A graphic of a global satellite network. (Getty)
WASHINGTON — The Space Force is slowly taking over from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) management responsibility for contracting commercial satellite communications (SATCOM) bandwidth and services — with an associated massive $13 billion funding pool for internet services provided by low Earth orbit constellations next in line, according to a senior service official.
“That contract will transition to the Space Force in the July timeframe,” Col. Rich Kniseley, director of the Space Systems Command Commercial Space Office (COMSO), told Breaking Defense on March 21 in an exclusive interview.
He explained that up to now 10 SATCOM contracts have been shifted to COMSO’s Commercial Satellite Communications Office (CSCO) under a memorandum of understanding with DISA.
The Defense Department for decades has had a process for buying SATCOM bandwidth from commercial providers via DISA to augment the limited services provided by its encrypted, jam-proof military communications birds, such as the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellites.
Funds for most DoD commercial SATCOM contracts are dispersed from the long-standing Defense Working Capital Fund managed by DISA through its Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization (DITCO) contracting agency. The fund, which works a bit like a checking account, is filled from the coffers of from all the military services and combatant commands.
CSCO, an arm of DISA until 2018 when it was moved to then-Air Force Space Command, and then to the Space Force in 2019, serves as the middleman between would-be DoD customers and commercial SATCOM operators. It vets participating companies and matches available capabilities with military user needs.
While contract management responsibilities are already being moved from DISA to the Space Force, at the moment the bulk of the SATCOM working capital funds are still in DISA’s hands.
When the service first set up COMSO in April 2023, a Space Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense that the service intended to set up its own working capital fund by September 2024, but so far that hasn’t happened. Kniseley said the current plan is to launch the new Space Force working capital fund, initially worth about $120 million, on Oct. 1.
“That will actually be a carve out of the existing Department of the Air Force working capital fund, so we got our cash corpus. We found efficiencies so we didn’t have to ask Congress for an amount of money to stand up the corpus,” he said.
Kniseley explained that shift of contracts and funds from DISA will take some time.
“For a while, we will still work with DISA/DITCO because we have a lot more contracts. So we’re gonna wean off of them [at] the right time,” he said. “So, there will still be a transition period, but for all purposes, a main thrust will be very up and going by [Oct. 1]. We’ll have people in the building. We’ll have our financial systems all transitioned.”
Kniseley said his office is “excited” about the expansion of its purview, noting that the transition of the acquisition program for broadband internet services provided by operators of what are known as proliferated low Earth orbit, or p-LEO, constellations alone is “going to be huge.”
The Proliferated Low Earth Orbit Satellite-Based Services program is COMSO’s effort to expand the Space Force’s use of commercial capabilities — with the service hoping to soon open up contracting for other types of services such as positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) and small, maneuvering satellites in geosynchronous Earth orbit.
CSCO and DISA in 2023 set up a 10-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract pool worth up to $900 million for the program. As first reported by Space News, the two sides in October 2024 pumped the program’s spending cap up to $13 billion to meet skyrocketing demand from military forces.
Up to now, most of the specific task orders under the p-LEO program have gone to SpaceX for the militarized version of its Starlink internet satellites called Starshield.