The Space Force Commercial Integration Cell, a program designed to integrate commercial space companies with US Space Force operations, has grown from ten to 15 companies, with plans to add two more by early next year, according to a senior official of the service.

Lt. Gen. Doug Schiess, who serves as commander of Space-Space Forces (S4S) and the Space Command’s Joint Forces Combined Space Component, said the program not only expands the number of participating companies, but also the range of mission areas .

“Which means those companies already have a contract with the United States government. When we first thought about it, it was mostly commercial (satellite communications), but it delved into imaging and domain awareness and other things,” Schiess said during the Mitchell Institute event on Wednesday.

“Because of the contracts that they already have, they have the ability to have people with top secret/sensitive information compartmentalized and then we have the connection so we can give them threat intelligence back and forth from ‘Hey, here’s what’s going on. at the top secret SCI level. They can also give us information. We have people on the Combined Space Operations Center floor, not 24/7 right now, but they have the ability to call the CSpOC floor and say, “Here’s what I’m dealing with.”

CIC, launched in 2015 as a pilot program, facilitates the exchange of real-time intelligence and threats between military and commercial satellite operators.

Hughes Network Systems, Maxar Technologies, Eutelsat America Corp., SpaceX, Inmarsat, SES Government Solutions, Intelsat General Communications, Iridium Communications, Viasat and XTAR are long-time CIC members.

Schiess said that while there is no set limit on the number of companies that can join CIC, the challenge is the Space Force’s ability to efficiently manage all of these connections.

“Do we have the staff number? How many people does it take to do this? I don’t see an upper limit to the ability to bring in companies. Just how do we manage these connections?” Schiess said.

CIC is located at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. All CIC companies sign confidentiality agreements to ensure that any information shared between CIC members is kept confidential and not used for competitive advantage or profit.

The program played an important role when an Intelsat satellite unexpectedly broke up in orbit – the company quickly notified Space Command, which allowed them to issue a public alert about the debris generated by the satellite breakup and warn other operators of potential collision risks.

“We knew this information because that company was talking to us right away. We also had our own people looking at it, and we were much quicker to get that information out to other people than we were in the past because we were able to collaborate with our commercial entities,” Schiess said.

SPACECOM also launched the Joint Commercial Operations cell, formerly known as the Joint Task Force-Space Defense Commercial Operations cell, designed to integrate commercial space capabilities with military operations. The cell comprises a network of allies, partners, academia and industry that contribute to 24/7 space operations around the globe.

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