AMOS 2025 — The Space Force’s Joint Commercial Operations (JCO) cell is in the midst of a reorganization designed to enable routine integration of space domain awareness (SDA) data and analysis from commercial operators into day-to-day military operations — not just at US Space Command, but across all the Combatant Commands.

“We are in the middle of a a discussion about where the long-term stabilization of something that fully integrates acquisitions, tactical acquisitions, and integrates into existing operations across 11 combatant commands goes,” JCO Director Barbara Golf told Breaking Defense Tuesday at the annual Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS) conference in Hawaii.

“We are looking at a new organizational construct, underneath SpOC [Space Operations Command], which is now going to be Combat Forces Command, for the integration into existing operations,” she said.

The move will in essence transform the JCO, located at Schriever SFB, Colo., from what has been for many years a test bed for figuring out to share unclassified SDA data to and from commercial providers into an “enduring construct” with bureaucratic staying power, she explained.

While not yet fully conceptualized, the plan is to set up methodologies for JCO to serve as a conduit for transmitting commercial, and eventually allied, SDA information to operators at the far-flung US Combatant Commands. The new JCO would function as “a data provider and analytical services provider,” Golf said.

The reorganization will have two parts: one aimed at enabling warfighters to use commercial SDA and the other aimed at acquiring commercial data and products that meet their needs.

Commercial SDA services would be provisioned by the JCO to the Combatant Commands via the Space Force’s operational deltas (the equivalent of Air Force wings) and the service’s components that function as liaison units to the Combatant Commands.

“Think of it like mission support, like an IT office, right? It’s not a separate operation. It’s a support function to other operations,” Golf said.

Commercial SDA data acquired by the JCO is put into the Unified Data Library — which up to now has essentially been a static data library that did not directly interface with any space monitoring and tracking operations. The Space Force in March kicked off a fast-track plan to update the UDL to enable machine-to-machine interfaces with operational systems.

Golf said that at the moment, the ease of sharing data from the UDL to various Space Force deltas is on a case-by-case basis, depending on how modern their software systems are.

For example, she said that integrating UDL-housed data about interference with GPS into the “common operating picture” for Mission Delta 31, which is responsible for positioning, navigation and timing, took “less than a year” because that delta “lives on modern infrastructure.”

“We changed the data format to match what they were using. We ran a code upgrade at unclassified. We are porting the containerized code up to secret and top secret,” Golf said.

On the other hand, integrating commercial data into that gathered by US military sensors for use of Mission Delta 2 — which actually is responsible for the SDA mission of keeping tabs on enemy satellites — has been more difficult, she said. This is in large part because that delta also is responsible for legacy sensors that provide missile warning.

“It’s a little bit more difficult to make things legacy, backward compatible into a system that is so tightly controlled for missile warning upgrades — correctly, since you don’t want to be screwing up with missile warning and those sorts of defense systems easily. So, that one has been taking a lot longer,” she said.

Golf stressed that the JCO reorganization isn’t about operational activities alone, however. SpOC is responsible only for organizing and training for the Space Force, not equipping Guardians with kit, she explained. The new JCO also will need to figure out how to link back to the service’s main acquisition command, Space Systems Command (SSC), where Golf currently hangs her hat, in order to acquire the commercial data and analytical products needed buy the warfighters.

“The special sauce of getting commercial to work is the acquisition tradecraft, the fast acquisition tradecraft, that we have created under the JCO … and that needs to get plugged in as well so that there is an SSC portion … of acquisitions to this new organization,” she said.

“We aren’t done yet, so I can’t actually draw you the final chart, but it will be tied to those two field commands, … where you have the acquisition element and the mission support element across all the operations,” she added.

Golf explained that on the acquisition side, the JCO model is based on “short duration, competitive, constant on-boarding,” where contracts with commercial firms — such as Leolabs, Exoanalytic, Slingshot and COMSPOC — are made only for a four- to six-week period.

This rapid turnover, she said, is necessary to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation, but also evolving military requirements.

“No one ever gets to rest on their laurels. I think that one of the key pieces is that, and I know industry can’t stand it. Quite frankly, I don’t care,” Golf said. “You’ve got to remain hungry.”