$1.37M across six firms: Space Force makes first operational commercial reserve awards for space tracking

The money: how much is CASR paying?

An SSC spokesperson put the total for all six contracts at $1.37 million ^[1]. SSC let them through the “General Services Administration contract framework” the Joint Commercial Operations (JCO) cell uses to buy commercial data and services ^[1]. Via Satellite reported that the six are purchase agreements under the ACCESS contract within that framework ^[3]. Industry sources who have held similar JCO contracts told Breaking Defense those tend to run no more than six months ^[1]. Col. Tim Trimailo, director of SSC’s Commercial Space Office (COMSO), described the initial values as fairly low, without disclosing them, and said the service will look at adjusting funding as it learns how much demand combatant commands have ^[2].

The scale is close to the pilot’s. In March 2025 the Space Force paid four companies it did not name a combined $1.1 million for 90-day contracts ^[4]. The service requested $7.5 million for CASR in fiscal 2026 to fund contracts with up to 10 companies ^[4].

The program is a rounding error next to the service’s topline. Via Satellite reported a Space Force request for fiscal 2027 of more than $71 billion, against about $32 billion enacted for fiscal 2026 ^[3]. Within that, the service asked for $37 million for commercial services in fiscal 2026 and about $24 million in fiscal 2027 ^[3].

What do the FY2027 NDAA bills do for commercial space tracking?

Neither defense authorization bill names CASR. Both carry the research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) line for Space Domain Awareness/Planning/Tasking Software (program element 1208248SF), requested at $617.1 million ^[6, 7]. The House-passed H.R. 8800 raises it to $631.1 million, including a $9 million increase labeled “Expanded Commercial Space Domain Awareness” and $5 million for a space command and control software pilot ^[6]. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s S. 4784 authorizes the line at the request ^[7]. Across all Space Force RDT&E, the House bill authorizes $38.172 billion and the Senate committee $37.260 billion, against a $38.373 billion request ^[6, 7].

The programs: who won the first CASR contracts?

The six firms are EOS Space Systems of Australia, NorthStar Earth and Space of Canada, InTrack Radar, Anduril (through its acquisition of ExoAnalytic), Slingshot Aerospace and LeoLabs ^[1, 2]. All of them already work with the JCO cell, the Space Force hub that integrates commercial space data and services and shares them with partners, Lt. Col. Brandon Galindo told reporters at AFCEA’s Space Industry Days on Oct. 21 ^[2].

That selection logic is plain in what officials said. “What we heard from the operational community is that … if something were to happen on orbit, debris or some breakup scenario, these are the companies on the commercial side that we would really depend upon,” Galindo said ^[2]. In its announcement, SSC said the awards “establish CASR’s initial SDA surge capability in support of Joint Commercial Operations (JCO),” and that participating providers “will furnish agreed-upon SDA capabilities” when demand rises ^[3]. Trimailo called CASR “a first-of-its-kind effort for the Space Force to integrate mature commercial space capabilities into government architectures when mission needs require additional capacity” ^[3].

For companies outside the first six, Trimailo said the cohort is open. “This is not a chalk line that we’ve snapped that says you can never get into CASR for the space domain awareness mission,” he said, adding, “It’s a living program” ^[2]. Galindo said terms and strategies will vary by company and by mission. “It’s not cookie cutter,” he said ^[2].

How we got here

The Space Force introduced the reserve in 2022 as a space version of the Air Force’s Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which leases airline capacity for military use in a crisis ^[4]. Then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall approved COMSO’s plan in 2023 ^[5]. In November 2024, Gen. Michael Guetlein, then vice chief of space operations, laid out the contract count: “we hope to have our first five contracts in ’25 and then another 15 contracts or so in ’26” ^[5].

What the service ran in 2025 was a pilot. It concluded in July 2025 after a wargame in Colorado Springs, and the program office said in December 2025 it was moving into a “scaling operations” phase, with a solicitation for a first cohort expected early in 2026 and all Phase 2 contracts to be awarded by the end of the year ^[4]. Each mission area is meant to pass through three stages: pilot, scaling and mature operations ^[4]. Topline Report’s earlier coverage of government-owned space tracking, the DARC Site 2 brief, shows the other half of that SDA architecture.

The politics

Criticism has centered on money and contract terms. Via Satellite reported that legislators have criticized the Space Force’s relatively small budgets for commercial services, including CASR ^[3]. Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Breaking Defense it is hard to see how the small, short awards will draw companies in ^[1]. “It will be hard for companies to build capacity and capability at scale for use during a crisis if they aren’t paid to do so today,” he said. “Companies do not build extra capacity for sport” ^[1].

Two issues remain open. The first is “shutter control,” whether and when Washington could order a CASR partner to cut off service to other customers during a conflict; companies worry about breach-of-contract claims from existing customers and about scaring off foreign governments ^[1]. Air & Space Forces Magazine described the same idea as a possible “denial of service” order ^[4]. The second is indemnification for firms whose satellites are damaged or destroyed in a conflict ^[1]. In 2024 a Space Force official said the service was “looking into potential wartime insurance” with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and expected that to be a policy decision ^[5]. The program office said in December 2025 that “CASR mature operations will require more complex aspects of the program that may require congressional, interagency, and/or intergovernmental support” ^[4].

Congress has touched the edges. Section 1607 of H.R. 8800 orders SSC, with Indo-Pacific Command, to study commercially owned satellite ground nodes in the Indo-Pacific, including host-nation rules and diplomatic pressures that could force a commercial operator to stop supporting U.S. military operations; the report is due 180 days after enactment ^[6]. Section 1605 directs the Air Force Secretary, acting through COMSO and subject to appropriations, to buy commercial space-based data for Northern Command’s wildfire mission ^[6].

Next milestone: when could CASR grow?

The near-term limit is the stopgap. The Defense Department is operating under H.R. 6500, which continues fiscal 2026 rates and expires Dec. 11, 2026, unless full-year appropriations come first ^[8]. Section 102 bars funds for any program element or project that had no fiscal 2026 money and for production rate increases ^[8]. The same clause is already holding up an Army award, as described in the HADES brief. Any CASR spending above the fiscal 2026 rate waits on a full-year bill or a specific exception in a new stopgap.

Beyond funding, COMSO is weighing the next mission area. Officials named commercial satellite communications, launch, and telemetry, tracking and command, which would draw on the Space Force’s Joint Antenna Marketplace ^[2]. The program office has said each new mission will start with a pilot built on the SDA blueprint ^[4]. With the six SDA agreements in place and roughly two months left in 2026, the service has not said how many more contracts it plans this year or when it will settle the shutter control and indemnification terms.