. This scruti­ny comes at a crit­i­cal time when sup­ply chain resilience has become a nation­al secu­ri­ty imperative.

The report’s find­ings will like­ly influ­ence upcom­ing pol­i­cy deci­sions and pro­cure­ment strate­gies. Defense con­trac­tors should pre­pare for increased empha­sis on domes­tic sourc­ing require­ments and sup­ply chain trans­paren­cy. Com­pa­nies that can demon­strate robust domes­tic sup­ply chains and reduced for­eign depen­den­cies will like­ly find them­selves at a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage in future competitions.

Legislative Developments Shape Future Contracting Landscape

H.R. 3838’s pro­vi­sions con­tin­ue to work through the leg­isla­tive process, with sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for defense con­trac­tors. The bill requires the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense for Indus­tri­al Base Pol­i­cy and the Direc­tor of Defense Pric­ing, Con­tract­ing, and Acqui­si­tion Pol­i­cy to sub­mit a com­pre­hen­sive report by March 1, 2026, exam­in­ing reg­u­la­tions and poli­cies that dis­cour­age con­trac­tors from main­tain­ing or invest­ing in surge capac­i­ty.

This leg­isla­tive focus on surge capac­i­ty reflects grow­ing recog­ni­tion that the defense indus­tri­al base must be pre­pared for rapid scal­ing in response to emerg­ing threats. Con­trac­tors should begin eval­u­at­ing their surge capac­i­ty capa­bil­i­ties and iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial bar­ri­ers to expan­sion. Those who can demon­strate surge readi­ness may find new oppor­tu­ni­ties as the Pen­ta­gon seeks to strength­en indus­tri­al base resilience.

Technology Infrastructure Modernization Accelerates

The Depart­men­t’s focus on tech­ni­cal debt reduc­tion and infra­struc­ture mod­ern­iza­tion con­tin­ues to gain momen­tum. Recent com­mu­ni­ca­tions from the Chief Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer’s office empha­size pri­or­i­tiz­ing tech­ni­cal debt reduc­tion for Fis­cal Year 2027, with spe­cif­ic atten­tion to local area net­work infra­struc­ture upgrades.

This ini­tia­tive rep­re­sents sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties for tech­nol­o­gy con­trac­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly those spe­cial­iz­ing in net­work infra­struc­ture, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, and sys­tems inte­gra­tion. The empha­sis on “max­i­miz­ing warfight­er lethal­i­ty” through tech­nol­o­gy improve­ments sig­nals that suc­cess­ful pro­pos­als must demon­strate oper­a­tional impact rather than mere­ly tech­ni­cal capability.

Strategic Implications for Defense Contractors

Sev­er­al key take­aways emerge from this week’s developments:

Pro­cure­ment Tim­ing Strat­e­gy: The shift away from tra­di­tion­al quar­ter­ly spend­ing pat­terns sug­gests con­trac­tors should main­tain con­sis­tent engage­ment through­out the fis­cal year rather than con­cen­trat­ing efforts on tra­di­tion­al peak peri­ods. The his­tor­i­cal pat­tern of 31% Q4, 25% Q2, 23% Q3, and 22% Q1 spend­ing may be evolving.

Pro­fes­sion­al Ser­vices Focus: The dom­i­nance of pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices spend­ing indi­cates strong demand for exper­tise-based solu­tions. Con­trac­tors should empha­size their abil­i­ty to pro­vide strate­gic advi­so­ry ser­vices, tech­ni­cal exper­tise, and spe­cial­ized knowl­edge rather than com­mod­i­ty services.

Sup­ply Chain Resilience: With increas­ing scruti­ny on for­eign depen­den­cies, con­trac­tors must proac­tive­ly address sup­ply chain vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. This review should include map­ping sup­pli­er net­works, iden­ti­fy­ing domes­tic alter­na­tives, and devel­op­ing con­tin­gency plans for sup­ply disruptions.

Surge Capac­i­ty Prepa­ra­tion: The leg­isla­tive focus on surge capac­i­ty sug­gests future oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­trac­tors who can demon­strate rapid scal­ing capa­bil­i­ties. Com­pa­nies should assess their capac­i­ty for rapid oper­a­tional expan­sion and iden­ti­fy poten­tial bar­ri­ers to surge production.

Looking Ahead

As we move through the remain­der of FY2025, sev­er­al fac­tors will shape the defense con­tract­ing land­scape. The Pen­tagon’s empha­sis on effi­cien­cy and strate­gic spend­ing sug­gests a more dis­ci­plined approach to pro­cure­ment. Con­trac­tors must demon­strate clear val­ue propo­si­tions and align their offer­ings with strate­gic priorities.

The ongo­ing focus on indus­tri­al base resilience will like­ly dri­ve pol­i­cy changes that favor domes­tic sup­pli­ers and com­pa­nies with robust sup­ply chain man­age­ment. Orga­ni­za­tions that invest in sup­ply chain trans­paren­cy and domes­tic sourc­ing capa­bil­i­ties will be well-posi­tioned for future opportunities.

Tech­nol­o­gy mod­ern­iza­tion ini­tia­tives present sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties, but suc­cess will require demon­strat­ing clear oper­a­tional impact. Con­trac­tors must move beyond tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions to show how their solu­tions enhance warfight­er capa­bil­i­ties and mis­sion effectiveness.

The defense indus­tri­al land­scape con­tin­ues evolv­ing rapid­ly, dri­ven by strate­gic com­pe­ti­tion, tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment, and fis­cal dis­ci­pline. Suc­cess in this envi­ron­ment requires agili­ty, strate­gic think­ing, and a deep under­stand­ing of both cur­rent trends and emerg­ing require­ments. Com­pa­nies that can adapt to these chang­ing dynam­ics while main­tain­ing focus on mis­sion-crit­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties will thrive in the evolv­ing defense marketplace.

August 20, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Weekly: Nuclear Power Takes Center Stage as Commercial Space Regulations Get Major Overhaul

Good morn­ing, Team. This week has major devel­op­ments in nuclear space tech­nol­o­gy, sweep­ing reg­u­la­to­ry changes, and some sig­nif­i­cant wins and loss­es in the launch sec­tor. Let’s dive in!

Trump Administration Shakes Up Space Regulations

The biggest news this week came from the White House, where Pres­i­dent Trump signed an exec­u­tive order titled “Enabling Com­pe­ti­tion in the Com­mer­cial Space Indus­try” on August 13th. This is a game-chang­er for com­mer­cial space com­pa­nies that have been strug­gling with bureau­crat­ic red tape.

The order directs the FAA to com­plete­ly over­haul the Part 450 launch and reen­try licens­ing reg­u­la­tions that have been a major pain point for the indus­try. It also scales back envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions for launch and space­port projects — a move that’s got indus­try lead­ers cel­e­brat­ing and envi­ron­men­tal groups concerned.

But here’s where it gets real­ly inter­est­ing: the Com­merce Depart­ment is now tasked with cre­at­ing a mis­sion autho­riza­tion sys­tem for “nov­el space activ­i­ties” that aren’t cur­rent­ly reg­u­lat­ed. This exec­u­tive order could open the door for all sorts of inno­v­a­tive space ven­tures we haven’t even imag­ined yet.

In a relat­ed move that raised eye­brows, the FAA ter­mi­nat­ed the entire mem­ber­ship of the Com­mer­cial Space Trans­porta­tion Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (COMSTAC) this week with­out expla­na­tion. A DOT spokesper­son said it’s part of a broad­er effort to “recon­sti­tute” advi­so­ry boards, but the tim­ing seems coincidental.

Nuclear Power: The Next Frontier

Nuclear tech­nol­o­gy is hav­ing a moment in space, and for good rea­son. NASA just appoint­ed Steven Sina­core to lead its ambi­tious lunar nuclear reac­tor pro­gram. The goal? Put a 100kW fis­sion reac­tor on the Moon with­in five years through pub­lic-pri­vate partnerships.

This ambi­tious effort is a mas­sive scale-up from their pre­vi­ous 40kW tar­get, dri­ven by plans for com­mer­cial lunar resource extrac­tion. But as for­mer NASA asso­ciate admin­is­tra­tor Bhavya Lal point­ed out, this won’t be cheap — we’re talk­ing about $3 bil­lion over five years, plus sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal assis­tance from NASA and DOE labs.

Mean­while, Zeno Pow­er made a strate­gic hire, bring­ing on AC Cha­ra­nia, NASA’s for­mer chief tech­nol­o­gist, as their new SVP of space busi­ness devel­op­ment. Zeno’s devel­op­ing nuclear bat­ter­ies that use radioiso­tope heat for pow­er in extreme envi­ron­ments — per­fect for deep space mis­sions where solar pan­els just won’t cut it.

The chal­lenges are real, though. The U.S. might not have enough enriched ura­ni­um for even one full-scale reac­tor pro­gram, and our launch sites aren’t ready for nuclear pay­load han­dling. But if we can solve these prob­lems, nuclear pow­er could trans­form how we explore the solar system.

While this is an ambi­tious effort, there are plen­ty of things to focus on here on Earth, and that $3 bil­lion can be bet­ter used else­where. Fur­ther­more, we have yet to demon­strate the abil­i­ty to tran­sit back and forth to the Moon safe­ly and efficiently.

Launch Successes and Failures

It was a mixed week for launch­es. ULA’s Vul­can Cen­taur com­plet­ed its first nation­al secu­ri­ty mis­sion (USSF-106) for the Space Force on August 12th — a major mile­stone after years of delays. Europe’s Ari­ane 6 also had a suc­cess­ful flight, launch­ing the MetOp-SG-A1 weath­er satellite.

But not every­one was cel­e­brat­ing. Chi­nese start­up Land­space’s Zhuque-2E methane-fueled rock­et failed to reach orbit on Thurs­day, end­ing a streak of four suc­cess­ful flights. The com­pa­ny has­n’t dis­closed what went wrong or what pay­loads were lost, which is typ­i­cal for Chi­nese launch failures.

Speak­ing of Chi­nese space com­pa­nies, both Land­space and CAS Space are eye­ing IPOs on Shang­hai’s STAR Mar­ket. CAS Space report­ed $34 mil­lion in rev­enue but $105 mil­lion in loss­es in 2024 — a reminder that the launch busi­ness is still tough, even with gov­ern­ment support.

Defense and Security Updates

The space domain con­tin­ues to mil­i­ta­rize. A U.S. MQ‑9 Reaper drone oper­at­ed by Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion flew a rare mis­sion deep into Mex­i­co on Wednes­day, orbit­ing near Mex­i­co City. Mex­i­can offi­cials con­firmed it was at their request, like­ly relat­ed to anti-car­tel oper­a­tions fol­low­ing Trump’s direc­tive to treat cer­tain car­tels as For­eign Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tions. As alum­ni of the USAF 11th Intel­li­gence Squadron, the PED has some­thing new to look at.

In a sig­nif­i­cant orga­ni­za­tion­al change, the Space Force will assume con­trol of all space mis­sions cur­rent­ly han­dled by Air Nation­al Guard units by Octo­ber 1st. This affects about 578 Guard posi­tions and effec­tive­ly kills pro­pos­als for a sep­a­rate Space Nation­al Guard.

Lt. Gen. DeAn­na Burt, retir­ing after 33 years of ser­vice, warned that while the Space Force has made great progress, it des­per­ate­ly needs more fund­ing to keep pace with threats. She empha­sized the ser­vice’s expect­ed role in the Gold­en Dome mis­sile defense sys­tem — anoth­er sign of space’s grow­ing impor­tance to nation­al security.

Commercial Developments

True Anom­aly, the defense-focused space start­up, raised a whop­ping $260 mil­lion in Series C fund­ing led by Accel. The com­pa­ny is devel­op­ing a space­craft that can maneu­ver near oth­er satel­lites — tech­nol­o­gy that’s increas­ing­ly impor­tant as space becomes more contested.

Impulse Space announced that its GEO rideshare pro­gram, “Car­a­van,” is ful­ly booked for its first mis­sion in Q3 2026. They’ll use their Helios orbital trans­fer vehi­cle to deliv­er up to four tons of small­sat pay­loads to GEO, with annu­al mis­sions planned thereafter.

On the com­mu­ni­ca­tions front, SpaceX is cry­ing foul over Vir­gini­a’s rur­al broad­band pro­gram. Despite hav­ing Star­link sub­scribers with­in a mile of 95% of tar­get­ed loca­tions, they’re only get­ting 4% of the sub­si­dized instal­la­tions. Mean­while, Ama­zon’s still-in-devel­op­ment Kuiper con­stel­la­tion is get­ting more fund­ing for more loca­tions — pol­i­tics in space, anyone?

Looking Ahead

As bud­gets tight­en (NASA could face a 25% cut in fis­cal 2026), the indus­try’s get­ting cre­ative. Small­sats are emerg­ing as a cost-effec­tive solu­tion for plan­e­tary sci­ence mis­sions. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land’s TERP RAPTOR cube­sat mis­sion to study aster­oid Apophis dur­ing its 2029 fly­by shows how acad­e­mia might fill gaps left by bud­get cuts.

The mes­sage is clear: do more with less, accept high­er risks for low­er costs, and lever­age com­mer­cial part­ner­ships wher­ev­er pos­si­ble. It’s a new era for space explo­ration, dri­ven by fis­cal real­i­ty and enabled by tech­no­log­i­cal innovation.

The space indus­try con­tin­ues to evolve at break­neck speed, with nuclear tech­nol­o­gy, reg­u­la­to­ry reform, and com­mer­cial inno­va­tion lead­ing the charge. As always, I’ll be keep­ing my eye on these devel­op­ments and how they cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for com­pa­nies like ours.

Until next time, keep look­ing up!

August 18, 2025  Leave a comment

Golden Dome For America Industry Summit: Defense Leaders Rally Industry for America’s Next-Generation Missile Shield

Huntsville, AL – The Mis­sile Defense Agency (MDA) host­ed its long-await­ed Gold­en Dome Indus­try Day this past week, mark­ing a piv­otal moment in what offi­cials are call­ing the most ambi­tious home­land defense ini­tia­tive since Ronald Rea­gan’s Strate­gic Defense Ini­tia­tive. The event brought togeth­er defense con­trac­tors, tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tors, and mil­i­tary lead­er­ship to out­line the mas­sive under­tak­ing that aims to cre­ate a com­pre­hen­sive air and mis­sile defense shield over the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States.

A Call to Action

Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Heath Collins, the 12th Direc­tor of the Mis­sile Defense Agency, opened the sum­mit with an urgent mes­sage: “Time is now. The nation has made a call, it needs us as the Mis­sile Defense Enter­prise, and we’re up for the task before us.” His remarks set the tone for what indus­try insid­ers are describ­ing as a trans­for­ma­tion­al moment for Amer­i­can defense capabilities.

The Gen­er­al’s mot­to, “Go Fast, Think Big,” encap­su­lat­ed the admin­is­tra­tion’s aggres­sive time­line. With just three to three-and-a-half years to deliv­er ini­tial capa­bil­i­ties – rough­ly 1,020 to 1,030 days from the indus­try sum­mit – the pres­sure is on to rev­o­lu­tion­ize how Amer­i­ca approach­es mis­sile defense.

“This enter­prise has made his­to­ry in the past. We are now ready to make his­to­ry mov­ing for­ward,” Collins empha­sized, acknowl­edg­ing that the pro­gram has faced skep­ti­cism in the press but express­ing con­fi­dence in the defense com­mu­ni­ty’s abil­i­ty to prove doubters wrong.

Massive Financial Commitment

The scope of Gold­en Dome became clear­er with the rev­e­la­tion of new con­tract­ing vehi­cles that could reach unprece­dent­ed lev­els. The MDA unveiled details about the Scal­able Home­land Inno­v­a­tive Enter­prise Lay­ered Defense (SHIELD) pro­gram, a 10-year con­tract­ing vehi­cle that could top $151 bil­lion accord­ing to pre­sen­ta­tion slides.

This mas­sive invest­ment rep­re­sents the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing what offi­cials describe as an “all-encom­pass­ing air and mis­sile defense shield.” The ini­tial fund­ing allo­ca­tion of $25 bil­lion in the gov­ern­men­t’s rec­on­cil­i­a­tion pack­age is just the begin­ning of what promis­es to be one of the largest defense expen­di­tures in mod­ern history.

Industry Response and Opportunities

The Defense Indus­try Base was all in atten­dance, with major play­ers posi­tion­ing them­selves for var­i­ous roles in the sprawl­ing ini­tia­tive. Com­pa­nies like Northrop Grum­man, Lock­heed Mar­tin, Lei­dos, L3Harris, CDW Gov­ern­ment, and RTX high­light­ed their exist­ing capa­bil­i­ties and readi­ness to con­tribute to the program.

“Northrop Grum­man is view­ing this as a once-in-a-gen­er­a­tion oppor­tu­ni­ty … and Northrop Grum­man is all in on Gold­en Dome for Amer­i­ca,” said Ray­mond Sharp, the com­pa­ny’s vice pres­i­dent over­see­ing their Gold­en Dome approach.

The MDA empha­sized that this isn’t just about tra­di­tion­al defense con­trac­tors. “We need the old primes… But we also need some of the new primes. We need the non-tra­di­tion­als. Acad­e­mia, absolute­ly. We need the best minds, the best inno­va­tors, inven­tors out there to change the game,” Collins stat­ed, sig­nal­ing an inclu­sive approach to capa­bil­i­ty development.

Technical Architecture and Capabilities

MDA’s Chief Archi­tect Stan­ley Stafi­ra out­lined the com­pre­hen­sive nature of the Gold­en Dome archi­tec­ture, describ­ing a mul­ti-lay­ered defense sys­tem that inte­grates space-based sen­sors, ground-based inter­cep­tors, and advanced com­mand and con­trol sys­tems. The archi­tec­ture encom­pass­es what offi­cials call the “Gold­en Dome Enter­prise Archi­tec­ture” (GEA), fea­tur­ing space-based upper lay­ers, ground-based low­er lay­ers, and inte­grat­ed domain aware­ness capabilities.

The sys­tem is designed to counter a broad spec­trum of threats, includ­ing bal­lis­tic mis­siles, hyper­son­ic weapons, cruise mis­siles, and next-gen­er­a­tion aer­i­al attacks. The MDA has already issued requests for infor­ma­tion cov­er­ing advanced radar sys­tems, space-based inter­cep­tors, and next-gen­er­a­tion launch­ers capa­ble of han­dling mul­ti­ple threat types.

Streamlined Acquisition Approach

Per­haps most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the MDA announced a fun­da­men­tal shift in its acqui­si­tion phi­los­o­phy. Rather than the tra­di­tion­al approach of spec­i­fy­ing exact require­ments, the agency is tak­ing a prob­lem-focused, chal­lenge-based approach that encour­ages indus­try innovation.

“We’re not going to be real­ly, I want this, I want this, the way we have been doing acqui­si­tion for quite some time,” Collins explained. “Prob­lem-focused, chal­lenge-focused. We want to part­ner with you, our think­ing part­ners, to help come up with the hows, the whats.”

The Mul­ti­ple Author­i­ty Announce­ment (MAA) – recent­ly rebrand­ed as “Nim­ble Options for Noble Effects” or “Noble” – rep­re­sents this new approach, tar­get­ing dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies and rapid capa­bil­i­ty devel­op­ment from non-tra­di­tion­al sources.

Operational Security and Communication Challenges

The indus­try day came after some con­tro­ver­sy regard­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion restric­tions. Pen­ta­gon offi­cials were report­ed­ly direct­ed not to dis­cuss Gold­en Dome dur­ing pub­lic pan­els at the con­cur­rent Space and Mis­sile Defense Sym­po­sium, lead­ing to what sources described as “amus­ing moments” as offi­cials strug­gled to ref­er­ence the pro­gram with­out nam­ing it directly.

A Pen­ta­gon spokesper­son explained the restric­tions as nec­es­sary for “oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty,” stat­ing that “it would be impru­dent for the Depart­ment to release fur­ther infor­ma­tion on this pro­gram dur­ing these ear­ly stages.”

Looking Forward

The indus­try day rep­re­sents just the begin­ning of an inten­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion between gov­ern­ment and indus­try. MDA offi­cials empha­sized that the pur­pose of the indus­try day is to have “a very one-way dia­logue” that is designed to broad­ly com­mu­ni­cate chal­lenges and prob­lems, with more detailed, inter­ac­tive ses­sions planned for the com­ing weeks and months.

The urgency is pal­pa­ble. As one offi­cial not­ed, “We need to be pre­pared to move and move quick­ly and change today, tomor­row, every day, between now and for­ev­er, but cer­tain­ly with­in the next three and a half years to get this ini­tial bit of capa­bil­i­ty out.”

The Bottom Line

Gold­en Dome rep­re­sents more than just anoth­er defense pro­gram – it’s a fun­da­men­tal reimag­in­ing of how Amer­i­ca pro­tects its home­land. With unprece­dent­ed fund­ing, an aggres­sive time­line, and a com­mit­ment to inno­va­tion that spans tra­di­tion­al and non-tra­di­tion­al defense part­ners, the ini­tia­tive promis­es to reshape the defense indus­tri­al base.

As Gen­er­al Collins con­clud­ed his remarks with the ral­ly­ing cry “Gold­en Dome for Amer­i­ca,” the mes­sage was clear: this is the defense com­mu­ni­ty’s moment to prove that the impos­si­ble is pos­si­ble, that Amer­i­ca can build the most advanced mis­sile defense sys­tem the world has ever seen.

The suc­cess of this ambi­tious under­tak­ing will depend not just on tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, but on the abil­i­ty of gov­ern­ment and indus­try to col­lab­o­rate at unprece­dent­ed speed and scale. With the clock tick­ing toward the three-year dead­line, the race to pro­tect Amer­i­ca’s home­land has offi­cial­ly begun.

August 11, 2025  Leave a comment

Defense Week in Review: Supply Chain Security, DOGE Impact, and Strategic Modernization

Team, the easy dis­cus­sion is to talk about last week’s Space Mis­sile Defense Agen­cy’s Sym­po­sium and the Gold­en Dome for Amer­i­ca’s Indus­try Sum­mit (which was held in a hock­ey are­na that was 3/4 filled with the DIB). Still, I am going to reserve that for anoth­er arti­cle because there are oth­er impor­tant DoD devel­op­ments span­ning sup­ply chain secu­ri­ty, gov­ern­ment effi­cien­cy ini­tia­tives, and strate­gic tech­nol­o­gy part­ner­ships. For those of us track­ing fed­er­al oppor­tu­ni­ties, this week’s events sig­nal both imme­di­ate con­tract­ing chal­lenges and longer-term strate­gic shifts that will reshape the defense marketplace.

Supply Chain Security Takes Center Stage

The GAO’s com­pre­hen­sive report on defense indus­tri­al base for­eign depen­den­cy risks, released this week, pro­vides sober­ing insights into DoD’s sup­ply chain vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. With over 200,000 sup­pli­ers sup­port­ing defense pro­duc­tion glob­al­ly, the depart­men­t’s lim­it­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty into com­po­nent ori­gins rep­re­sents both a nation­al secu­ri­ty chal­lenge and a busi­ness opportunity.

The report’s rev­e­la­tion that DoD can iden­ti­fy coun­try-of-ori­gin infor­ma­tion for less than 10% of sub-tier sup­pli­ers in crit­i­cal pro­grams like the F‑35 under­scores the urgency of sup­ply chain illu­mi­na­tion efforts. The dis­cov­ery of Chi­nese mag­nets in F‑35 sys­tems and the sub­se­quent pro­duc­tion stop­pages demon­strate the real-world con­se­quences of sup­ply chain opacity.

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing is that the Fed­er­al Pro­cure­ment Data Sys­tem shows the U.S. as the coun­try of ori­gin for approx­i­mate­ly 96% of DoD pro­cure­ment oblig­a­tions. Yet, this data does­n’t cap­ture sub­con­trac­tor or com­po­nent-lev­el infor­ma­tion. For micro­elec­tron­ics alone, DoD esti­mates that 88% of pro­duc­tion and 98% of assem­bly and test­ing occur over­seas, pri­mar­i­ly in Tai­wan, South Korea, and China.

From a con­tract­ing per­spec­tive, the GAO’s rec­om­men­da­tion to test con­tract deliv­er­ables requir­ing sup­pli­er infor­ma­tion cre­ates poten­tial new rev­enue streams for com­pa­nies capa­ble of sup­ply chain map­ping and analy­sis. The Defense Busi­ness Board­’s empha­sis on imple­ment­ing com­mer­cial best prac­tices sug­gests DoD will increas­ing­ly look to pri­vate sec­tor exper­tise for sup­ply chain vis­i­bil­i­ty solutions.

DOGE’s Defense Department Focus Intensifies

The Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy’s impact on Pen­ta­gon oper­a­tions has moved beyond spec­u­la­tion into mea­sur­able action. Gold­man Sachs ana­lysts report that DoD now ranks sec­ond among fed­er­al agen­cies in total can­celed IT con­tract val­ue, with con­sult­ing giants Booz Allen Hamil­ton and Lei­dos bear­ing the brunt of terminations.

The num­bers tell a com­pelling sto­ry: Lei­dos lost a $310 mil­lion hyper­son­ic ISR project, while Booz Allen Hamil­ton saw mul­ti­ple con­tracts total­ing over $130 mil­lion ter­mi­nat­ed. These aren’t arbi­trary cuts—they reflect new DoD mem­os rais­ing thresh­olds for IT and ser­vices con­tract­ing, forc­ing a more dis­ci­plined approach to ven­dor relationships.

This cre­ates both chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties. Prime con­trac­tors must demon­strate clear val­ue propo­si­tions tied to warfight­er out­comes, while small­er, more agile firms may find new open­ings in a ratio­nal­ized mar­ket­place. The empha­sis on out­come-based per­for­mance met­rics sug­gests that con­trac­tors who can artic­u­late mea­sur­able mis­sion impact will thrive in this environment.

Technical Debt Modernization Accelerates

Sec­re­tary Hegseth’s recent mem­o­ran­dum on “Pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of Tech­ni­cal Debt for Max­i­miz­ing Warfight­er Lethal­i­ty” rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal shift in how DoD approach­es IT mod­ern­iza­tion. The direc­tive is crys­tal clear: tech­ni­cal debt invest­ments must direct­ly sup­port com­bat­ant com­mand require­ments and enhance warfight­er capa­bil­i­ties above all else.

The estab­lish­ment of the Mis­sion Net­work as a Ser­vice (MNaaS) Cross Func­tion­al Team sig­nals DoD’s com­mit­ment to uni­fy­ing enter­prise archi­tec­ture across com­bat­ant com­mands. MNaaS isn’t just anoth­er IT initiative—it’s a strate­gic imper­a­tive to cre­ate a cohe­sive SECRET fab­ric archi­tec­ture that enables seam­less infor­ma­tion shar­ing across areas of responsibility.

Equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant is the depart­men­t’s explo­ration of Hard­ware as a Ser­vice (HaaS) mod­els. By lever­ag­ing ven­dor leas­ing arrange­ments for routers, switch­es, and oth­er IT equip­ment, DoD can achieve scale effi­cien­cies while ensur­ing only NIAP-approved equip­ment enters the enter­prise. This approach address­es both mod­ern­iza­tion needs and secu­ri­ty requirements—a win-win for tax­pay­ers and warfight­ers alike.

Cloud Computing Advances Despite Complexity

The Joint Warfight­ing Cloud Capa­bil­i­ty (JWCC) pro­gram con­tin­ues its mea­sured roll­out, with secret-lev­el bid offer­ings expect­ed from Google, Microsoft, Ora­cle, and Ama­zon Web Ser­vices in the com­ing weeks. DIS­A’s Sharon Woods empha­sized the strate­gic impor­tance of enter­prise top secret cloud capabilities—a gap that JWCC aims to fill.

The mul­ti-cloud approach reflects lessons learned from the trou­bled JEDI con­tract while main­tain­ing com­pet­i­tive dynam­ics among major cloud providers. For defense con­trac­tors, this cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties across mul­ti­ple plat­forms rather than win­ner-take-all scenarios.

Modern Open System Standards Drive Interoperability

The grow­ing empha­sis on Mod­ern Open Sys­tem Stan­dards (MOSS) reflects DoD’s com­mit­ment to avoid­ing ven­dor lock-in while enabling rapid tech­nol­o­gy inte­gra­tion. These standards—characterized by open avail­abil­i­ty, roy­al­ty-free imple­men­ta­tion, and non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry access—are becom­ing fun­da­men­tal to major defense programs.

The Mod­u­lar Open Sys­tems Approach (MOSA) enables inte­gra­tion of com­po­nents from mul­ti­ple sup­pli­ers, cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for small­er, inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies to par­tic­i­pate in large-scale pro­grams tra­di­tion­al­ly dom­i­nat­ed by prime con­trac­tors. The empha­sis on “exten­sion and adapt­abil­i­ty” with­in MOSS frame­works sug­gests that con­trac­tors who can demon­strate flex­i­ble, stan­dards-based solu­tions will have com­pet­i­tive advan­tages in upcom­ing solicitations.

Professional Services Market Transformation

The con­ver­gence of sup­ply chain secu­ri­ty con­cerns, DOGE effi­cien­cy require­ments, and open sys­tems imple­men­ta­tion cre­ates a com­plex mar­ket for pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices. The chal­lenge lies in demon­strat­ing clear val­ue while nav­i­gat­ing increased scruti­ny on con­trac­tor relationships.

Key ser­vice areas show­ing resilience include:

  • Sys­tems inte­gra­tion and inter­op­er­abil­i­ty testing
  • Sup­ply chain risk assess­ment and mitigation
  • Stan­dards com­pli­ance and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion support
  • Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and data pro­tec­tion services
  • Per­for­mance-based logis­tics and sustainment

The crit­i­cal fac­tor is artic­u­lat­ing direct con­nec­tions between ser­vices and mis­sion out­comes. Con­trac­tors who can demon­strate mea­sur­able warfight­er impact through per­for­mance met­rics will com­mand pre­mi­um pric­ing in this environment.

Procurement Patterns Signal Strategic Shifts

Pen­ta­gon pro­cure­ment data reveals inter­est­ing trends that savvy con­trac­tors should mon­i­tor. Sec­ond quar­ter fis­cal 2025 oblig­a­tions totaled $104.6 bil­lion, bring­ing first-half spend­ing to $212.4 billion—a quar­ter-over-quar­ter decrease that occurred only three times in the past decade.

Pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices dom­i­nat­ed Q2 spend­ing at $15.4 bil­lion, con­trast­ing sharply with civil­ian agency trends where pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices con­tracts faced high ter­mi­na­tion rates under DOGE ini­tia­tives. This increased spend­ing on pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices sug­gests DoD rec­og­nizes the crit­i­cal nature of spe­cial­ized exper­tise in com­plex defense programs.

Strategic Implications for Defense Contractors

This week’s devel­op­ments rein­force sev­er­al crit­i­cal trends shap­ing the defense mar­ket­place. The empha­sis on sup­ply chain trans­paren­cy cre­ates both com­pli­ance chal­lenges and rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ties. Com­pa­nies that can demon­strate com­pre­hen­sive sup­ply chain vis­i­bil­i­ty and domes­tic sourc­ing capa­bil­i­ties will com­mand pre­mi­um pricing.

The DOGE influ­ence demands rig­or­ous cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis and out­come-based con­tract­ing mod­els. Suc­cess requires align­ment with three key pri­or­i­ties: warfight­er lethal­i­ty, fis­cal dis­ci­pline, and tech­no­log­i­cal innovation.

Final­ly, the empha­sis on open stan­dards and inter­op­er­abil­i­ty cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties for firms with rel­e­vant tech­ni­cal exper­tise. The abil­i­ty to work across mul­ti­ple plat­forms and inte­grate diverse sys­tems becomes a key differentiator.

Looking Ahead

As we move into the final quar­ter of fis­cal 2025, the con­ver­gence of sup­ply chain secu­ri­ty require­ments, effi­cien­cy ini­tia­tives, and tech­nol­o­gy mod­ern­iza­tion cre­ates a dynam­ic mar­ket­place. Suc­cess belongs to those who can nav­i­gate this com­plex­i­ty while deliv­er­ing mea­sur­able val­ue to our nation’s defenders.

The defense trans­for­ma­tion con­tin­ues, and those who adapt quick­ly to these new realities—demonstrating clear mis­sion impact, sup­ply chain trans­paren­cy, and tech­ni­cal excellence—will cap­ture the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ties in this evolv­ing landscape.

August 9, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Weekly Wrap: DoD’s Resilient Comms Push, NASA-Russia Thaw, and China’s Rapid Acceleration

Hey Team, here is your week­ly space indus­try brief­ing. What I’ve been track­ing this week are devel­op­ments that paint a pic­ture of an indus­try increas­ing­ly dri­ven by nation­al secu­ri­ty pri­or­i­ties — from major DoD con­tracts to diplo­mat­ic break­throughs, and some game-chang­ing part­ner­ships that could reshape how we man­age risks both in space and on Earth.

DoD Doubles Down on Resilient Space Communications

The Space Force made waves this week with its Pro­tect­ed Tac­ti­cal Sat­com-Glob­al (PTS‑G) pro­gram, award­ing $37.2 mil­lion across five com­pa­nies — Boe­ing, Northrop Grum­man, Viasat, Intel­sat (now part of SES), and Astra­nis. But here’s what makes this sig­nif­i­cant: it’s just the open­ing sal­vo in a pro­gram with a $4 bil­lion ceiling.

The urgency behind PTS‑G became crys­tal clear when you con­sid­er what’s hap­pen­ing in Ukraine. GPS jam­ming has cre­at­ed dead zones that extend to LEO — that’s right, inter­fer­ence pow­er­ful enough to affect satel­lites in orbit. The DoD’s solu­tion? A fre­quen­cy-hop­ping wave­form (PTW) that essen­tial­ly plays musi­cal chairs with fre­quen­cies to sneak encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions past jammers.

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing from a busi­ness per­spec­tive is the accel­er­at­ed time­line. The Space Force scrapped its inter­me­di­ate PTS-Resilience pro­gram in Jan­u­ary to piv­ot direct­ly to the glob­al solu­tion. They want pro­duc­tion space­craft ready to launch by 2028, with the 2026 bud­get already allo­cat­ing $572 mil­lion for the entire PTS pro­gram. When DoD moves this fast and with this much mon­ey, you know they’re tak­ing the threat seriously.

Breaking the Ice: NASA and Roscosmos Leaders to Meet

In what could sig­nal a sig­nif­i­cant shift in space diplo­ma­cy, NASA Act­ing Admin­is­tra­tor Sean Duffy is set to meet with Roscos­mos Direc­tor Gen­er­al Dmit­ry Bakanov this week, mark­ing the first face-to-face meet­ing between the agen­cies’ lead­ers since Octo­ber 2018. The meet­ing, coin­cid­ing with the Crew-11 launch, comes as Duffy empha­sizes main­tain­ing U.S.-Russia part­ner­ships in space despite what he calls “wild dis­agree­ment” over Ukraine.

This diplo­mat­ic thaw is par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy giv­en the ongo­ing tech­ni­cal chal­lenges aboard the ISS. That per­sis­tent air leak in the Russ­ian Zvez­da mod­ule? It’s still there, despite recent repair attempts. Roscos­mos Deputy Direc­tor Sergei Krikalev con­firmed the leak con­tin­ues at a reduced rate, with NASA and Russ­ian experts col­lab­o­rat­ing to under­stand the mod­ule’s struc­tur­al issues. It’s a reminder that in space, physics does­n’t care about geopol­i­tics — and nei­ther should crit­i­cal safe­ty collaborations.

The Moon’s Sustainability Crisis: Are We Creating a Lunar Junkyard?

Here’s some­thing that should con­cern every busi­ness exec­u­tive eye­ing lunar oppor­tu­ni­ties: We might be turn­ing the Moon into an off-world garbage dump before we even estab­lish a prop­er pres­ence there. With com­mer­cial lunar mis­sions ramp­ing up — Fire­fly just scored its fourth NASA lunar lan­der con­tract worth $176.7 mil­lion for a 2029 south pole mis­sion — experts are sound­ing alarms about sustainability.

The chal­lenge? There’s no con­sen­sus on what “lunar sus­tain­abil­i­ty” even means. MIT’s Afreen Sid­diqi, lead­ing a NASA-fund­ed study, found the space com­mu­ni­ty split between those focused on estab­lish­ing a per­ma­nent human pres­ence and those pri­or­i­tiz­ing envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion for sci­en­tif­ic research. Mean­while, dead lan­ders are pil­ing up on the lunar sur­face like mon­u­ments to our ambi­tions — or expen­sive lit­ter, depend­ing on your perspective.

For­mer NASA pol­i­cy chief Char­i­ty Wee­den put it blunt­ly: “It’s crit­i­cal not to mess up, because you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly get a sec­ond chance.” As some­one who’s spent decades in strate­gic plan­ning for defense appli­ca­tions, I can tell you this is exact­ly the kind of for­ward-think­ing we need more of in the industry.

Government Contracts Drive Industry Growth

The gov­ern­men­t’s role as anchor ten­ant con­tin­ues to reshape the industry:

SES’s Strate­gic Piv­ot: The satel­lite oper­a­tor report­ed a 21% surge in gov­ern­ment rev­enue to €153 mil­lion ($175 mil­lion) in Q2, now rep­re­sent­ing a third of total rev­enues. CEO Adel Al-Saleh says they’re approach­ing $1 bil­lion in annu­al gov­ern­ment rev­enue — all while their tra­di­tion­al media busi­ness slides 13.6%. The mes­sage is clear: if you’re not sell­ing to gov­ern­ments, you’re miss­ing the growth market.

NRO Embraces Com­mer­cial Imagery: Albe­do secured a Stage 2 con­tract from the Nation­al Recon­nais­sance Office for its Clarity‑1 satel­lite, which deliv­ers 10-cen­time­ter res­o­lu­tion imagery from very low Earth orbit. This fol­lows the broad­er trend of intel­li­gence agen­cies lever­ag­ing com­mer­cial capa­bil­i­ties rather than build­ing every­thing in-house.

Earth Obser­va­tion for Nation­al Secu­ri­ty: The suc­cess­ful launch of NISAR (NASA-ISRO Syn­thet­ic Aper­ture Radar) rep­re­sents a $1.5 bil­lion invest­ment in Earth obser­va­tion with clear dual-use poten­tial. With the abil­i­ty to detect sur­face changes small­er than a quar­ter-inch and gen­er­ate 80 ter­abytes of data dai­ly, this capa­bil­i­ty has obvi­ous appli­ca­tions for both cli­mate sci­ence and nation­al security.

Launch Industry Reality Check: Survival of the Fittest

The launch sec­tor’s bru­tal shake­out con­tin­ues. Aus­trali­a’s Gilmour Space Tech­nolo­gies learned this first­hand when their Eris rock­et bare­ly cleared the tow­er before crash­ing back to Earth just 14 sec­onds after liftoff. Despite the fail­ure, they’re call­ing it valu­able data col­lec­tion, though I sus­pect their investors might use dif­fer­ent terminology.

The stark real­i­ty? Only Rock­et Lab and Fire­fly Aero­space have suc­cess­ful­ly reached orbit among recent launch star­tups not backed by bil­lion­aires. Even Fire­fly­’s track record is mixed, with only two ful­ly suc­cess­ful launch­es out of six attempts. Yet they’re push­ing ahead with an IPO that could val­ue the com­pa­ny at $5.5 bil­lion, set­ting a price range of $35–39 per share.

Game-Changing Commercial Applications

While defense dri­ves the big con­tracts, inno­v­a­tive com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions are emerging:

Fire Intel­li­gence Rev­o­lu­tion: Oro­raT­e­ch USA’s part­ner­ship with Opter­rix to pro­vide real-time wild­fire data to insur­ers is exact­ly the kind of prac­ti­cal space appli­ca­tion that dri­ves ROI. With USAA as the pilot cus­tomer and the recent Pal­isades Fire demon­strat­ing the urgent need, this could trans­form how insur­ers man­age wild­fire risk. Their Pine Grove con­stel­la­tion going oper­a­tional this year, fol­lowed by eight more satel­lites, shows they’re seri­ous about scaling.

Data Infra­struc­ture Evo­lu­tion: The KSAT-AWS part­ner­ship aims to inte­grate ground sta­tion capa­bil­i­ties across 200+ anten­nas at 40 loca­tions, deliv­er­ing satel­lite data to cus­tomers with­in 10 min­utes of task­ing. This kind of infra­struc­ture is what enables the real-time appli­ca­tions that both com­mer­cial and gov­ern­ment cus­tomers increas­ing­ly demand.

China’s Space Ambitions: Full Speed Ahead

While we’re debat­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty, Chi­na is accel­er­at­ing its space capa­bil­i­ties across mul­ti­ple fronts:

  • Com­mer­cial Over­sight: New qual­i­ty con­trol reg­u­la­tions for com­mer­cial space projects sig­nal Chi­na’s sec­tor is matur­ing rapid­ly, though high­er com­pli­ance bur­dens could slow some progress
  • Lunar Hard­ware: Qui­et but steady progress on the Long March 10A rock­et, with struc­tur­al tests com­plet­ed and rumors of a sev­en-engine sta­t­ic fire test com­ing soon
  • Satel­lite Inter­net: The Guowang con­stel­la­tion added more satel­lites, bring­ing the total to 39 since Decem­ber 2024, with plans for 400 by 2027

The mes­sage is clear: Chi­na isn’t wait­ing for inter­na­tion­al con­sen­sus on any­thing. They’re build­ing capa­bil­i­ties now and fig­ur­ing out the rules later.

These devel­op­ments — from DoD’s urgent push for resilient com­mu­ni­ca­tions to Chi­na’s aggres­sive time­line — point to a fun­da­men­tal shift in how the space indus­try oper­ates. It’s no longer about leisure­ly explo­ration; it’s about rapid capa­bil­i­ty deploy­ment in an increas­ing­ly con­test­ed domain.

Looking Ahead: Strategic Implications

From my per­spec­tive, ana­lyz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties at the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and nation­al defense, sev­er­al crit­i­cal trends are emerg­ing that will shape invest­ment and strate­gic deci­sions in the com­ing years:

  1. Resilience is Non-Nego­tiable: The PTS‑G pro­gram’s $4 bil­lion ceil­ing sends a clear mes­sage — DoD will pay what­ev­er it takes for sys­tems that work in con­test­ed envi­ron­ments. Every com­pa­ny pitch­ing to gov­ern­ment cus­tomers needs to answer one fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: “What hap­pens when the adver­sary jams, hacks, or shoots at your sys­tem?” If you don’t have a good answer, you don’t have a viable product.
  2. The Gov­ern­ment Gravy Train Has Lim­its: Yes, SES’s piv­ot to gov­ern­ment con­tracts is smart, giv­en their 21% rev­enue growth in that sec­tor. But here’s the catch — every­one else sees the same oppor­tu­ni­ty. As more com­pa­nies chase fed­er­al dol­lars, com­pe­ti­tion will inten­si­fy and mar­gins will com­press. The win­ners will be those who can deliv­er unique capa­bil­i­ties, not just me-too solutions.
  3. Chi­na’s Time­line is Our Time­line: With Guowang rac­ing toward 400 satel­lites by 2027. Their lunar pro­gram is advanc­ing steadi­ly, we’re not com­pet­ing against their cur­rent capa­bil­i­ties — we’re com­pet­ing against where they’ll be in 3–5 years. Com­pa­nies and investors need to plan accord­ing­ly. Incre­men­tal improve­ments won’t cut it; we need leap-ahead technologies.
  4. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Will Become Manda­to­ry: The lunar sus­tain­abil­i­ty debate might seem aca­d­e­m­ic now, but mark my words. With­in five years, we’ll see manda­to­ry sus­tain­abil­i­ty require­ments for lunar mis­sions. Smart com­pa­nies will get ahead of this curve, build­ing in end-of-life dis­pos­al plans and resource-shar­ing pro­to­cols before reg­u­la­tors force their hand.
  5. Com­mer­cial Suc­cess Requires Gov­ern­ment Foun­da­tion: The harsh real­i­ty from the launch sec­tor — only Rock­et Lab and Fire­fly sur­viv­ing among non-bil­lion­aire-backed star­tups — teach­es a cru­cial les­son. Pure com­mer­cial plays are incred­i­bly risky. The sus­tain­able path for­ward com­bines gov­ern­ment anchor con­tracts with com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions. Oro­raT­e­ch’s mod­el of serv­ing both insur­ers and (inevitably) gov­ern­ment agen­cies for wild­fire mon­i­tor­ing shows the way.
  6. Speed Beats Per­fec­tion in the New Space Race: The Space Force killing PTS‑R to accel­er­ate PTS‑G demon­strates a fun­da­men­tal shift in acqui­si­tion phi­los­o­phy. In an envi­ron­ment where threats evolve month­ly, not year­ly, get­ting 80% solu­tions deployed quick­ly beats 100% solu­tions deliv­ered late. Com­pa­nies still oper­at­ing on tra­di­tion­al aero­space time­lines will find them­selves left behind.

The space indus­try is at an inflec­tion point. It’s no longer about the romance of explo­ration or the promise of space tourism. It’s about deliv­er­ing crit­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties for nation­al secu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness, and plan­e­tary resilience. Com­pa­nies that under­stand this shift and can exe­cute with urgency will define the next decade of space commerce.

Those still pitch­ing Pow­er­Points about colonies on Mars while ignor­ing the urgent needs of gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es here on Earth? They’ll join the grow­ing grave­yard of space dreams that nev­er quite made it to orbit.

Until next week, keep look­ing up.

August 4, 2025  Leave a comment

Pentagon Pivots: Technical Debt, DOGE Cuts, and Congressional Oversight Shape Defense Landscape

The Depart­ment of Defense con­tin­ues to nav­i­gate a com­plex land­scape of mod­ern­iza­tion chal­lenges, bud­get pres­sures, and con­gres­sion­al over­sight as we move deep­er into fis­cal year 2025. This week’s devel­op­ments under­score the crit­i­cal inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­o­gy trans­for­ma­tion, fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, and warfight­er readi­ness that defines today’s defense environment.

Technical Debt Takes Center Stage

Sec­re­tary Hegseth’s recent mem­o­ran­dum on “Pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of Tech­ni­cal Debt for Max­i­miz­ing Warfight­er Lethal­i­ty” rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal shift in how DoD approach­es IT mod­ern­iza­tion. The direc­tive is crys­tal clear: tech­ni­cal debt invest­ments must direct­ly sup­port com­bat­ant com­mand require­ments and enhance warfight­er capa­bil­i­ties above all else.

The estab­lish­ment of the Mis­sion Net­work as a Ser­vice (MNaaS) Cross Func­tion­al Team sig­nals DoD’s com­mit­ment to uni­fy­ing enter­prise archi­tec­ture across com­bat­ant com­mands. This isn’t just anoth­er IT initiative—it’s a strate­gic imper­a­tive to cre­ate a cohe­sive SECRET fab­ric archi­tec­ture that enables seam­less infor­ma­tion shar­ing across areas of responsibility.

Equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant is the depart­men­t’s explo­ration of Hard­ware as a Ser­vice (HaaS) mod­els. By lever­ag­ing ven­dor leas­ing arrange­ments for routers, switch­es, and oth­er IT equip­ment, DoD can achieve scale effi­cien­cies while ensur­ing only NIAP-approved equip­ment enters the enter­prise. This approach address­es both mod­ern­iza­tion needs and secu­ri­ty requirements—a win-win for tax­pay­ers and warfight­ers alike.

DOGE’s Defense Department Focus Intensifies

The Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy’s impact on Pen­ta­gon oper­a­tions has moved beyond spec­u­la­tion into mea­sur­able action. Gold­man Sachs ana­lysts report that DoD now ranks sec­ond among fed­er­al agen­cies in total can­celed IT con­tract val­ue, with con­sult­ing giants Booz Allen Hamil­ton and Lei­dos bear­ing the brunt of terminations.

The num­bers tell the sto­ry: Lei­dos lost a $310 mil­lion hyper­son­ic ISR project, while Booz Allen Hamil­ton saw mul­ti­ple con­tracts total­ing over $130 mil­lion ter­mi­nat­ed. These aren’t arbi­trary cuts—they reflect new DoD mem­os rais­ing thresh­olds for IT and ser­vices con­tract­ing, forc­ing a more dis­ci­plined approach to ven­dor relationships.

From a busi­ness per­spec­tive, this cre­ates both chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties. Prime con­trac­tors must demon­strate clear val­ue propo­si­tions tied to warfight­er out­comes, while small­er, more agile firms may find new open­ings in a ratio­nal­ized marketplace.

Congressional Oversight Expands Space and Defense Priorities

The House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee’s 14-hour markup of the fis­cal 2026 NDAA reveals law­mak­ers’ grow­ing focus on space capa­bil­i­ties and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies. Beyond the head­line pro­grams, the com­mit­tee’s amend­ment requests pro­vide valu­able intel­li­gence on con­gres­sion­al pri­or­i­ties and time­line expectations.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Seth Moul­ton’s amend­ment requir­ing annu­al com­bat­ant com­mand report­ing on remote-sens­ing data sig­nals sus­tained leg­isla­tive inter­est in intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance, and recon­nais­sance capa­bil­i­ties. The five-year report­ing require­ment sug­gests Con­gress expects long-term strate­gic plan­ning, not quick fixes.

The space domain receives par­tic­u­lar atten­tion, with brief­ing requests cov­er­ing satel­lite con­trol net­work mod­ern­iza­tion, radi­a­tion risks for non-hard­ened satel­lites, and nuclear elec­tric propul­sion roadmaps. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Turn­er’s push for a nuclear elec­tric propul­sion test mis­sion by 2030 estab­lish­es a con­crete time­line for advanced space capabilities.

Cloud Computing Advances Despite Complexity

The Joint Warfight­ing Cloud Capa­bil­i­ty (JWCC) pro­gram con­tin­ues its mea­sured roll­out, with secret-lev­el bid offer­ings expect­ed from Google, Microsoft, Ora­cle, and Ama­zon Web Ser­vices in the com­ing weeks. DIS­A’s Sharon Woods empha­sized the strate­gic impor­tance of enter­prise top secret cloud capabilities—a gap that JWCC aims to fill.

The mul­ti-cloud approach reflects lessons learned from the trou­bled JEDI con­tract while main­tain­ing com­pet­i­tive dynam­ics among major cloud providers. For defense con­trac­tors, this cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties across mul­ti­ple plat­forms rather than win­ner-take-all scenarios.

Procurement Patterns Signal Strategic Shifts

Pen­ta­gon pro­cure­ment data reveals inter­est­ing trends that savvy con­trac­tors should mon­i­tor. Sec­ond quar­ter fis­cal 2025 oblig­a­tions totaled $104.6 bil­lion, bring­ing first-half spend­ing to $212.4 billion—a quar­ter-over-quar­ter decrease that occurred only three times in the past decade.

Pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices dom­i­nat­ed Q2 spend­ing at $15.4 bil­lion, con­trast­ing sharply with civil­ian agency trends where pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices con­tracts faced high ter­mi­na­tion rates under DOGE ini­tia­tives. Northrop Grum­man’s $700 mil­lion Ground Based Strate­gic Deter­rent con­tract exem­pli­fies the con­tin­ued demand for high-val­ue pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices in crit­i­cal defense programs.

The spend­ing surge fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s sig­na­ture on the con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion demon­strates how pol­i­cy deci­sions direct­ly impact pro­cure­ment pat­terns. The week of March 10–14 saw $14.3 bil­lion in unclas­si­fied procurement—the quar­ter’s high­est week­ly total.

Strategic Implications for Defense Contractors

These devel­op­ments cre­ate a new oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment for defense con­trac­tors. Suc­cess requires align­ment with three key pri­or­i­ties: warfight­er lethal­i­ty, fis­cal dis­ci­pline, and tech­no­log­i­cal innovation.

Com­pa­nies must artic­u­late clear con­nec­tions between their offer­ings and com­bat effec­tive­ness. The days of sell­ing IT solu­tions based sole­ly on tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions are over—warfighter impact dri­ves fund­ing decisions.

The DOGE influ­ence demands rig­or­ous cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis and out­come-based con­tract­ing mod­els. Con­trac­tors who can demon­strate mea­sur­able val­ue through per­for­mance met­rics and cost effi­cien­cies will thrive in this environment.

Final­ly, the empha­sis on space capa­bil­i­ties, cloud com­put­ing, and advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties for firms with rel­e­vant exper­tise. The semi­con­duc­tor man­u­fac­tur­ing dis­cus­sion in defense cir­cles high­lights the crit­i­cal need for domes­tic pro­duc­tion capa­bil­i­ties and advanced mate­ri­als discovery.

Looking Ahead

As we approach the final quar­ter of fis­cal 2025, sev­er­al fac­tors will shape the defense land­scape. Con­gres­sion­al action on the NDAA will estab­lish fund­ing pri­or­i­ties and pro­gram author­i­ties. JWCC imple­men­ta­tion will deter­mine cloud com­put­ing strate­gies across the depart­ment. Most impor­tant­ly, the con­tin­ued focus on tech­ni­cal debt pri­or­i­ti­za­tion will dri­ve IT invest­ment deci­sions through­out the enterprise.

For defense exec­u­tives, the mes­sage is clear: align with warfight­er require­ments, demon­strate fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, and lever­age emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies to main­tain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. The Pen­tagon’s trans­for­ma­tion con­tin­ues, and those who adapt quick­ly will cap­ture the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ties in this evolv­ing marketplace.

The inter­sec­tion of pol­i­cy, tech­nol­o­gy, and fis­cal real­i­ty cre­ates both chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties. Suc­cess belongs to those who can nav­i­gate this com­plex­i­ty while deliv­er­ing mea­sur­able val­ue to our nation’s defenders.

July 30, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Weekly Wrap: Funding Flows, Defense Deals, and Deep Space Dreams

Hey every­one, Austin here with your week­ly space indus­try brief­ing. I have been track­ing some fas­ci­nat­ing devel­op­ments across the sec­tor this week, from mas­sive fund­ing rounds to crit­i­cal defense con­tracts. Let’s dive into what’s been hap­pen­ing above our heads and in the boardrooms.

Golden Dome Takes Shape Under New Leadership

One of the week’s biggest devel­op­ments came from the world of mis­sile defense. Gen. Michael Guetlein, fresh­ly con­firmed as the Gold­en Dome pro­gram man­ag­er, wast­ed no time lay­ing out his vision for Amer­i­ca’s next-gen­er­a­tion home­land mis­sile defense sys­tem. Speak­ing at the Space Foun­da­tion con­fer­ence, Guetlein com­mit­ted to deliv­er­ing an “objec­tive archi­tec­ture” with­in 60 days – an aggres­sive time­line that sig­nals the admin­is­tra­tion’s urgency on this initiative.

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is Guetlein’s direct report­ing line to Deputy Sec­re­tary of Defense Steve Fein­berg, bypass­ing tra­di­tion­al chains of com­mand. This stream­lined struc­ture, com­bined with efforts to expand the con­trac­tor base beyond SpaceX to include com­pa­nies like Ama­zon, Rock­et Lab, and Stoke Space, sug­gests a seri­ous push to accel­er­ate devel­op­ment. The MDA’s draft RFP for this inte­grat­ed defense shield rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal shift in how we approach home­land defense, tran­si­tion­ing from iso­lat­ed sys­tems to a tru­ly inte­grat­ed archi­tec­ture that com­bines satel­lites, sen­sors, inter­cep­tors, and com­mand networks.

True Anomaly Scores Big with $260M Series C

The week kicked off with a bang as True Anom­aly, the defense-focused aero­space start­up, announced a whop­ping $260 mil­lion Series C fund­ing round. Led by Accel, this mix of equi­ty and debt financ­ing (with Stifel Bank pro­vid­ing the debt por­tion) will fuel the com­pa­ny’s ambi­tious plans to devel­op space­craft capa­ble of maneu­ver­ing near oth­er satel­lites in orbit.

What caught my atten­tion here is the strate­gic tim­ing. With the com­pa­ny plan­ning four mis­sions over the next 18 months and expand­ing from 170 to 250 employ­ees, True Anom­aly is posi­tion­ing itself at the fore­front of U.S. space domain aware­ness efforts. This isn’t just about build­ing cool tech – it’s about nation­al secu­ri­ty in an increas­ing­ly con­test­ed space environment.

Command and Control Gets an Upgrade

Speak­ing of defense, Booz Allen Hamil­ton land­ed a sub­stan­tial $315 mil­lion Air Force con­tract to devel­op the sec­ond pro­to­type of the Tac­ti­cal Oper­a­tions Cen­ter-Light (TOC‑L). This portable com­mand and con­trol kit is a game-chang­er for bat­tle­field com­mu­ni­ca­tions, inte­grat­ing mul­ti­ple data sources to cre­ate a syn­chro­nized air picture.

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is the shift in prime con­trac­tors – Lock­heed Mar­tin led phase one, but now Booz Allen takes the helm with L3Harris as a part­ner. The focus on reduc­ing size, weight, and pow­er while improv­ing usabil­i­ty shows the mil­i­tary’s push toward more agile, deploy­able sys­tems. With 16 kits already deployed world­wide and hun­dreds more planned, this rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant evo­lu­tion in how we approach bat­tle­field management.

Rethinking Missile Defense Architecture

The Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies dropped a thought-pro­vok­ing study this week on reimag­in­ing our air and mis­sile defense sys­tems. Their pro­pos­al? Move away from large, vul­ner­a­ble ground-based radars and opt for a mesh net­work of small­er, pas­sive sensors.

The num­bers are stag­ger­ing – their Poland case study sug­gests 400 elec­tro-opti­cal and infrared sen­sors would be need­ed for com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age. While pas­sive sys­tems offer stealth advan­tages (they don’t emit detectable sig­nals), the study acknowl­edges sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, includ­ing weath­er degra­da­tion and the com­plex­i­ty of sen­sor place­ment. This hybrid approach, com­bin­ing pas­sive and active sys­tems, could rep­re­sent the future of home­land defense; how­ev­er, its imple­men­ta­tion won’t be sim­ple or inexpensive.

NASA’s Interplanetary Internet Plans

Look­ing beyond Earth­’s orbit, NASA is advanc­ing plans to com­mer­cial­ize deep space com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The agency is seek­ing indus­try pro­pos­als for two ambi­tious projects: a Lunar Trun­k­line Com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem with 5 Gbps down­link capa­bil­i­ty by 2029, and a Mars End-to-End Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vice oper­a­tional by 2030.

These aren’t just incre­men­tal improve­ments – we’re talk­ing about build­ing the infra­struc­ture for sus­tained human pres­ence on the Moon and Mars. The Mars sys­tem require­ments include posi­tion­ing, nav­i­ga­tion, and tim­ing func­tions sim­i­lar to GPS, plus the abil­i­ty to con­trol robot­ic oper­a­tions on the Red Plan­et. With the White House call­ing for $1.6 bil­lion in com­mer­cial Moon and Mars infra­struc­ture invest­ment, this could be a major oppor­tu­ni­ty for com­pa­nies ready to tack­le the chal­lenges of deep space operations.

Global Space Politics Heat Up

The geopo­lit­i­cal land­scape saw inter­est­ing devel­op­ments as Sene­gal became the 56th nation to join the Artemis Accords – and only the sec­ond coun­try to sign both the U.S.-led Artemis Accords and Chi­na’s Inter­na­tion­al Lunar Research Sta­tion ini­tia­tive. This diplo­mat­ic bal­anc­ing act high­lights how small­er nations are nav­i­gat­ing the increas­ing­ly bifur­cat­ed land­scape of space exploration.

Mean­while, ten­sions con­tin­ue else­where. Russ­ian mil­i­tary air­craft con­duct­ed a three-hour flight in Alaska’s Air Defense Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Zone, prompt­ing a response from 10 U.S. air­craft, includ­ing F‑35s and F‑16s. While such flights are rou­tine, they serve as a reminder of the ongo­ing strate­gic com­pe­ti­tion extend­ing into the aero­space domain.

Commercial Sector Momentum

The com­mer­cial space sec­tor showed mixed sig­nals this week. SpaceX’s Star­link expe­ri­enced one of its longest out­ages – about 2.5 hours affect­ing users glob­al­ly due to a fail­ure of “key inter­nal soft­ware ser­vices. With over 6 mil­lion cus­tomers world­wide, this high­lights the grow­ing depen­dence on space-based inter­net infrastructure.

On the fund­ing front, Space42 secured a mas­sive $695.5 mil­lion loan for its Al Yah 4 and 5 GEO satel­lites, backed by a $5.1 bil­lion UAE gov­ern­ment con­tract. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny’s heavy reliance on this sin­gle gov­ern­ment con­tract, which accounts for near­ly 75% of its $7 bil­lion rev­enue back­log, rais­es ques­tions about diversification.

Looking Ahead: Challenges and Opportunities

Sev­er­al con­cern­ing trends emerged this week. Indus­try offi­cials warned that pro­posed 25% bud­get cuts to the ISS could turn astro­nauts into “cus­to­di­ans of a moth­balled facil­i­ty” and push inter­na­tion­al part­ners toward Chi­na’s Tian­gong sta­tion. This could have seri­ous impli­ca­tions for the tran­si­tion to com­mer­cial space stations.

More pos­i­tive­ly, NASA released an updat­ed soft­ware cat­a­log with over 1,200 codes avail­able for pub­lic down­load. From flight-ter­mi­na­tion soft­ware used by com­mer­cial launch providers to algo­rithms adapt­ed for dis­as­ter response, this rep­re­sents a real exam­ple of tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer in action.

The Bottom Line

This week rein­forced sev­er­al key themes I’ve been track­ing: the increas­ing mil­i­ta­riza­tion of space, the push toward com­mer­cial solu­tions for gov­ern­ment needs, and the grow­ing impor­tance of inter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships. With Gold­en Dome’s accel­er­at­ed time­line, major fund­ing rounds, crit­i­cal defense con­tracts, and ambi­tious deep-space plans all con­verg­ing, we’re see­ing the space indus­try mature into a com­plex ecosys­tem bal­anc­ing com­mer­cial inno­va­tion with nation­al secu­ri­ty imperatives.

For those of us in this “space” (I know it is a hor­ri­ble pun), these devel­op­ments present both oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges. The shift toward inte­grat­ed mis­sile defense archi­tec­tures, mesh sen­sor net­works, com­mer­cial deep-space com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and hybrid gov­ern­ment-com­mer­cial part­ner­ships all require sophis­ti­cat­ed analy­sis and strate­gic plan­ning. As always, suc­cess will come to those who can nav­i­gate the tech­ni­cal com­plex­i­ties while under­stand­ing the broad­er geopo­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic context.

That’s your week in space. As always, I am close­ly track­ing these devel­op­ments for oppor­tu­ni­ties that align with our strate­gic objec­tives. The rapid pace of change cre­ates both chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties — stay­ing informed is critical.

Until next week, keep look­ing up!

July 28, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Weekly: Major Shifts in Defense, VMware’s Partner Issues, Commercial Consolidation, and Policy Battles


Hey Team, here is your week­ly space indus­try roundup. This week brought some sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments that’ll shape both our nation­al secu­ri­ty pos­ture, tech­nol­o­gy, and the com­mer­cial space land­scape. Let me break down what caught my attention.

Golden Dome Gets Its Leader

The big news last Thurs­day was the Sen­ate’s con­fir­ma­tion of Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein to lead Pres­i­dent Trump’s Gold­en Dome mis­sile defense ini­tia­tive. This con­fir­ma­tion, com­ing two months after his nom­i­na­tion, marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for what is arguably the admin­is­tra­tion’s most ambi­tious space program.

For those track­ing the lead­er­ship changes, Lt. Gen. Shawn Brat­ton was nom­i­nat­ed ear­li­er this week to fill Guetlein’s for­mer role as Vice Chief of Space Oper­a­tions. The Space Force is mov­ing quick­ly to main­tain con­ti­nu­ity while pur­su­ing this new defen­sive architecture.

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is the tim­ing — get­ting Guetlein con­firmed now allows the pro­gram to tran­si­tion from the con­cept phase to the exe­cu­tion phase. I’m watch­ing close­ly to see how they’ll struc­ture the pro­cure­ment strat­e­gy for what promis­es to be a mas­sive undertaking.

SES-Intelsat Merger Creates Satellite Giant

In the com­mer­cial sec­tor, SES com­plet­ed its acqui­si­tion of Intel­sat on Thurs­day, cre­at­ing what is essen­tial­ly a geo­sta­tion­ary behe­moth with approx­i­mate­ly 90 GEO satel­lites — that’s more than Eutel­sat, Tele­sat, and Viasat com­bined. But here’s what’s intrigu­ing: CEO Adel Al-Saleh is already talk­ing about scal­ing up to “hun­dreds” of MEO satellites.

The com­bined enti­ty faces sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, how­ev­er. They’re car­ry­ing over $4 bil­lion in debt against pro­ject­ed rev­enues of $4.3 bil­lion this year. Their plan? Cut $430 mil­lion in annu­al costs through oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies and lever­age their increased pur­chas­ing power.

From a strate­gic per­spec­tive, this con­sol­i­da­tion makes sense giv­en the pres­sure from SpaceX’s Star­link. The fact that reg­u­la­tors approved this merg­er rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly, com­pared to the Inmarsat-Viasat deal, shows just how much the com­pet­i­tive land­scape has shift­ed. One ana­lyst, Tim Far­rar, not­ed this indi­cates “how much reg­u­la­tors have tak­en onboard the com­pe­ti­tion from Starlink.”

VMware Partners Face Another Shakeup

Broad­com con­tin­ues its aggres­sive restruc­tur­ing of VMware’s part­ner ecosys­tem. They announced this week that the cur­rent VMware Cloud Ser­vice Provider pro­gram will end on Octo­ber 31, replaced by a new, invite-only pro­gram start­ing Novem­ber 1.

The impact? Poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing for small­er providers. Part­ners not invit­ed to the new pro­gram can only ser­vice exist­ing con­tracts with­in their cur­rent terms, with no renewals or new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. The white-label pro­gram that allowed small­er oper­a­tors to work through larg­er part­ners? Also end­ing Octo­ber 31.

This is the sec­ond major over­haul of the part­ner pro­gram in 18 months. As some­one who has worked with numer­ous VMware part­ners over the years, I can tell you that this lev­el of dis­rup­tion is unprece­dent­ed. One Red­dit user claimed that their orga­ni­za­tion spends approx­i­mate­ly $400,000 annu­al­ly through a white-label part­ner and now has just six months to design and build an entire­ly new vir­tu­al­iza­tion plat­form. Mean­while, the U.S. com­bat­ant com­mands are being hit with bills that are mak­ing the J6 and pro­cure­ment offi­cers’ eyes water.

NASA Faces Budget Battle with Congress

Ten­sions are esca­lat­ing between NASA and House Democ­rats. Reps. Zoe Lof­gren and Valerie Foushee sent a let­ter to Act­ing Admin­is­tra­tor Sean Duffy, accus­ing the agency of ille­gal­ly impound­ing funds and pre­ma­ture­ly imple­ment­ing the fis­cal 2026 bud­get proposal.

The specifics are con­cern­ing: NASA can­celed a planned upgrade to the ISS’s Alpha Mag­net­ic Spec­trom­e­ter and is block­ing press releas­es about mis­sions slat­ed for can­cel­la­tion. This, while the White House pro­pos­es a 25% bud­get cut that both House and Sen­ate appro­pri­a­tors seem like­ly to reject.

Speak­ing of Duffy, he’s final­ly set­tling into his dual role as Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary and Act­ing Admin­is­tra­tor of NASA. He addressed the NASA work­force via video on Fri­day, although he admit­ted that Wednes­day was only his “first full day at NASA.” His com­ment that lead­ing NASA won’t impact his DOT work raised some eye­brows — we’ll see how that plays out.

Space Force Prioritizes Military Launch Access

With com­mer­cial launch demand surg­ing, the Space Force released new guide­lines Wednes­day for allo­cat­ing launch infra­struc­ture and range resources. The mes­sage is clear: nation­al secu­ri­ty mis­sions get pri­or­i­ty access to finite gov­ern­ment resources.

This isn’t sur­pris­ing, giv­en the strain on Cape Canaver­al and Van­den­berg facil­i­ties, but it does sig­nal poten­tial con­flicts ahead as com­mer­cial oper­a­tors con­tin­ue to ramp up their launch cadence. The Space Force reaf­firmed sup­port for com­mer­cial indus­try but drew a clear line on resource allocation.

Quick Hits from the Week

  • Blue Orig­in’s NG‑2 Mis­sion: The sec­ond New Glenn launch will car­ry NASA’s ESCAPADE Mars mis­sion. No date has been set yet, but the space­craft has­n’t shipped to the launch site, sug­gest­ing we’re still months away.
  • NASA’s TRACERS Mis­sion: Set to launch this month on SpaceX, this $115 mil­lion dual-satel­lite mis­sion will study the impacts of space weath­er on satel­lite oper­a­tions. With the May 2024 G5 storm caus­ing an esti­mat­ed $500 mil­lion in loss­es, under­stand­ing these phe­nom­e­na is becom­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly critical.
  • House NDAA Progress: The House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee advanced the FY26 NDAA with pro­vi­sions sup­port­ing Gold­en Dome and for­mal­iz­ing Pen­ta­gon pro­cure­ment of com­mer­cial satel­lite imagery. The 55–2 vote shows strong bipar­ti­san sup­port for space initiatives.
  • Fire­fly Goes Pub­lic: Fire­fly Aero­space has filed its S‑1 with the SEC, plan­ning to list on the Nas­daq under the tick­er sym­bol FLY. Anoth­er sign of the matur­ing com­mer­cial space market.

Looking Ahead

The con­sol­i­da­tion in both gov­ern­ment part­ner­ships (VMware) and satel­lite oper­a­tions (SES-Intel­sat) reflects a mar­ket in tran­si­tion. Small­er play­ers are being squeezed out while larg­er enti­ties posi­tion them­selves for the next phase of competition.

For those of us in the fed­er­al con­tract­ing space, the Gold­en Dome pro­gram presents a sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ty, but also pos­es sub­stan­tial risk due to the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges it entails. I’ll be watch­ing close­ly to see how the pro­cure­ment strat­e­gy develops.

The NASA bud­get bat­tle is far from over. With appro­pri­a­tors in both cham­bers reject­ing the pro­posed cuts, we’re like­ly head­ed for anoth­er con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion sce­nario — nev­er ide­al for long-term programs.

That’s your week in space. As always, I’m track­ing these devel­op­ments close­ly for oppor­tu­ni­ties that align with our strate­gic objec­tives. The rapid pace of change cre­ates both chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties — stay­ing informed is critical.

Until next week, keep look­ing up!

July 21, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Weekly Roundup: Leadership Changes, Chinese Maneuvers, and Funding Flows

The space indus­try expe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments this week, marked by unprece­dent­ed lead­er­ship changes at NASA, con­cern­ing Chi­nese satel­lite activ­i­ties, and robust invest­ment activ­i­ty that sig­nals con­tin­ued con­fi­dence in the sec­tor’s growth trajectory.

NASA Leadership Shake-Up Creates Unprecedented Situation

In a move that caught the space com­mu­ni­ty off guard, Pres­i­dent Trump announced late Wednes­day that Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Sean Duffy would serve as act­ing NASA admin­is­tra­tor while retain­ing his Cab­i­net posi­tion. This unprece­dent­ed arrange­ment replaces Janet Petro, who had been lead­ing NASA on an act­ing basis since the admin­is­tra­tion began.

Duffy, a for­mer con­gress­man with no space back­ground, now over­sees both the nation’s trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture and its $24.9 bil­lion space agency. The deci­sion rep­re­sents the first time in NASA’s near­ly 70-year his­to­ry that a Cab­i­net mem­ber has tak­en inter­im con­trol of the space agency, rais­ing ques­tions about the admin­is­tra­tion’s long-term NASA strategy.

Mean­while, the Sen­ate remains grid­locked on NASA’s bud­get. A Sen­ate Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee markup ses­sion was sus­pend­ed Thurs­day due to an unre­lat­ed FBI head­quar­ters fund­ing dis­pute, leav­ing a bill that would restore NASA’s pro­posed bud­get cuts in lim­bo. The leg­is­la­tion would pro­vide $24.9 bil­lion for NASA in fis­cal 2026, revers­ing the admin­is­tra­tion’s pro­posed 25% cut and main­tain­ing cur­rent fund­ing levels.

Chinese Space Activities Raise Strategic Concerns

Chi­na’s increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed space oper­a­tions are draw­ing height­ened atten­tion from U.S. defense offi­cials. Two sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments this week under­score the grow­ing com­plex­i­ty of Chi­nese space capa­bil­i­ties and their poten­tial mil­i­tary implications.

First, Chi­na has achieved a break­through in orbital refu­el­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Satel­lite track­ing data indi­cate that Chi­nese satel­lites Shi­jian-21 and Shi­jian-25 suc­cess­ful­ly docked in geo­syn­chro­nous orbit, like­ly con­duct­ing the first high-alti­tude orbital refu­el­ing demon­stra­tion. The oper­a­tion, which occurred more than 20,000 miles above Earth, rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant advance­ment in space ser­vic­ing capa­bil­i­ties with clear dual-use applications.

The impli­ca­tions extend beyond tech­ni­cal achieve­ment. Orbital refu­el­ing tech­nol­o­gy could enable Chi­na to extend satel­lite lifes­pans indef­i­nite­ly, pro­vid­ing strate­gic advan­tages in both civil­ian and mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions. U.S. Space Force GSSAP inspec­tor satel­lites posi­tioned them­selves near­by to mon­i­tor the oper­a­tion, high­light­ing Amer­i­can inter­est in Chi­nese space activities.

Addi­tion­al­ly, an exper­i­men­tal Chi­nese satel­lite, Shiyan-28B, was dis­cov­ered in an unusu­al low-incli­na­tion orbit nev­er before used by Chi­na. The space­craft, launched July 3, was found in a 795-kilo­me­ter orbit inclined at just 11 degrees, pro­vid­ing cov­er­age over the South Chi­na Sea and Indi­an Ocean. The satel­lite’s pur­pose remains clas­si­fied, though ana­lysts sug­gest poten­tial appli­ca­tions in region­al mon­i­tor­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions test­ing, or sig­nals intelligence.

Between late 2023 and Decem­ber 2024, five Chi­nese satel­lites exe­cut­ed unprece­dent­ed close approach maneu­vers that space ana­lysts described as the most com­plex mul­ti-satel­lite oper­a­tions ever observed. These activ­i­ties are prompt­ing the Pen­ta­gon to enlist com­mer­cial firms to help deci­pher Chi­nese inten­tions in space.

Investment Activity Signals Sector Confidence

Despite broad­er eco­nom­ic head­winds, space indus­try invest­ment showed remark­able strength in the sec­ond quar­ter. Space com­pa­nies raised $3.2 bil­lion, mark­ing the high­est quar­ter­ly fund­ing total in more than a year, accord­ing to Space Cap­i­tal research.

The stand­out deal was Var­da Space Indus­tries’ $187 mil­lion Series C round, bring­ing the reen­try vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­er’s total fund­ing to $329 mil­lion. Led by Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal and Shrug Cap­i­tal, with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Founders Fund, Peter Thiel, and Lux Cap­i­tal, the fund­ing will sup­port Var­da’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing ambi­tions and increase flight cadence toward a goal of one mis­sion per day.

Oth­er notable fund­ing rounds includ­ed Cis­Lu­nar Indus­tries’ $1 mil­lion seed invest­ment from Col­orado ONE Fund to scale pro­duc­tion of pow­er pro­cess­ing units, and Inter­stel­lar Tech­nolo­gies’ $61.8 mil­lion Series F round to sup­port its Zero launch vehi­cle development.

Euro­pean invest­ment activ­i­ty surged, dri­ven by geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions that moti­vate efforts to build sov­er­eign space capa­bil­i­ties. The U.K. gov­ern­ment con­firmed a $191 mil­lion invest­ment in Eutel­sat to main­tain its stake and sup­port OneWeb con­stel­la­tion upgrades, bring­ing total fund­ing to approx­i­mate­ly $1.76 billion.

Technology Developments and Market Dynamics

Sev­er­al com­pa­nies achieved sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal mile­stones this week. North­wood Space announced that its Por­tal ground ter­mi­nal suc­cess­ful­ly passed oper­a­tional tests, col­lect­ing data from U.S. Defense Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Satel­lite Pro­gram space­craft. The ful­ly dig­i­tal phased array anten­na rep­re­sents a new gen­er­a­tion of ground seg­ment tech­nol­o­gy capa­ble of con­nect­ing to mul­ti­ple satel­lites simultaneously.

EnduroSat, the Bul­gar­i­an satel­lite man­u­fac­tur­er, appoint­ed for­mer DARPA offi­cial Paul “Rusty” Thomas to lead its U.S. oper­a­tions. Thomas, who pre­vi­ous­ly led Project Black­jack and worked at SpaceX and Ama­zon’s Kuiper Gov­ern­ment Solu­tions, will help EnduroSat expand its Amer­i­can pres­ence as the com­pa­ny scales from small-batch pro­duc­tion to tens of satel­lites per month.

The appoint­ment reflects broad­er indus­try trends toward rapid scal­ing and inter­na­tion­al expan­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly as defense appli­ca­tions dri­ve demand for pro­lif­er­at­ed satel­lite architectures.

Regulatory and Policy Developments

Space traf­fic man­age­ment remained a con­tentious issue as sev­en indus­try groups urged Con­gress to ful­ly fund the Office of Space Com­merce’s Traf­fic Coor­di­na­tion Sys­tem for Space (TraC­SS) at $65 mil­lion, rather than zero­ing out the pro­gram as the admin­is­tra­tion pro­posed. The sys­tem rep­re­sents crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture for man­ag­ing the increas­ing­ly crowd­ed orbital environment.

SpaceX moved clos­er to enter­ing the Indi­an mar­ket after receiv­ing approval from the Indi­an Nation­al Space Pro­mo­tion Autho­riza­tion Cen­tre for Star­link ser­vices. While addi­tion­al spec­trum and reg­u­la­to­ry clear­ances remain pend­ing, suc­cess­ful entry would pro­vide access to the world’s most pop­u­lous nation and estab­lish a strate­gic foothold in Asia.

Looking Ahead

The space indus­try faces a com­plex land­scape of oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges. Chi­nese tech­no­log­i­cal advances in orbital ser­vic­ing and satel­lite oper­a­tions are reshap­ing strate­gic cal­cu­la­tions. At the same time, robust pri­vate invest­ment con­tin­ues dri­ving inno­va­tion and capa­bil­i­ty development.

The unprece­dent­ed NASA lead­er­ship arrange­ment under Sec­re­tary Duffy will like­ly face scruti­ny as Con­gress con­sid­ers the agen­cy’s bud­get and long-term direc­tion. Mean­while, the grow­ing empha­sis on space as a domain of strate­gic com­pe­ti­tion ensures con­tin­ued gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor focus on devel­op­ing advanced capabilities.

For defense con­trac­tors and space com­pa­nies, the mes­sage is clear: the pace of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment and oper­a­tional com­plex­i­ty in space is accel­er­at­ing rapid­ly, cre­at­ing both oppor­tu­ni­ties for those who can adapt quick­ly and risks for those who can­not keep pace with evolv­ing require­ments and capabilities.

July 14, 2025  Leave a comment

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