The Deputy Secretary of Defense tasked the Defense Business Board to form a task group to identify impediments to DoD's ability to better utilize the commercial satellite sector and recommend ways forward that allow DoD to better leverage opportunities from commercial satellite communications service providers. The task group reported four findings. 1. COMSAT is needed to satisfy future DoD requirements by impediments exist. 2.SATCOM is a mission critical resource. 3. "Nontraditional" opportunities for rapid COMSAT acquisition are available but not being utilized. 4. DoD's management structure and strategy is currently not optimized.

The expanding global commercial space industry offers new opportunities--such as technological advances in small satellites, lower launch costs, and innovative satellite applications--that could help the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) meet its mission requirements more efficiently and give it access to a broader innovation pool. The Department of the Air Force (DAF), particularly the U.S. Space Force (USSF), is increasing its partnership activities with the commercial space industry to take advantage of these opportunities. As the DAF makes investment decisions to leverage commercial space capabilities, it needs a better understanding of opportunities, risks, and challenges it might encounter. To help the DAF evaluate these potential benefits and risks, RAND researchers examined two space-related markets that together represent the widest variation in market and firm maturity: the commercial space-based positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) market (an emerging market) and the commercial satellite communications (SATCOM) market (an established market). This variation between the two markets is useful for identifying distinct and cross-cutting themes that could be generalized to other commercial space markets not analyzed in this research. In this report, the researchers describe their analysis and provide findings and recommendations for the DAF.

Since the advent of the space age, a primary constraint on military, commercial, and civil space missions has been the cost of launch. Launching objects into space requires substantial investments in launch systems and infrastructure, which has restricted the market to only a handful of national governments and several large private companies. This study explores the possibility of a space industry significantly less constrained by the cost of access to space.

The Department of Defense (DoD) is considering major investments in systems that exploit information to support warfighting, and communications between users around the globe will be key to transmitting and using this information. In the near term, there are not enough military systems to satisfy projected communications demand and commercial systems will have to be used. In the future, budgetary pressures will make it difficult for the services to satisfy the projected communications demand with dedicated military assets. This report seeks to answer several questions: 1) How much of the projected demand can be met with programmed and planned military assets?; 2) Can commercial technologies, systems, or services meet the remaining needs? How do commercial communication assets compare with military assets in their ability to meet criteria important to DoD? What steps might be taken to mitigate shortfalls?; 3) What is the expected cost of providing the projected communications demand?; and, 4) What investment strategies should DoD employ to minimize the expected cost? The many categories of military communications include everything from battlefield communications between mobile users to communications between fixed sites in rear areas. Some of these communications must be survivable in a nuclear war, and others need high levels of protection from detection, interception, or jamming. Some require verv high data rates, whereas others need only low data rates. Some communications can be by wire or fiber optic cable, whereas others must use wireless means. We have examined a specific category of communications-high bandwidth, minimally protected satellite communications. This category of military demand represents roughly half of the projected military satellite capacity needs. To the extent that use of commercial systems can satisfy this need, military systems can be used for more specialized communications needing a greater level of control over their operation.

This book examines the drivers behind great power security competition in space to determine whether realistic strategic alternatives exist to further militarization. Space is an area of increasing economic and military competition. This book offers an analysis of actions and events indicative of a growing security dilemma in space, which is generating an intensifying arms race between the US, China, and Russia. It explores the dynamics behind a potential future war in space and investigates methods of preventing an arms race from an international relations theory and military-strategy standpoint. The book is divided into three parts: the first section offers a broad discussion of the applicability of international relations theory to current conditions in space; the second is a direct application of theory to the space environment to determine whether competition or cooperation is the optimal strategic choice; the third section focuses on testing the hypotheses against reality, by analyzing novel alternatives to three major categories of space systems. The volume concludes with a study of the practical limitations of applying a strategy centered on commercialization as a method of defusing the orbital security dilemma. This book will be of interest to students of space power, strategic studies, and international relations.

This report assesses military use of commercial wideband satellites by evaluating their effectiveness across several characteristics defined by the United States Space Command. The cost of buying or leasing commercial systems is then found and compared with the cost of buying military systems with commercial characteristics.