By Chris Forrester
Randy Segal, Partner, Hogan Lovells kicked off her session (Government Funding Channels for the Space Defense Industry) at the Silicon Valley Space Week’s MilSat Symposium strand, with a Polling question, and asked what the government could additionally do to support delegate’s investment activity?
Jonathan Lusczakoski, Principal, AE Industrial Partners gave an example as the aircraft industry and that neither Boeing or Airbus did not make 50 or 100 aircraft and then pause and make another batch. “They have non-stop, ongoing production, and the satellite industry needs to do the same with continuous activity. Government could help with a level-loaded supply chain.”
Tom Gillespie, Managing Partner, In-Q-Tel, said that government awards were improving over the past year or so but there’s very little certainty as to when an award might be made. Improving this would make a difference but there’s more to be done. More cash should go to Tier 2 businesses.
Dr Timur Davis, Head of Transportation Sector, Munich RE Ventures said that government had stepped in and replaced to a certain extent the lack of funding from the commercial sector but still decision-making was opaque and that made life really challenging. Early start-up businesses need cash in the bank and were relying on these contracts but there’s still a way to go and we need to make these processes faster and more transparent.
Devin Brande, Director of Commercial Operations Grp, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) said he was fortunate at the NGA that today it had the great good fortune of being able to select from multiple sources but we should not take this for granted. He explained that the NGA was very much moving in the direction of faster decision making and tapping into the market-place for greater diversity and opportunity.
Ric Mommer, Commercial Engagement & Investor Relations, Space Portfolio at the Dept. of Defense, said commercial satellite communications was an easy example of dual use, for military and commercial, and there are opportunities to improve interoperability, for example. “In general, you have a very friendly consumer technology that provides tremendous value for our military and our allies. We are working to enable commercial capabilities to work between commercial providers to help the US government and to share information across our allies architecture.”