Rendering of constellation of imaging satellites in low Earth orbit. Credit: BlackSky
By Sandra Erwin,
Published by Space News, 6 November 2025
The race to deliver intelligence faster is reshaping the commercial satellite industry — and the business models behind it.
At last week’s Milsat Symposium in Mountain View, California, executives from leading imaging firms said defense and national security customers are demanding not just more data, but smarter, more timely intelligence — and that’s forcing companies that were once competitors to start partnering in new ways.
Satellite data is abundant, but its utility depends on how fast it can be turned into strategic advantage, said Dan Katz, CEO and co-founder of Orbital Sidekick. That firm’s hyperspectral satellites recently revealed new damage to Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility following a U.S. strike in June.
Multimodal intelligence mandate
Katz said the industry’s next phase hinges on combining multiple types of data such as optical, radar and hyperspectral imagery — a shift toward “multimodal” intelligence that governments and commercial customers alike now expect. Energy, mining and agriculture companies want “end-to-end services that stream into workflows so people can take decisive action in moments,” he said.
“There’s no magic bullet,” Katz added. “Hyperspectral data is powerful, but we have to fuse it with everything else.”
Geospatial intelligence firms see key opportunities in Europe, where governments are rearming. “They’re looking hard at multimodal data to show dynamic movement — on the ground or even in space,” said Dan Smoot, CEO of Vantor (formerly Maxar Intelligence). “You’re seeing a major reinvention underway, both in governments and the commercial sector, about how to actually fuse data together.”
Artificial intelligence is accelerating the speed of intelligence delivery — but also raising questions about trust.
“If somebody wants to know where all the surface-to-air missiles are, they don’t want to manually evaluate data,” said Scot Curri, vice president of geospatial solutions at BlackSky. “They want high confidence that you detected each one.”
Some false positives are acceptable for certain non-sensitive use cases, Curri said. But at scale, automation is essential. “They don’t want analysts looking at hundreds of thousands of square kilometers.”
Teaming up for Luno and TacSRT
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Luno program is forcing traditional rivals to join forces. The multi-year procurement requires teams that merge data and analytics across modalities.
“For Luno, you have to work with partners — even competitors,” said Smoot. “We require each other’s data now to actually drive the solutions. It’s no longer just about selling pixels.”
That same collaborative model is shaping the Space Force’s Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking (TacSRT) initiative, which is driving innovation in sensor fusion. Vantor recently demonstrated multi-sensor tracking of drug cartel movements along the U.S. southern border, Smoot said. Curri said BlackSky and Iceye have run similar demos.
Bureaucracy vs. speed
Inside the U.S. government, however, the adoption of commercial models is slowed by fragmented procurement. NGA buys the analytics; the National Reconnaissance Office buys the raw imagery.
Historically, U.S. agencies have divided requirements by phenomenology: radar procurement over here, electro-optical over there, hyperspectral somewhere else. “And so it’s really difficult to bring all that together,” Curri explained. Other countries, he noted, lack this bureaucratic fragmentation which makes it easier to leverage commercially derived intelligence.
The bottom line
“There’s a lot of stress and strain in the geospatial industry, by nature, because it’s a complex business to procure, but there’s a lot of market opportunity when we work together,” Smoot said.
In an industry built on competition, executives agreed, speed and collaboration may now be the new high ground.
Wartime risk to satellites reshaping how the military procures space assets
Defense officials and satellite executives in recent years have been wrestling with a tough question: if commercial satellites are targeted in war, who eats the loss — the Pentagon or the private sector?
The U.S. Space Force thinks it may have found an answer.
Facing growing threats to spacecraft that support military missions, the service is turning to a “government-owned, commercially-operated” model — known as GOCO — to buy and manage future constellations. The approach lets the military tap private technology and talent while keeping the hardware under government ownership.
- Executives described the shift Oct. 29 at the MilSat Symposium, saying the model has gained traction as tensions in space rise and companies question how far they should go in supporting military operations.
- “What we’re seeing is that the government has been more open to government owned, commercially operated systems,” said Servando Cuellar, director of U.S. government programs at Astranis, a builder of geostationary communications satellites.
- The trend is being driven by warnings like Russia’s declaration that Western commercial satellites aiding Ukraine could be “legitimate military targets.” That statement rattled policymakers and investors, sparking a broader debate about how to safeguard commercial space infrastructure while maintaining military access to it.
- Cuellar said the GOCO structure gives the Pentagon “all the benefits of commercial, the operations, the innovation, the speed, the rapid deployment,” but shifts liability to the government. “Ultimately, that asset is owned by the government, and they bear the majority of that risk in a conflict situation,” he said.
The Space Force is already using the model for several programs. Its MILNET low Earth orbit broadband network will be government-owned but operated by SpaceX, which will handle day-to-day control and network management. Officials say this setup protects industry from wartime-related asset loss, market volatility and indemnification headaches — while giving the government more flexibility.
Other programs, including the Maneuverable Geosynchronous Orbit (MGEO) services and the Protected Tactical Satcom – Global (PTS-G) initiative, are following the same pattern.
Cuellar said the government’s priority in wartime is agility, such as being able to reposition and re-task satellites. GOCO systems allow commercial operators to separate military and civilian customers and “set up those contractual vehicles so that they have assured access to the system,” he said.
But the model doesn’t solve every problem.
Brad Bode, co-founder and chief technology officer of Atlas Space Operations, said the government’s acquisition culture still lags behind its rhetoric on using commercial systems. Agencies often demand add-ons that turn commercial products into bespoke builds. “One of the problems companies run into is that the government has not yet quite wrapped their head around how to use commercial in certain instances,” he said.
Still, executives believe dual-use technology — systems that serve both commercial and government markets — will dominate the next decade. “Dual use will increase quite a bit in the next 10–20 years,” Bode predicted.
Cuellar said Astranis has already shown that existing satellites can run military anti-jam waveforms with no hardware changes. “It’s really about using the same thing in a different manner versus trying to design something completely different.”
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