COLORADO SPRINGS — An executive order issued April 9 by the Trump administration — which instructs the Pentagon to prioritize commercial technologies in its acquisition strategy — validates the U.S. Space Force’s ongoing efforts to harness private-sector space technologies, a service official said April 10.
Col. Richard Kniseley, head of the Commercial Space Office (COMSO) within the Space Force’s Space Systems Command, described the directive as “an exclamation point” on initiatives already underway to modernize how the Pentagon procures space-based capabilities.
“We’ve done so much of a grassroots effort in COMSO … showing how amazing the commercial capabilities are,” Kniseley told reporters at the Space Symposium.
The executive order, titled “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base,” aims to reform the Department of Defense’s procurement processes by prioritizing commercial products and streamlining defense acquisitions.
Bridging commercial and military
COMSO operates within the Space Force’s procurement organization, the Space Systems Command (SSC). While traditional defense contracting processes handle much of the military’s space hardware acquisitions, SSC adopted a new approach several years ago with the mantra: “Exploit what we have, buy what we can and build only what we must.”
Established in 2023 to implement this strategy, COMSO oversees the Commercial Satellite Communications Office and SpaceWERX, the Space Force’s innovation arm that is part of the Department of the Air Force’s AFWERX. The office also manages programs like the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) and the Space Domain Awareness Marketplace, which aim to integrate private-sector technologies for tracking satellites and debris in orbit.
The Space Force a year algo also rolled out a commercial strategy to provide higher level guidance.
Kniseley noted growing interest across military combatant commands in commercial satellite services, including communications and target tracking. However, he highlighted that the Pentagon’s budget structure, which focuses on established “programs of record,” creates challenges in reallocating funding to nontraditional commercial services.
Congressional support
Congressional backing has been instrumental for COMSO’s initiatives, Kniseley said. Lawmakers inserted $50 million in the 2024 defense spending bill and $40 million in 2025 specifically for commercial space services.
“What that did was help make our commercial services program relevant,” he said.
He emphasized that efforts to expand commercial integration were well underway before the executive order. “Long before Trump’s executive order came out last night, there’s been a lot of work going on behind the scenes,” Kniseley said.
Late last year, the Space Force’s Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein and then-senior procurement executive Frank Calvelli — who departed at the end of the Biden administration — signed a directive requiring procurement executives to review their requirements and “look to see which ones of those can we move over to commercial, international, and what has to be purpose built.”
That analysis is ongoing, with a final report expected “in the next couple of months,” according to Kniseley. The findings “will probably have an influence on the budget going forward,” he added, explaining that part of the process involves vetting companies offering services of interest by examining “the investments that each of these companies have, the number of contracts they have, the capabilities that they’re bringing to bear.”
Resource requirements
Despite the push for commercial integration, Kniseley acknowledged that expanding the use of private-sector services will not happen overnight and will require additional resources.
“When I look at the executive order, I look at it more as an exclamation point on a lot of the things that we’re doing,” he said. “But it will require additional budget, it will also require additional resources, and that usually means people as well.”
He cited the need for contracting officers with expertise in commercial contracting vehicles. Kniseley added that defense committees in Congress “are very forward leaning with commercial and they’ve been very receptive to a lot of the things that we have asked them for.”
Expanding commercial services
The military’s interest in commercial space services extends across multiple domains. Key areas include satellite communications; high-resolution imagery and geospatial data analytics; space object tracking for threat identification; and commercial positioning, navigation, and timing solutions to complement GPS.
The Space Force is also exploring emerging commercial capabilities such as responsive launch services—the ability to rapidly deploy satellites or replace damaged assets through commercial providers. Other areas of interest include in-orbit servicing, debris removal, and satellite refueling, collectively referred to as space access, mobility, and logistics. Environmental monitoring represents another sector where commercial providers supply weather data and environmental insights used for military mission planning and operations.
