It is my great pleasure to present another issue of The Wright Flyer Papers. Through this series, Air Command and Staff College presents a sampling of exemplary research produced by our residence and distance- learning students. This series has long showcased the kind of visionary thinking that drove the aspirations and activities of the earliest aviation pioneers. This year’s selection of essays admirably extends that tradition. As the series title indicates, these papers aim to present cuttingedge, actionable knowledge—research that addresses some of the most complex security and defense challenges facing us today.

Recently, The Wright Flyer Papers transitioned...

The Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), the acquisition arm for Air Force Space Command (AFSPC), is tasked to deliver “resilient and affordable space capabilities.”¹ During a 17 January 2012 interview, AFSPC commander Gen William Shelton outlined a fundamental shift in how AFSPC/SMC should accomplish its mission: “We are changing direction. In terms of the overall capability it is much the same . . . but how we achieve that capability is going to be fundamentally different.”²

One of the “different” approaches General Shelton and SMC would like to leverage is commercially hosted military payloads (CHMP). CHMPs significantly depart from...

It is helpful to understand the characteristics of the commercial satellite industry and CHMPs. This section reviews the key participants likely to be involved in a CHMP contract, provides insight on how the commercial satellite industry manages procurements, and discusses how these practices could benefit SMC. Examples of previous payloads hosted on commercial satellites are also provided.

A 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on telecommunications in the fixed satellite services industry provides the following definition of hosted payloads: “A hosted payload allows users, such as the government, to add transponders or other equipment to a commercial satellite already scheduled...

Since SMC has awarded only one CHMP, it could be reasoned that few other organizations have leveraged commercial hosting of payloads. Perhaps hosting a payload on commercial satellites is too technically complex or there are not enough opportunities. Yet table 2 illustrates that numerous commercially hosted payload solutions have been implemented by a wide range of entities, foreign and domestic, private and government, from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the ADF. There also appear to be many opportunities to find suitable commercial hosts for military payloads. General Pawlikowski stated that there are approximately 80 commercial satellites forecasted...

Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, but in the same speech, he also stated that “it is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system.”⁵⁹ Molding, balancing, and instituting change in government bureaucracies can be challenging. However, there is no shortage of senior leader CHMP champions up for the challenge. These leaders have pushed their workforce to find ways to implement CHMP solutions. It starts from the top; Pres. Barack Obama stated in the National Space Policy that the government should explore hosting...

Senior leaders have articulated their desire to leverage CHMPs. The commercial satellite industry indicates that it would like to see the government utilize the available space on the industry’s satellites to host military payloads. Yet only one CHMP has been awarded by SMC. There are numerous commercial satellites scheduled to launch over the next five years, but there are also numerous challenges which make implementing a CHMP solution difficult. The streamlined acquisition culture the commercial satellite industry operates in—firm-fixed-priced non developmental contracts are conceived and awarded, with the satellites in orbit in less than four years—is what attracts...