The U.S. Air Force has a Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) and the U.S. Space Force is considering creating their own equivalent CRAF. The CRAF was established by a joint agreement between the DoD and the Department of Commerce on December 15, 1951. It was created after the Berlin airlift when DoD realized there could be a need to supplement aircraft to support a major defense emergency. And as the Space domain becomes more commercial, the U.S. Space is considering creating this resource in hopes of being prepared for a future conflict instead of reacting to a future need that can not be met by military assets.
The Space System Command has been in talks with private companies about creating this program, with plans to call it the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR). Space System Command is responsible for procuring space hardware and services and creating a CASR that lines up with the work they do. The program will potentially include satellite manufacturers, launch vehicle operators, remote sensing companies, and other sectors of the space industry the government could need to mobilize during a crisis.
This goes in line with what Lt. Gen Michael Guetlein, head of Space System Command is pushing for, a collaboration between the military and the commercial space sector. He has been a proponent of using commercially available space products and services to fill national security needs and has directed his workforce to build ties with new space companies. Space Systems Command created a program called “Front Door” as an acquisition command’s one-stop shop for facilitating the connection between industry and potential Space Force customers. The program makes it easier to cut through the typical bureaucracy associated with supporting the federal government.
The idea to create CASR is also in line with the Biden administration’s “deterrence by resilience” goal, according to Aidan Poling in a recent paper published by the Atlantic Council. In addition, the conflict in Ukraine showed just how important Space resources are to those on the ground fighting. It isn’t hard to connect the dots to see how quickly space assets can become military assets. Besides the fact, military and commercial assets can all become targets no matter who owns them.
At the Commercial Space Transportation Conference, Chirag Parikh, executive secretary of the National Space Council said, “We’ve got to consider commercial capabilities and how they operate not just now but also in a time of crisis.”
The next step will be integrating government and private sector assets while there is support from the industry. Private companies have to make money and the government will need to make CASR financially attractive for the industry to get companies on board.
Space hasn’t been looked at as a military asset. But the world is changing. For the partnership to work, the military needs to communicate not only its expectations but also the risks. Commercial systems could soon find themselves under attack and the U.S. Space Force wants to collectively tackle that problem now – not later.
There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered before the CASR can be created. More than just figuring out the financial incentive for industry players, they also have to determine what missions actually would need to be rapidly augmented by commercial capabilities during a crisis or war – from satellite communication (this area is already primarily provided by commercial providers) to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, to launch.
