The White House National Space Council’s users advisory group held its inaugural meeting on Thursday to discuss options for how the Department of Defense can better use commercial space services, Breaking Defense reported.
Gen. David Thompson, vice chief of space operations at the U.S. Space Force, said the service branch considers the use of the commercial sector in two ways and one is supporting its missions and operations through the direct use of commercial space services and the second is adapting the approaches and technologies coming from the sector.
“The commercial sector is now also serving as an engine of innovation, and the technologies that they’re developing, the new and innovative operating concepts, the way they are thinking about space also spurs us on to think about, can we use those technologies and operating concepts … perhaps we can adapt them to some of the military roles and missions,” Thompson said.
Chirag Parikh, executive secretary of the National Space Council, talked about the emergence of new technologies and space applications and what ways it has blurred the lines between national security, commercial and civil space sectors.
“As we think about the Venn diagram of space, we think about it in the three sectors, civil, commercial and national security. And what’s interesting about that Venn diagram … of civil, commercial, and national security is becoming more and more overlapped,” he noted.
“And a real reason for that is actually … the value that commercial space services are providing to the economy, it’s providing to our civil capacity, and it’s providing to our national security capacity,” Parikh added.
