Both civilian agencies and America’s military utilize commercial satellite communications (COMSATCOM) services to help deliver mission-critical data and applications across the globe. Unfortunately, as we discussed in previous posts, the way the government has traditionally acquired and paid for these services is often less than optimal.
In both the civilian and defense communities, there has been a marked reliance on building government owned and operated satellite constellations for handling communications needs. Unfortunately, this reliance on “building it themselves” has made the government miss the cost efficiencies available through hosted payloads and other COMSATCOM services.
To learn more about the current method in which the federal government and military acquire and pay for COMSATCOM, we sat down with Jeff Rowlison, the Vice President of Government Affairs at SES Space and Defense and a frequent contributor on the GovSat Report.
During our conversation, Jeff discussed the different ways the military utilizes COMSATCOM, the process in which they acquire these services and the changes they need to make to the acquisition process if they’re going to more effectively and efficiently spend taxpayer dollars on COMSATCOM.
Here is what Jeff had to say:
For more ideas on how to positively impact the acquisition process for commercial satellite services across the federal government, read, “Seven Ways to Make the DoD a Better Buyer of Commercial SATCOM,” by clicking HERE.
