The Space Force is exploring ways to incentivize acquisition leaders to leverage more commercial innovation across their programs, including a new “scorecard” to quantify their efforts.
The service is making sweeping reforms to its acquisition enterprise in response to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s call for “acquisition transformation.” That includes changing the way it sets requirements, manages programs, and fields capabilities. In June, the Space Force announced nine portfolio acquisition executives who will manage programs by mission areas, and officials are now working to put the authorities and structures in place to support those PAEs.
Col. Daniel Urban, the Space Force’s director of systems of systems engineering within the space acquisition and integration office, said Aug. 25 the service plans to institute a scorecard mechanism that will evaluate PAE performance. The Space Force is still determining what those metrics will be, but Urban said commercial integration will likely be one of them.
“Where we are today is at kind of a fundamental turning point, paradigm shift in how we’re going to do acquisition across all levels, including commercial integration,” Urban said at an Aug. 25 event hosted by the Washington Space Business Roundtable. “The idea here is, commercial first and speeding up capability to the warfighter.”
The Space Force has for years talked about the need to adopt more commercial technology, with acquisition leaders calling for program leaders to first consider what capabilities are available in the private sector before opting to build a new satellite, sensor, or ground system. In 2024, it adopted its first-ever commercial space strategy, and last year, it took a deep-dive through its acquisition portfolio looking for requirements that could be met with purely commercial capabilities.
Space Force leaders, including Space Systems Command Commander Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, say this “commercial first” mindset has been normalized across its acquisition community, but some companies are still looking for evidence the service is serious about adopting private sector innovation.
Clive Cook, CEO of space analytics firm Precursor, said during the panel that while companies like his have had some success getting a foot in the door through small business contracts, it’s much harder to transition those technologies to actual programs of record. That experience is common among startups and other nontraditional defense companies and is often referred to as the “valley of death”—the space between pitching a technology to the Pentagon and transitioning it to users in the field.
Cook said holding PAEs accountable to actually integrate commercial technology into their larger programs is a step toward addressing that challenge. He also advocated for the creation of a dedicated funding line that would prioritize capabilities that have worked their way through the department’s innovation ecosystem through initiatives like the Small Business Innovative Research program.
Tahara Dawkins, senior director of policy at Astroscale-U.S.—an on-orbit servicing and logistics firm that’s on contract with the Space Force for several demonstrations in the coming years—said commercial companies have proven in recent years that their capabilities hold value for the government. The challenge, she said, lies in the government’s ability to align its policies, regulations, budgets, and acquisition strategies with that reality.
“As soon as a government says a capability is strategically important, there should be a policy that connects the capability with implementation and answers the questions on who owns it, who needs it, who can fit it in the architecture, and what happens after demonstration,” Dawkins said. “Good policy should reduce the distance between recognizing capability and actually being a customer.”