Space Force reveals first 6 ‘operational’ contracts for civil reserve support in space monitoring

WASHINGTON — The Space Force has awarded what the service calls the first “operational” contracts under its still-nascent Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) initiative to six space monitoring firms, Space Systems Command (SSC) announced.

The contracts are short term and designed to test military demand while the command’s Commercial Space Office (COMSO) continues to wrestle with thorny legal issues that have bedeviled the program from its launch in 2023.

The six new contracts — issued to Australian firm EOS Space Systems, Canada’s NorthStar Earth and Space, InTrack Radar, Anduril (via its acquisition of ExoAnalytic), Slingshot Aerospace, and LeoLabs — are worth a total of $1.37 million, an SSC spokesperson told Breaking Defense.

CASR is the Space Force’s planned version of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) for leveraging commercial airlines to support military logistics operations when needed, managed by US Transportation Command (TRANSCOM). The concept is that commercial space firms could be called upon in wartime to surge delivery of satellite-derived capabilities.

According to SSC’s Thursday press release, the contracts were let through the “General Services Administration contract framework” used by the Joint Commercial Operations cell to buy commercial data and services. Industry sources who have received similar contracts from the JCO cell have said they tend to run for no more than six months.

The new contracts follow COMSO’s March 2025 award of $1.1 million in three-month pilot contracts to four unnamed companies, first reported by Breaking Defense. Those awards were designed to test out the contracting processes and the CASR framework agreement for interested firms, rather than provide operational data.

According to reports by Air & Space Forces Magazine and Space News, COMSO head Col. Tim Tremillo told reporters during the annual Space Industry Days conference held Oct. 19-22 in Los Angeles that the initial operational awards were meant to provide a short-term boost in space domain awareness data, with the idea that these initial contracts would allow the service to judge military demand. He also made it clear that he expects the CASR program to expand both to more companies and more mission areas.

However, given the small dollar values and short contract duration of the new contracts, it is hard to see how companies will be enticed to join up, said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It will be hard for companies to build capacity and capability at scale for use during a crisis if they aren’t paid to do so today. Companies otherwise will not make investments for infrastructure that sits unused and idle, ready for on-demand use, if they are not compensated to build and also maintain that surge capability. Companies do not build extra capacity for sport—it costs money,” he told Breaking Defense today.

Meanwhile, COMSO has yet to develop contractual arrangements that deal with key legal and financial issues that are critical to enticing commercial space companies to join CASR.

The first issue revolves around when and if the US government will have the right to turn off a CASR partner’s services to other customers during a conflict ― a power often referred to as “shutter control.” Companies worry that they could be accused of breach of contract by existing customers if that right were exercised by Washington, and that potential customers (particularly foreign governments) will be scared off.

The second outstanding issue is the question of whether the Pentagon will be willing to indemnify partner firms against financial losses whose satellites are damaged or destroyed during a conflict.