Space Industry Weekly: Congressional Pushback, MDA’s $151B SHIELD Contract, and Launch Milestones

The space indus­try wit­nessed sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments this week, from Capi­tol Hill bat­tles over NASA’s flag­ship rock­et to the Mis­sile Defense Agen­cy’s mas­sive new con­tract­ing vehi­cle and esca­lat­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions affect­ing space oper­a­tions. Here’s what busi­ness lead­ers need to know about the week’s most impact­ful events.

MDA Releases Massive $151 Billion SHIELD Contract

The week’s most sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment for defense con­trac­tors came with the Mis­sile Defense Agen­cy’s release of the Scal­able Home­land Inno­v­a­tive Enter­prise Lay­ered Defense (SHIELD) con­tract vehi­cle. This stag­ger­ing 10-year, $151 bil­lion Indef­i­nite Delivery/Indefinite Quan­ti­ty (IDIQ) oppor­tu­ni­ty rep­re­sents one of the largest defense con­tracts in history.

SHIELD serves as the sec­ond major con­tract­ing vehi­cle sup­port­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s Gold­en Dome ini­tia­tive to build a lay­ered mis­sile defense sys­tem for the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States. The con­tract encom­pass­es 19+ domain areas, includ­ing pro­to­typ­ing, weapon design, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, sys­tems engi­neer­ing, and data min­ing. Notably, com­pa­nies need expe­ri­ence in only two of these areas to qual­i­fy as IDIQ hold­ers, sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er­ing bar­ri­ers to entry com­pared to tra­di­tion­al defense contracts.

The tim­ing is critical—the final Request for Pro­pos­al hit the streets before Octo­ber 1, fol­low­ing indus­try feed­back on the draft solic­i­ta­tion. This RFP rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal shift in how DoD approach­es acqui­si­tion, mov­ing away from tra­di­tion­al, lengthy pro­cure­ment cycles toward more agile, flex­i­ble arrange­ments that can rapid­ly issue orders across mul­ti­ple domains.

Regard­less of whether you rep­re­sent an FSI, OEM, or VAR, SHIELD presents unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties in cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, sys­tems engi­neer­ing, and data analytics—core com­pe­ten­cies that align per­fect­ly with the con­trac­t’s scope. The low­ered entry bar­ri­ers could enable mid-tier con­trac­tors to com­pete along­side tra­di­tion­al defense primes, poten­tial­ly reshap­ing the mis­sile defense indus­tri­al base.

Congressional Battle Over Space Launch System Intensifies

Con­gress deliv­ered a sharp rebuke to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s plans to ter­mi­nate NASA’s Space Launch Sys­tem (SLS) rock­et after the Artemis III mis­sion. Texas Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz emerged as the pro­gram’s unlike­ly new cham­pi­on, craft­ing a pro­vi­sion that secured $6.7 bil­lion in fund­ing for two addi­tion­al SLS missions—Artemis IV and Artemis V—while also con­tin­u­ing con­struc­tion of the Lunar Gate­way space station.

This devel­op­ment rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant shift in space pol­i­cy dynam­ics. The orig­i­nal archi­tects of the SLS program—former sen­a­tors Bill Nel­son, Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son, and Richard Shelby—have all left office. Yet, Cruz has stepped into the breach with renewed vig­or. His moti­va­tion appears clear: beat­ing Chi­na back to the Moon and main­tain­ing Amer­i­can lunar pres­ence, which he views as achiev­able only through con­tin­ued SLS operations.

The con­gres­sion­al push­back rais­es fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the future of Amer­i­can space explo­ration strat­e­gy. It cre­ates poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­trac­tors sup­port­ing both tra­di­tion­al gov­ern­ment pro­grams and emerg­ing com­mer­cial alternatives.

SpaceX Achieves Critical Starship Milestones

SpaceX con­tin­ued demon­strat­ing progress on its Star­ship pro­gram, with encour­ag­ing results from recent heat shield test­ing. The vehi­cle’s dis­tinc­tive orange tint after its Indi­an Ocean land­ing ini­tial­ly raised con­cerns. Still, Elon Musk clar­i­fied that the col­oration came from oxi­dized metal­lic test tiles and exposed insu­la­tion from delib­er­ate­ly removed tiles. Cru­cial­ly, the heat shield tiles remained large­ly attached—a sig­nif­i­cant advance­ment toward rapid reusability.

The com­pa­ny also received Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion approval to more than dou­ble Fal­con 9 launch­es from Space Launch Com­plex-40, increas­ing the annu­al lim­it from 50 to 120 mis­sions. This approval sup­ports SpaceX’s ambi­tious goal of 170 Fal­con 9 launch­es in 2025, main­tain­ing their dom­i­nant posi­tion in the com­mer­cial launch market.

How­ev­er, SpaceX faces logis­ti­cal chal­lenges in scal­ing Star­ship oper­a­tions. Each launch requires over 200 tanker trucks to deliv­er nec­es­sary propellants—an inef­fi­cient process the com­pa­ny plans to address through on-site cryo­genic flu­id pro­duc­tion facilities.

Defense and National Security Developments

Beyond SHIELD, the Depart­ment of Defense imple­ment­ed the final Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Matu­ri­ty Mod­el Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (CMMC) rule, requir­ing defense con­trac­tors to demon­strate prop­er safe­guard­ing of Fed­er­al Con­tract Infor­ma­tion and Con­trolled Unclas­si­fied Infor­ma­tion. This devel­op­ment sig­nif­i­cant­ly impacts space indus­try con­trac­tors, who must now achieve CMMC cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to main­tain DoD contracts.

NASA announced plans for a trio of solar obser­va­tion space­craft to launch on Sep­tem­ber 23 aboard a Fal­con 9 rock­et. The missions—IMAP, Car­ruthers Geo­coro­na Obser­va­to­ry, and SWFO-L1—will study solar wind and space weath­er effects, pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal data for pro­tect­ing satel­lites and astro­nauts from space weath­er impacts.

International Launch Activities and Competitive Dynamics

Israel suc­cess­ful­ly launched the Ofek 19 syn­thet­ic aper­ture radar satel­lite using its Shav­it 2 rock­et, demon­strat­ing con­tin­ued indige­nous space capa­bil­i­ties despite region­al secu­ri­ty chal­lenges. Cana­di­an launch com­pa­ny Reac­tion Dynam­ics made a strate­gic $1.2 mil­lion invest­ment in Mar­itime Launch Ser­vices, secur­ing access to Space­port Nova Sco­tia for its Aurora‑8 rocket.

Chi­nese com­mer­cial rock­et com­pa­ny Orien­space secured $27–124 mil­lion in Series B+ financ­ing to advance its Gravity‑2 medi­um-lift vehi­cle, capa­ble of deliv­er­ing 20 met­ric tons to low-Earth orbit. This rep­re­sents Chi­na’s con­tin­ued push into com­mer­cial launch mar­kets and pos­es increas­ing com­pe­ti­tion to West­ern providers.

Industry Infrastructure and Investment Trends

Rock­et Lab unveiled its Neu­tron launch com­plex at Vir­gini­a’s Wal­lops Island, designed to com­pete with SpaceX’s Fal­con 9 in the medi­um-lift mar­ket. How­ev­er, founder Peter Beck acknowl­edged the com­pa­ny’s aggres­sive 2025 launch time­line remains challenging.

French rock­et builder Maia­Space com­plet­ed exten­sive pro­pel­lant tank test­ing for its Maia rock­et, rep­re­sent­ing Euro­pean efforts to devel­op com­pet­i­tive com­mer­cial launch capa­bil­i­ties with the first flight tar­get­ed for 2027.

Strategic Implications for Defense Contractors

The SHIELD con­tract release fun­da­men­tal­ly alters the mis­sile defense land­scape, offer­ing unprece­dent­ed access to a $151 bil­lion mar­ket while sup­port­ing crit­i­cal nation­al secu­ri­ty objec­tives. The con­trac­t’s structure—requiring exper­tise in only two of 19+ areas—creates oppor­tu­ni­ties for spe­cial­ized firms to com­pete along­side tra­di­tion­al primes.

For com­pa­nies, the tim­ing aligns per­fect­ly with grow­ing demand for cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, sys­tems engi­neer­ing, and data ana­lyt­ics capa­bil­i­ties across the defense sec­tor. The Gold­en Dome ini­tia­tive’s empha­sis on speed and scale favors agile con­trac­tors who can rapid­ly deliv­er inno­v­a­tive solutions.

Con­gres­sion­al resis­tance to admin­is­tra­tion space pol­i­cy changes sug­gests con­tin­ued polit­i­cal volatil­i­ty around major pro­grams, cre­at­ing both risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­trac­tors sup­port­ing mul­ti­ple pro­gram port­fo­lios. The inter­na­tion­al launch sec­tor’s con­tin­ued diver­si­fi­ca­tion high­lights the need for Amer­i­can com­pa­nies to main­tain tech­no­log­i­cal and com­pet­i­tive advantages.

Looking Ahead

The com­ing weeks will bring addi­tion­al clar­i­ty on SHIELD con­tract awards, con­gres­sion­al space fund­ing pri­or­i­ties, and inter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive devel­op­ments. The con­ver­gence of mas­sive defense spend­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with evolv­ing space capa­bil­i­ties cre­ates a dynam­ic envi­ron­ment requir­ing strate­gic agili­ty and care­ful atten­tion to both domes­tic pol­i­cy changes and glob­al com­pet­i­tive trends.

For defense con­trac­tors and space indus­try exec­u­tives, suc­cess will require under­stand­ing how these inter­con­nect­ed developments—from SHIELD­’s unprece­dent­ed scale to inter­na­tion­al launch competition—reshape the strate­gic land­scape and cre­ate new path­ways for growth and innovation.

September 15, 2025  Leave a comment

Pentagon Shakes Up Leadership While Army Modernizes Electronic Warfare Capabilities

Best in Class

Defense Indus­try Week­ly Roundup

Team, it’s been anoth­er event­ful week in the DoD, with major lead­er­ship changes at the Pen­ta­gon, sig­nif­i­cant mod­ern­iza­tion efforts in elec­tron­ic war­fare, and some con­cern­ing devel­op­ments in weapons test­ing over­sight. Let’s dive into what’s been happening.

Pentagon Leadership Overhaul Continues

The biggest sto­ry this week involves Defense Sec­re­tary Pete Hegseth’s con­tin­ued restruc­tur­ing at the Pen­ta­gon. Late Fri­day, we learned that Lt. Gen. Jef­frey Kruse was removed from his posi­tion as direc­tor of the Defense Intel­li­gence Agency (DIA), cit­ing “loss of confidence.”

What makes this par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is the tim­ing — it comes after a leaked DIA report con­tra­dict­ed the admin­is­tra­tion’s claims about the effec­tive­ness of June’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facil­i­ties. While the White House main­tained the strikes “com­plete­ly oblit­er­at­ed” Iran’s nuclear capa­bil­i­ties, the DIA assess­ment sug­gest­ed the dam­age was far more lim­it­ed, set­ting back their pro­gram by “maybe a few months, tops.”

Hegseth did­n’t stop there. He also dis­missed Vice Adm. Nan­cy Lacore, head of the Navy Reserve, and Rear Adm. Mil­ton Sands, who led Naval Spe­cial War­fare Com­mand. The rea­sons for these dis­missals remain unclear, but they’re part of a broad­er pat­tern of lead­er­ship changes that now includes the Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Naval Oper­a­tions, and sev­er­al oth­er senior positions.

Army’s Elec­tron­ic War­fare Evolution

On the mod­ern­iza­tion front, the Army is mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant moves in elec­tron­ic war­fare. At TECHNET AUGUSTA 2025, offi­cials unveiled plans for the Mod­u­lar Mis­sion Pay­load (MMP) — a new elec­tron­ic war­fare kit designed to be inter­op­er­a­ble across vir­tu­al­ly any plat­form in the service.

Col. Scott Shaf­fer, project man­ag­er for EW and cyber with­in PEO IEW&S, explained that the MMP rep­re­sents a shift away from ded­i­cat­ed EW vehi­cles. As one offi­cial put it, “We’re past that point of where you’re going to have a ded­i­cat­ed EW vehi­cle try­ing to move across a bat­tle­field, anten­nas look­ing like a porcupine.”

The Army is pri­or­i­tiz­ing com­mer­cial off-the-shelf (COTS) and gov­ern­ment off-the-shelf (GOTS) solu­tions, with Shaf­fer not­ing, “If we’re only hit­ting 60 per­cent of the require­ments, that’s okay because we’re at least get­ting some­thing out there and it can be field­ed very soon.”

This push comes as the Army estab­lish­es 18 new EW com­pa­nies across its divi­sions, sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ing its elec­tron­ic war­fare capa­bil­i­ties at a time when elec­tro­mag­net­ic spec­trum dom­i­nance is increas­ing­ly critical.

Weapons Testing Office Gutted

In a move that’s rais­ing seri­ous con­cerns among over­sight advo­cates, the Pen­tagon’s weapons test­ing office has dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduced its scope. The Direc­tor of Oper­a­tional Test and Eval­u­a­tion (DOT&E) cut the num­ber of pro­grams it over­sees from 251 to 152, with the work­force slashed from 94 employ­ees to just 46.

Most alarm­ing? The Army’s new XM7 rifle has been removed from over­sight — a deci­sion that crit­ics say eeri­ly par­al­lels the M16’s trou­bled his­to­ry. Greg Williams from the Project On Gov­ern­ment Over­sight (the orga­ni­za­tion tends to be left of cen­ter in its edi­to­r­i­al) warned that the XM7 “is a per­fect exam­ple of a weapon sys­tem that requires both devel­op­men­tal and oper­a­tional testing.”

Defense Sec­re­tary Hegseth defend­ed the cuts, claim­ing they’ll save $300 mil­lion annu­al­ly by elim­i­nat­ing “redun­dant, non-essen­tial, non-statu­to­ry func­tions.” But as Williams point­ed out, any short-term sav­ings could be dwarfed by the long-term costs of field­ing faulty weapons. The unasked ques­tion is, how do we increase the lethal­i­ty to the warfight­er while bal­anc­ing risk? 

Federal Acquisition Reform Accelerates

The FAR over­haul con­tin­ues at break­neck speed, with sig­nif­i­cant changes to Parts 8 and 12 that could reshape how the gov­ern­ment buys every­thing from IT ser­vices to con­struc­tion projects.

The biggest game-chang­er? Con­tract­ing offi­cers must now pri­or­i­tize Best-in-Class (BIC) con­tracts as their first source of sup­ply. If they want to use any­thing else, they need writ­ten jus­ti­fi­ca­tion approved by senior lead­er­ship. This change effec­tive­ly gives com­pa­nies on gov­ern­men­twide acqui­si­tion con­tracts a mas­sive com­pet­i­tive advantage.

Part 12 brings equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant changes, rais­ing the sim­pli­fied acqui­si­tion thresh­old for com­mer­cial items to $7.5 mil­lion — up from the pre­vi­ous $250,000 in prac­tice. The gov­ern­ment also elim­i­nat­ed a third of the claus­es pre­vi­ous­ly required for com­mer­cial con­tracts, stream­lin­ing the process considerably.

AI Tools Get Fast-Track Security Approval

FedRAMP announced it will pri­or­i­tize AI cloud ser­vices for secu­ri­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, respond­ing to a request from the Fed­er­al CIO Coun­cil. The new cri­te­ria focus on con­ver­sa­tion­al AI engines for rou­tine fed­er­al use, with pri­or­i­ty giv­en to tools that:

  • Have demand from at least five CFO Act agencies
  • Offer enter­prise-grade fea­tures like sin­gle sign-on and role-based access
  • Guar­an­tee data sep­a­ra­tion and protection
  • Are avail­able through GSA schedules
  • Can meet FedRAMP require­ments with­in two months

Inter­est­ing­ly, none of the cur­rent AI offer­ings — includ­ing Google’s Gem­i­ni, Ope­nAI’s Chat­G­PT, or Anthrop­ic’s Claude — meet all five cri­te­ria yet.

Looking Ahead

As we head into Sep­tem­ber, Con­gress returns from recess fac­ing a poten­tial gov­ern­ment shut­down on Sep­tem­ber 30th. The spend­ing bat­tle will dom­i­nate the agen­da, com­pli­cat­ed by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s efforts to claw back pre­vi­ous­ly approved funding.

The Army’s new Direc­torate for Strat­e­gy and Trans­for­ma­tion, led by Andrew Evans, aims for ini­tial oper­at­ing capa­bil­i­ty by mid-Octo­ber. This reor­ga­ni­za­tion insti­tu­tion­al­izes the trans­for­ma­tion efforts pre­vi­ous­ly han­dled by the ISR Task Force, includ­ing high-pro­file pro­grams like Athena-Sen­sor and HADES.

Mean­while, fed­er­al unions con­tin­ue fight­ing the admin­is­tra­tion’s col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing ter­mi­na­tions in court, with NASA, the Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice, and oth­er agen­cies added to the list of enti­ties where unions are being elim­i­nat­ed for “nation­al secu­ri­ty” reasons.

The Bottom Line

This week’s devel­op­ments high­light the ten­sion between rapid mod­ern­iza­tion and prop­er over­sight. While the push for com­mer­cial solu­tions and stream­lined acqui­si­tion makes sense in today’s threat envi­ron­ment, the gut­ting of weapons test­ing capa­bil­i­ties rais­es legit­i­mate con­cerns about repeat­ing past mistakes.

The elec­tron­ic war­fare mod­ern­iza­tion efforts show promise, par­tic­u­lar­ly the move away from ded­i­cat­ed plat­forms toward mod­u­lar, adapt­able sys­tems. But suc­cess will depend on exe­cu­tion — and whether the Army can tru­ly deliv­er plug-and-play capa­bil­i­ties that work across diverse platforms.

As always, I’ll be watch­ing how these changes impact our defense indus­tri­al base and, most impor­tant­ly, our warfight­ers in the field. The push for effi­cien­cy is admirable, but not at the cost of effec­tive­ness or safety.

Stay tuned for next week’s update, where we’ll like­ly see more on the con­gres­sion­al spend­ing fight and hope­ful­ly some clar­i­ty on the Pen­tagon’s broad­er reor­ga­ni­za­tion plans.

Stay tuned for next week’s update. Until then, keep look­ing up!

September 4, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Weekly: Starship Success, China’s Launch Ambitions, and the Golden Dome Initiative

Hey every­one, Austin here with your week­ly space indus­try roundup. What a week it’s been! From SpaceX final­ly break­ing their Star­ship los­ing streak to major devel­op­ments in mis­sile defense and some fas­ci­nat­ing moves in the com­mer­cial satel­lite sec­tor, there’s plen­ty to unpack. Let’s dive in.

Starship Finally Sticks the Landing

After what felt like an eter­ni­ty of explo­sive test cam­paigns and FAA inves­ti­ga­tions, SpaceX’s Star­ship Flight 10 deliv­ered exact­ly what the com­pa­ny need­ed. The mas­sive rock­et lift­ed off from Star­base on Tues­day evening and hit every sin­gle mile­stone – some­thing we haven’t seen in quite a while.

The Super Heavy boost­er per­formed a text­book boost-back burn and soft land­ing in the Gulf (though we lost one Rap­tor engine dur­ing ascent – 32 out of 33 isn’t bad). But here’s the real kick­er: Star­ship actu­al­ly deployed those dum­my Star­link satel­lites through its new slot-shaped pay­load door. After fail­ures on flights 7, 8, and 9, see­ing those mass sim­u­la­tors deploy was huge. The vehi­cle even per­formed an in-space Rap­tor relight and sur­vived reen­try for a pin­point splash­down in the Indi­an Ocean.

With over $500 mil­lion spent on the Star­ship pro­gram this year alone, this suc­cess could­n’t have come at a bet­ter time. Elon’s promis­ing a launch cadence of every 3–4 weeks in the future. If that holds, we could see six more flights before the end of the year.

The Golden Dome Initiative: America’s Next-Gen Missile Defense

I attend­ed some fas­ci­nat­ing brief­in­gs this week on the Mis­sile Defense Agen­cy’s Gold­en Dome ini­tia­tive – a com­pre­hen­sive over­haul of our mis­sile defense archi­tec­ture, man­dat­ed by the pres­i­dent and with a 3.5‑year dead­line. Gen­er­al Collins made it crys­tal clear: this isn’t about rogue mis­siles any­more. We’re talk­ing peer-to-peer defense against Chi­na, Rus­sia, Iran, and North Korea.

The archi­tec­ture breaks down into five lay­ers: Space, Upper, Under, Lim­it­ed Area Defense, and Domain Aware­ness. What caught my atten­tion was the empha­sis on space-based inter­cep­tors for boost, mid-course, and glide-phase inter­cepts. MDA and Space Force are stand­ing up a joint pro­gram office – that’s how seri­ous they are about the space component.

The num­bers are stag­ger­ing: the Shield IDIQ con­tract alone is worth $151 bil­lion over a 10-year peri­od. They’re push­ing for month­ly flight tests, AI-enabled fire con­trol, and data speeds that far exceed cur­rent fiber optic solu­tions. The mes­sage from MDA? “Go fast, think big.” They’re even will­ing to take more risks to meet the aggres­sive timeline.

China’s Launch Sector Heats Up

While we’re focused on reusabil­i­ty here in the States, Chi­na’s launch sec­tor is absolute­ly explod­ing with activ­i­ty. State-owned CASC is devel­op­ing the Long March 10 series for crewed lunar mis­sions, while its com­mer­cial sec­tor is rac­ing to debut reusable launch­ers that mir­ror SpaceX’s approach.

Two new­com­ers, Ark­tech and Welight, just entered the fray with full-flow staged com­bus­tion engines – show­ing how quick­ly Chi­nese star­tups are adopt­ing cut­ting-edge tech. Mean­while, estab­lished play­ers CAS Space and Land­space are advanc­ing toward IPOs on Shang­hai’s STAR Mar­ket, with val­u­a­tions hit­ting $1.55 bil­lion despite sig­nif­i­cant losses.

The real dri­ver? Mega­con­stel­la­tions. Chi­na’s Guowang and Qian­fan projects are cre­at­ing mas­sive demand for launch capac­i­ty. Who­ev­er cracks reli­able reusabil­i­ty first will dom­i­nate their market.

Commercial Satellite Innovations

Some excit­ing devel­op­ments in the com­mer­cial sec­tor this week:

Plan­et’s Pel­i­can Pro­duc­tion: Plan­et launched their third and fourth Pel­i­can satel­lites – the first ones built by their man­u­fac­tur­ing teams rather than engi­neers. These high-res birds will even­tu­al­ly form a 30-satel­lite con­stel­la­tion capa­ble of revis­it­ing any loca­tion every 30 min­utes. Their pro­duc­tion line hit full speed last month, and they’re already plan­ning Gen2 Pel­i­cans with even high­er resolution.

Esper’s Hyper­spec­tral Suc­cess: Aus­tralian start­up Esper launched their OTR‑2 hyper­spec­tral sen­sor as a host­ed pay­load. After their first satel­lite failed to make con­tact, they piv­ot­ed to a vir­tu­al mis­sion that’s gen­er­at­ed $32M in book­ings. Their sen­sors can iden­ti­fy rare earth ele­ments from orbit for just $1.50 per km² – com­pared to $4M+ for tra­di­tion­al ground explo­ration. They claim a 100% accu­ra­cy rate so far, which sounds almost too good to be true.

EchoStar’s Big Move: In a mas­sive strate­gic shift, EchoStar is sell­ing $23 bil­lion worth of ter­res­tri­al wire­less spec­trum to AT&T. This ends their tra­di­tion­al mobile car­ri­er ambi­tions but pro­vides cap­i­tal to pay down debt and fund their $5 bil­lion direct-to-device satel­lite con­stel­la­tion. They’ve already ordered 100 satel­lites from MDA Space.

Launch Sector Updates

Fire­fly­’s Back: After their April fail­ure, Fire­fly com­plet­ed their inves­ti­ga­tion and got FAA clear­ance to resume launch­es. The cul­prit? Plume-induced flow sep­a­ra­tion caused by fly­ing at a high­er angle of attack, lead­ing to exces­sive heat­ing and struc­tur­al fail­ure. They’re adding heat shield­ing and adjust­ing flight pro­files for future missions.

Rock­et Lab’s Neu­tron Progress: The com­pa­ny inau­gu­rat­ed Launch Com­plex 3 at Wal­lops Island, bring­ing Neu­tron one step clos­er to its maid­en flight. The pad fea­tures a unique launch stand design meant to min­i­mize refur­bish­ment between launch­es. They’re still tar­get­ing a launch before year’s end if every­thing goes smoothly.

Record Reusabil­i­ty: SpaceX hit anoth­er mile­stone with boost­er B1067 com­plet­ing its 30th flight on a Star­link mis­sion. That’s just incred­i­ble when you think about where we were a decade ago.

Quick Hits

  • Aero­space­lab raised €94 mil­lion ($110M) to expand their “Megafac­to­ry” in Bel­gium, designed to pro­duce 500 satel­lites annu­al­ly by 2027
  • NOAA’s weath­er satel­lite over­haul is fac­ing major cuts, reduc­ing from 6 to 4 satel­lites and can­cel­ing $852M in sen­sor contracts
  • Space Force opti­cal pay­loads: Rock­et Lab’s Geost sub­sidiary won an expand­ed $80.7M con­tract for GEO opti­cal payloads
  • Poland’s pres­i­dent vetoed fund­ing for Star­link ser­vices in Ukraine, poten­tial­ly cut­ting off sup­port by October

Looking Ahead

The space indus­try con­tin­ues to expe­ri­ence a break­neck pace of inno­va­tion and com­pe­ti­tion. Between Star­ship’s suc­cess, Chi­na’s aggres­sive launch devel­op­ment, and the mas­sive Gold­en Dome ini­tia­tive, we’re see­ing unprece­dent­ed invest­ment and activ­i­ty across both com­mer­cial and defense sectors.

What strikes me most is the shift in risk tol­er­ance – from MDA’s will­ing­ness to “go fast” on mis­sile defense to com­mer­cial com­pa­nies push­ing the enve­lope on reusabil­i­ty and pro­duc­tion. The next few months will be crit­i­cal as these ini­tia­tives move from plan­ning to execution.

Stay tuned for next week’s update. Until then, keep look­ing up!

September 1, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Weekly: Launch Records Shatter While Military Space Takes Center Stage

Team, here with your week­ly space indus­try roundup. This past week has been absolute­ly packed with devel­op­ments that are reshap­ing both com­mer­cial and mil­i­tary space oper­a­tions. From SpaceX hit­ting triple dig­its to the Space Force prepar­ing for orbital com­bat, let’s dive into what’s been hap­pen­ing above our heads.

SpaceX Shatters Launch Records (Again)

SpaceX just crossed a mile­stone that would have seemed impos­si­ble just a few years ago — they launched their 100th Fal­con 9 rock­et of 2025 on Mon­day morn­ing from Van­den­berg Space Force Base. To put this in per­spec­tive, they hit this mark on Octo­ber 20th last year, mean­ing they’re run­ning near­ly two months ahead of their 2024 pace. At this rate, SpaceX will launch more Fal­con 9s this year than NASA flew Space Shut­tle mis­sions in three decades.

The com­pa­ny has also reas­signed about 20% of its Fal­con 9 engi­neer­ing team to work on Star­ship for the next six months, fol­low­ing three con­sec­u­tive upper stage fail­ures ear­li­er this year. Their tenth Star­ship test flight is sched­uled for today (Sun­day), with engi­neers believ­ing they’ve solved the dif­fuser issue that caused May’s fail­ure. We’ll see if Ver­sion 3 of Star­ship, expect­ed late this year or ear­ly 2026, can final­ly deliv­er on the vehi­cle’s ambi­tious promises.

Military Space Operations Enter New Era

The U.S. Space Com­mand is no longer play­ing defense. Gen­er­al Stephen Whit­ing made it crys­tal clear this week: “We now have a com­bat­ant com­mand focused on war fight­ing in space.” This shift from defen­sive to offen­sive capa­bil­i­ties marks a fun­da­men­tal change in how Amer­i­ca approach­es space security.

Last year’s joint U.S.-French satel­lite maneu­ver near a for­eign satel­lite (like­ly Russ­ian) demon­strat­ed new ren­dezvous and prox­im­i­ty oper­a­tions capa­bil­i­ties. The exer­cise was so suc­cess­ful, they’re plan­ning to repeat it lat­er this year. Mean­while, the Nation­al Recon­nais­sance Office has launched over 200 satel­lites since 2023, with SpaceX report­ed­ly lead­ing the com­pe­ti­tion for a new 450-satel­lite con­stel­la­tion to track mis­sile launches.

The inte­gra­tion of AI is par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing — Space Com­mand has built “Space­Bot,” a large lan­guage mod­el trained on oper­a­tional data that can com­plete tasks “at machine speed” that pre­vi­ous­ly required ten peo­ple and five hours.

International Launch Developments

The glob­al launch land­scape con­tin­ues to evolve rapid­ly. Fire­fly Aero­space signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing with Japan’s Space Cotan to study launch­ing their Alpha rock­et from Hokkai­do Space­port, which would give them access to the Asian satel­lite mar­ket and pro­vide redun­dan­cy for U.S. allies.

Chi­na’s space ambi­tions faced a set­back when Land­Space’s Zhuque-2E Y2 methane rock­et failed dur­ing an upper stage anom­aly, los­ing four Guowang inter­net satel­lites. Despite this, Chi­na suc­cess­ful­ly test-fired its Long March 10 rock­et’s cen­ter core with sev­en YF-100K engines, keep­ing them on track for crewed lunar mis­sions before 2030. They’ve also approved devel­op­ment of the Long March 10B vari­ant, and Bei­jing-based Ark­tech secured fund­ing for their mas­sive Glacier‑1 rock­et capa­ble of lift­ing 40,000 kg to LEO.

In Europe, Avio gained a 10-year license to oper­ate Vega rock­ets from French Guiana inde­pen­dent­ly of Ari­ane­space. At the same time, Ari­ane 6 com­plet­ed its third launch, deploy­ing the MetOp-SG-A1 weath­er satellite.

Major Industry Moves and Funding

True Anom­aly raised $260 mil­lion in Series C fund­ing (mix of equi­ty and debt) to devel­op space­craft for nation­al secu­ri­ty mis­sions. The com­pa­ny plans four mis­sions over the next 18 months and will grow from 170 to 250 employees.

Rock­et Lab com­plet­ed its $275 mil­lion acqui­si­tion of Geost, expand­ing its role as a defense con­trac­tor with elec­tro-opti­cal and infrared sen­sor capa­bil­i­ties. Spin­Launch secured $30 mil­lion for its Merid­i­an Space broad­band con­stel­la­tion, sup­ple­ment­ing April’s $12 mil­lion from Kongs­berg Defence and Aerospace.

On the ser­vices side, Amen­tum began work on the $4 bil­lion Space Force Range Con­tract after com­peti­tor RGNext dropped its legal chal­lenge. They’re tasked with mod­ern­iz­ing launch ranges to han­dle high­er launch rates.

Policy Shifts and Controversies

NASA’s act­ing admin­is­tra­tor Sean Duffy cre­at­ed waves by stat­ing the agency would “move aside” Earth sci­ence pri­or­i­ties in favor of explo­ration. In his Fox Busi­ness inter­view on August 14th, Duffy specif­i­cal­ly stat­ed: “All of the cli­mate sci­ence and all of the oth­er pri­or­i­ties that the last admin­is­tra­tion had at NASA, we’re going to move aside. All of the sci­ence that we do is going to be direct­ed towards explo­ration, which is the mis­sion of NASA. That’s why we have NASA, is to explore, not to do all of these Earth sci­ences.” This shift would rep­re­sent a major shift for NASA since Earth sci­ence — includ­ing cli­mate mon­i­tor­ing — has been a core NASA mis­sion since the agen­cy’s found­ing. In fact, the 1958 law that cre­at­ed NASA lists as its first objec­tive “the expan­sion of human knowl­edge of the Earth and of phe­nom­e­na in the atmos­phere and space.”

In oth­er news, the Air Nation­al Guard’s trans­fer to the Space Force remains con­tentious. Despite Pres­i­dent Trump’s 2024 cam­paign promise to cre­ate a Space Nation­al Guard, the trans­fer of 578 posi­tions begins on Octo­ber 1st. A Col­orado sur­vey showed only 8 of 101 space oper­a­tors were will­ing to trans­fer full-time, high­light­ing the resis­tance to this reorganization.

In the UK, it has announced plans to fold its own Space Agency into the Depart­ment for Sci­ence, Inno­va­tion, and Tech­nol­o­gy by April 2026, rais­ing indus­try con­cerns about reduced vis­i­bil­i­ty into space spending.

Looking Ahead: Space-Based Solar Power

A new study from King’s Col­lege Lon­don and Xi’an Jiao­tong Uni­ver­si­ty sug­gests space-based solar pow­er could pro­vide 80% of Europe’s renew­able ener­gy by 2050. The research ana­lyzed NASA’s heliosat swarm and pla­nar array designs, find­ing poten­tial cost sav­ings of 7–15% com­pared to ground-based solar, plus a two-thirds reduc­tion in bat­tery require­ments due to con­sis­tent pow­er generation.

Notable Launches and Milestones

The X‑37B space­plane launched on its eighth mis­sion Thurs­day night aboard a Fal­con 9, car­ry­ing exper­i­ments includ­ing laser com­mu­ni­ca­tions and quan­tum iner­tial sen­sors. The pre­vi­ous mis­sion last­ed 908 days, and no dura­tion has been announced for this flight.

In a his­toric first, Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents launched Canada’s first space rock­et in 25 years with their Star­sailor vehi­cle. How­ev­er, it sep­a­rat­ed ear­li­er than planned and did­n’t reach the Kár­mán line.

The Bottom Line

This week per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the cur­rent state of the space indus­try — com­mer­cial com­pa­nies are achiev­ing unprece­dent­ed launch cadences. In con­trast, mil­i­tary space oper­a­tions open­ly embrace offen­sive capa­bil­i­ties. The inte­gra­tion of AI, the push toward reusabil­i­ty across mul­ti­ple providers, and the con­tin­ued inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion for lunar land­ing capa­bil­i­ties all point to an indus­try that’s matur­ing rapid­ly while still push­ing boundaries.

As we watch Star­ship’s tenth test flight and mon­i­tor the ongo­ing Nation­al Guard inte­gra­tion debates, one thing is clear: space is no longer just about explo­ration and sci­ence. It’s about nation­al secu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness, and increas­ing­ly, the infra­struc­ture that will define the next cen­tu­ry of human activ­i­ty both on and off Earth.

Until next time, keep look­ing up!

August 31, 2025  Leave a comment

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

« older posts newer posts »