WASHINGTON — Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who has spearheaded Pentagon efforts to bring cutting-edge technology into defense programs, is overseeing the military’s first industrial space integration strategy.
The brand new strategy comes because the Pentagon seeks to tap into advancements in industrial space technology to keep up a bonus over China, now seen as America’s top military competitor.
“At Deputy Secretary Hicks’ direction, the Department is currently developing our first DoD Industrial Space Integration Strategy in an effort to drive integration and ensure the provision of business space solutions during competition, crisis and conflict,” Pentagon Spokesman Eric Pahon said Nov. 27 in an announcement to .
The space integration strategy is being drafted by the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb. Speaking at an industry conference last month, Plumb said, “It’s an exciting time for innovation in space and there’s major opportunities for the department to leverage, just like the rapid production and technology refresh rates that the industrial sector can provide.”
The Pentagon’s annual report on Chinese military capabilities released to Congress last month warned that China was closing once-substantial gaps with American space technologies, increasing the likelihood that Beijing could gain the upper hand in a future conflict by attacking United States satellites.
Speaking with reporters last week, Hicks called China’s rise the Pentagon’s top concern and said partnering with the private sector is significant to outpacing Beijing in developing cutting-edge technology. But she acknowledged the Pentagon must do more to draw industrial innovation. “We now have a challenge with the industrial sector really DoD as a robust and capable partner,” she said.
The brand new industrial strategy joins other initiatives led by Hicks, including a project to rapidly develop fleets of unmanned vehicles and platforms using artificial intelligence and other advanced industrial technologies, which she has pushed as a lesson from Ukraine’s war against Russian forces.
“The Ukrainians are showing a variety of how that rapid iteration is occurring” in deploying drones and other unmanned systems, Hicks said. The Pentagon is now working to emulate that agility, she added.
Industrial space reserve
Individually from the industrial space integration strategy, DoD and U.S. Space Force officials are drafting plans to ascertain a industrial space reserve to make sure the U.S. military has access to industrial satellites during conflicts.
Under this system generally known as Industrial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR), DoD would sign agreements with firms to make sure services like satellite communications and distant sensing are prioritized for U.S. government use during national security emergencies.
Hicks is backing these efforts, said Pahon. “With the rapid growth of the industrial space sector, we’ve a chance to capture that innovation in support of the warfighter,” he added. “The Industrial Augmentation Space Reserve is one in all several essential initiatives which are getting after this challenge.”
The CASR project is led by the Space Force’s Space Systems Command.
The goal is to recruit firms to take part in this system during peacetime, with the inducement that they might get large contracts for services in the event that they are needed during conflicts or crises. To motivate firms to be a part of CASR, the Space Force would give them access to wargames, for instance, allowing them to take part in exercises so that they can higher understand how satellite-based services are used.