Geoffrey Carrigan, Bluestaq LLC; Seth Harvey, Bluestaq LLC
Keywords: Marketplace, Data, Data dissemination, ISR, Dynamic Tasking, Distribution, Contracting, Imaging, Data Integration, Optical Sensing, Space-based capture
Abstract:
The technology and innovation discussed at conferences around the world, just like AMOS, continue to highlight the groundbreaking advancements in research and capability development. Historically, the valley of death leaves eventual end-users of this technology waiting longer periods for higher technology readiness levels. In commercial environments, this creates the opportunity for the first mover advantage and can act as a great way to incentivize change. However, in a warfighting environment, this gap is harder to cross, with the restrictions and cumbersome acquisition regulations. Companies like Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, and others fill the gap between provider and consumer, with real-time connections, driving out the true costs of a product and allowing supply to match demand. Without this same market in the Department of Defense, the end user remains in the dark, overpays, or incurs unnecessary risk to operations by not having access to the right data at the right time to make life-or-death decisions. This presentation intends to demonstrate a marketplace for connecting providers to consumers for the government or military domain, providing unrivaled value, shortening the time between product creation and market availability, and putting the needed information into the right hands at the right time. As the new Chief of Space Operations continues to push for Space to own the Tactical ISR mission, the demand signal has never been stronger. By leveraging existing technologies such as the Unified Data Library (UDL) and the existence of fully documented Application Program Interfaces (APIs), this presentation will show the benefits of real-time accessibility to tactical level Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) through the existence of a Marketplace. The on-orbit capabilities of commercial providers continue to surge, showing the ability for private companies to do things previously only possible with government sponsorship. As the capabilities have grown, so has the demand from the end user, creating an amplifying feedback cycle that increases both supply and demand. As future advancements in shared ground stations and real-time tasking continue to grow, the only part that seems to be missing is the exchange layer between provider and consumer. The Space Domain Awareness (SDA) Marketplace is a capability which initially went into production in 2020, focused primarily on SDA data. The number of data products continues to grow, and the recent addition of Tactical ISR through multiple providers spikes that growth even more. A thorough assessment of the marketplace identified gaps and integrated providers to meet the end users’ needs with a timely, taskable, and tailored approach. Although the Marketplace brings providers and consumers together for the purchase of data, this topic is not a marketing pitch. One of the key aspects that makes the Marketplace function is that it remains an independent party in all purchases, without representing itself as a provider or consumer in any context. Instead, the Marketplace acts as the translation layer between commercial capabilities and government process, with the ability to act as an open platform using consumer funding, while also extending the same capability to government organizations. As this presentation shows, the ability to create an order, receive proposals, and execute the order speeds the rate of technology advancement by showing that a true market exists. This incentivizes commercial companies to provide data and satisfies the needs of operational customers who are currently starved for information. The Tactical ISR example is fitting, as it brings the capabilities of space back to some of the most relevant users, all while lowering the barrier to entry for both parties. Marketplaces allow for a wider range of data providers, giving users access to a larger data pool. This leads to improved data quality, as more providers means more diverse and accurate data. Additionally, marketplaces often offer data processing and analysis services, which can save users time and resources by providing pre-processed data that is ready to use. Finally, the use of a marketplace for tactical ISR data can benefit the end warfighter. By providing access to more diverse and accurate data, warfighters can make more informed decisions in the field. This can lead to more successful operations and fewer casualties. Additionally, the use of a marketplace can provide a more cost-effective solution for accessing data, which can free up resources for other critical areas of military operations. By leveraging the UDLs distribution architecture, this critical data can get to users at any location, and any classification level. This removes the burden from commercial data providers to work networking and integration, and instead focus solely on providing data. Likewise, the end user can feed existing tools and applications, without re-engineering the solution for each potential provider. Most importantly, tactical ISR is not possible without the ability to tactically acquire. The Marketplace allows for real-time acquisition of near real time data, bringing the data one step from it’s final resting place. To complete the last step and link space collection to tactical user, there needs to be a device capable of operating in an austere environment, potentially with intermittent communications, that can connect to the tools in use of the operational customer. This is where the Tactical UDL (T-UDL) comes into play. The T-UDL is a micro-sized version of the Cloud-based UDL, capable of synchronizing data to and from the Enterprise UDL and other T-UDLsextending the cloud to the Tactical Edge. Since the T-UDL has an identical software architecture as the Enterprise UDL, data synchronization is seamless to the user, has identical data controls, and has the portability needed for Tactical users. Combining T-UDL and Tactical ISR data through the Marketplace ensures a true end-to-end process for tactical operations. In conclusion, the use of a marketplace for tactical ISR data can provide numerous benefits to both data providers and end-users. This is especially relevant in the connection between space capabilities and military end users, where current capabilities are too far separated from the people who need them most. By leveraging the SDA Marketplace, this gap can be closed, providing future incentives for the commercial market to grow and current operational users the information they
Date of Conference: September 19-22, 2023
Track: Space Domain Awareness