A

Addressing the National Oceanographic Partnership Program Challenge of Conducting a Technology Demonstration

Following from the core findings discussed in Chapter 6, the advice in this appendix is based on three premises:

1. The commercial New Space business model is sound and will continue to grow in directions that will create a self-sustaining ecosystem that, with properly structured contract mechanisms can benefit both traditional and nontraditional government users.
2. The Hybrid Space Architecture (HSA) is foundational to future U.S. Space Force (USSF) space acquisitions and represents a driving need for space hardware large enough to make the government an important and ultimately an essential player within that ecosystem.
3. The growing ecosystem will be extensible such that it will provide opportunities for new users with innovative ideas residing both inside and outside the government.

From the perspective of the statement of task, this report recognizes an existing space ecosystem capable of supporting most of the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR’s) current needs and also predicts a growing future space ecosystem capable of also supporting ONR’s projected future needs. Based on the committee’s work in preparing this report and its collective experience, the pursuit of HSA’s allocation of system requirements across USSF, the intelligence community (IC), commercial partnerships, and allies represents a legitimate way to cost share, build resiliency, and increase performance. Unfortunately, full benefits are not likely to be realized within a time frame capable of fully satisfying ONR’s near-term technology demonstration window. This estimate is based on the annual congressional budget cycle, assuming that it takes another 3 years to sort out the differences in opinion among the current players and to secure the necessary funding for HSA. It will likely take another 2 years to put procedures in place and to secure the funding needed to sufficiently influence the services available within the ecosystem.

Despite these constraints, the committee concludes that the technical capabilities exist today to be able to fly the National Oceanographic Partnership Program’s (NOPP’s) sensors in a technical demonstration mode through free-flying satellites, hosted payloads, and/or other government agency capabilities such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) International Space Station (ISS). Given the current private investment interest and abundance of commercial SmallSat providers and operators, it is projected that the ecosystem will grow sufficiently that NOPP should readily be able to meet its projected future sensor flight needs through commercial providers of either single satellites or constellations. Just as the ecosystem will grow and evolve, so too will the contractual methods and types of products offered. Thus, the commercial partnership of the future is likely to be

a hybrid in itself, consisting of flying advance sensors provided through ONR, commercial turnkey approaches to fly and operate sensors, and direct data-buys. The committee sees two challenges for ONR to accomplish this: (1) using systems engineering and management know-how to manage commercial suppliers in a rapidly evolving ecosystem, and (2) navigating the breadth of commercial offerings available within a few years, assuming that the sensors could be ready.

ONR leadership commitment to an execution-focused team for facilitating between instrument projects and commercial and/or other government organizations, such as NASA for access to the ISS, would be a first step. As noted in this report, ONR’s challenges are not unique, especially in understanding the breadth and pedigree of the commercial industry capabilities. ONR as well as the rest of the government space organizations would benefit from something like a space Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC). There would also be significant value in regular facilitated government/industry engagements (conferences, pilot projects, etc.), both formal and informal, to foster better communication, standardization, and understanding of capabilities—something ONR could lead. Another option would be a trusted commercial broker that maintained an up-to-date source of commercial capabilities and pedigree data, acting as a clearinghouse, that could potentially also be employed to broker services. As HSA matures, a Space FFRDC and/or commercial broker services could also facilitate access to information and capabilities to be employed as part of HSA.