Earlier this month, the United States Air Force announced that it was going to be formalizing and extending the Commercial Integration Cell (CIC) in the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC). The
CIC is an intentional space within the JSpOC for industry experts from some of the country’s largest satellite providers that enables military and industry to work together to help increase situational awareness in space and improve mission assurance.

Originally started as a pilot program, the CIC has been successful in bringing together space entities from the public and private sector, and working to help reduce or eliminate instances of interference and other issues. In fact, in a recent interview with Via Satellite, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Brian Brown, deputy commander at JFCC Space, was asked just how frequently military and industry at the JSpOC have worked together to overcome these challenges, and he replied:

“Almost everyday, just based on how different networks and things are set up in the satellite communications environment, we deal quite often with RF interference. With our commercial partners we were able to help smooth that process through, help understand how communications will work between us and them, and how they can help us understand that environment and mitigate those things. We frequently observe inadvertent interference, which the CIC helps us work through…”

For additional information on why the CIC was introduced, the benefits that it’s delivered to the military and the reasons why it was formalized, we sat down with two satellite experts that have recently returned from a trip to the JSpOC – Todd Gossett and Jeff Rowlison. Todd is the Senior Director of Hosted Payloads at satellite provider, SES Space and Defense. Jeff is the Vice President of Government Affairs, also with SES Space and Defense.

During our discussion, we asked Todd and Jeff why the JSpOC was created, why the CIC was introduced, what the CIC has accomplished and how they anticipate the role of the CIC will evolve into the future. Here is what they had to say: