On Point: Q&A With Dave Sterling

What is the biggest challenge that the Defense Department and the intelligence community face in taking advantage of commercial satellite data?
The biggest challenge is meeting the overwhelming demand for collection and having enough resource (budget) to put against that, especially during a period of continuing resolution. For nonbudgetary challenges, the biggest issue is empowering end users— military or military partners—to task commercial data, imagery, at speed to meet dynamic mission requirements. Currently, many commercial systems exist, but few government off-the-shelf systems are in place to process large amounts of commercial imaging and radio frequency data at scale: artificial intelligence and machine learning-driven compute vs. people manually interrogating data.

According to reports, Russia obtained Starlink data to fight Ukraine. Is this a one-time issue or a major challenge for the future?
It will be a major challenge. Hardware and data that is commercial implies that anyone can buy it. The real key is how our U.S. commercial space companies protect their space-based collection capabilities used for U.S. military and friendly partners. The challenge with commercial is there is a lot of exposure to how space-based tech is operating and more than one provider exists. For the example of Starlink, there are several other foreign companies that provide space-based communications. In a sense, the playing field is being leveled with commercial space, creating a new challenge for how to protect U.S.-based companies, their capabilities, and worst yet, their intellectual property from being procured or stolen by foreign near-peer threats.   

What changes would you recommend for more effective use of commercial satellite data?
Everything needs to revolve around speed and promote low latency. Industry today is working closely with our partners to promote commercial, not as an additive resource to support missions, but an imperative. As this shift from commercial space data as a “nice to have” transitions to a premier data source, industry is also increasing the speed to task data collection and relay that information to
ground to support decision-making faster than ever.

How will emerging technologies affect commercial satellite data?
Space-to-space communication supported with the proliferation of laser-based communications is going to greatly support targeting, monitoring and actioning over the horizon threats in a potential kinetic conflict, particularly in denied areas.

Where does your company see areas for growth?
As a company, we see immediate promise by demonstrating how space-based commercial collection capability can be tasked and processed at mission speed to support the warfighter. More importantly, this data, which is purely unclassified, provides immediate information-sharing opportunities for coalition building in operating environments.