Defense News
WASHINGTON — To maximize its capabilities in space, the Pentagon needs to adapt its acquisition policies to more easily incorporate commercial technologies and practices in a rapidly evolving marketplace, a panel of space executives said Wednesday.
Kay Sears, president of satellite service provider Intelsat General Corp., said the space industry has a lot to offer the Department of Defense, but not under a slow-moving acquisitions process that takes years to develop and procure new platforms. Technological advances in the commercial space business move much faster and could offer cheaper solutions to the Pentagon’s needs, she said. Rather than building a satellite program over 25 years, it may make more sense to buy the access and services the DoD needs when it needs it.
“We’re a service based company,” she said. “We can build great economics into [the Pentagon’s] business as well, but you have to be willing to accept our model. Let’s get an acquisition approach that allows you to take advantage of all this new technology that commercial is investing in.”
Sears’ remarks came during a panel discussion hosted Wednesday by the Atlantic Council on the space race in business.
Eric Thoemmes, Lockheed Martin’s vice president of space and missile defense programs, noted that government and commercial development of space has largely converged over the last 30 years. Within the industrial base, workers may be building a commercial communications satellite one day and a military missile warning satellite the next…
