WASHINGTON — The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in search of information from the private sector on barriers encountered by business distant sensing data providers when doing business with the intelligence community and the Department of Defense.
A request for information (RFI) published Aug. 21 asks corporations to submit details about what obstacles they experience attempting to sell services to intelligence and defense agencies. Responses are due Sept. 22.
“Over the past decade, the business distant sensing industry has grown rapidly, and it continues to introduce latest capabilities, improved imagery quality, and enhanced revisit rates,” the RFI says.
Even though it is the policy of the USA to eliminate impediments to the timely delivery of space capabilities and speed up the use of business capabilities, the RFI says, “regularly business industry encounters challenges to working with the U.S. government and spending on business analytic products stays relatively small in comparison with spending on business satellite data.”
The Director of National Intelligence, says the RFI, directed a study to look at ways to beat barriers to make use of of business distant sensing, space-based data and analytic services within the intelligence community and the Department of Defense.
The RFI is meant to discover specific challenges encountered by business providers of information — including imagery and signals — and analytic services. “Information provided within the responses may assist within the identification and understanding of systemic barriers to the use of business overhead data and analytic products and will help develop solutions and inform funding decisions.”
Industrial distant sensing includes all types of satellite imagery and likewise non-imagery derived geospatial information resembling automated identification system (AIS) data, radio frequency-derived data and finished analytics and products.
‘Step in the best direction’
A white paper released last yr by the Center for Strategic and International Studies argued that intelligence and defense agencies are usually not making the most of business distant sensing innovation to the extent that they may.
“The capabilities provided by business firms may be used to enrich government space systems across a wide selection of national security missions and fill in gaps in capabilities where the U.S. government has lagged,” the paper said. “The challenge for the military and intelligence community is knowing methods to leverage business capabilities for military advantage.”
Todd Harrison, a co-author of the paper and currently managing director of Metrea Strategic Insights, said the RFI issued by the ODNI “is a robust step in the best direction.”
“They’re asking all the best questions to raised inform and recalibrate their approach to accessing business capabilities,” Harrison said.
“It is usually telling that that is coming from the intelligence community and never the military or the Space Force,” he added. “The IC is far farther along in accessing and utilizing business space capabilities than the military is, but the knowledge they’re collecting from industry within the RFI could definitely help the Space Force because it begins to get serious about leveraging business space distant sensing capabilities.”
Harrison said the ODNI through this process may conclude that agencies need to supply contract on-ramp opportunities more regularly, and work with Congress to ease regulatory and licensing restrictions which might be holding back U.S. corporations.
“Lots of the business space capabilities which might be of interest to the U.S. government are based on satellites with an expected lifetime of 5 years or less,” said Harrison. “If contract opportunities only occur every three years or so, and the licensing and ITAR [International Traffic in Arms Regulations] review process takes months or years to work through, that seriously impacts the power of corporations to effectively use the systems they’re constructing.”