Defense & Intelligence Policy, Business and Technology

The Military Race for Space Will Turn on the Ability to Choose Commercial Services

NextGov: The Pentagon’s drive to better harness orbital capabilities for missile defense, desert firefights, and everything in between is running “headlong into an acquisition process that doesn’t allow you to get there until the late 2020s,” retired Gen. Robert Kehler, a former commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told lawmakers Wednesday.

Current and former defense department officials have said that China and Russia may soon gain advantage over the United States in space communication — not for lack of technology but because of its overabundance, the Pentagon’s slow acquisition process, and the military’s inability to figure out what services it should be buying from commercial providers instead of making them itself.

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