{"id":91468,"date":"2026-10-29T23:46:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T15:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/the-pentagons-message-to-space-startups-show-us-something-that-works\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T23:46:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T15:46:20","slug":"the-pentagons-message-to-space-startups-show-us-something-that-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/the-pentagons-message-to-space-startups-show-us-something-that-works\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pentagon\u2019s Message to Space Startups: Show Us Something That Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Maj.
DIU\u2019s Maj. Gen. Steven \u201cBucky\u201d Butow (left) in conversation with Viasat Government\u2019s Fred Taylor at the MilSat Symposium. (Photo: SatNews)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three Pentagon officials took the MilSat Symposium stage at Silicon Valley Space Week on Wednesday afternoon. Each gave startups the same advice: bring something that works.<\/p>\n

Space Development Agency Director GP Sandhoo went first. Too many companies arrive with ideas rather than mature technology, he said, and the small-business research awards many of them live on rarely produce winners. In his \u201c30-some-odd years of having done this, it\u2019s probably single digits, the successes that come out of that,\u201d he said of SBIR and STTR programs. For many small companies, he added, those awards have become a lifeline.<\/p>\n

He pointed to early aviation and the auto industry. Those industries succeeded in spite of government funding, Sandhoo said. The successful ones build it, show it and then sell it. SDA\u2019s bar is lower than founders might expect: a \u201cC+, B-\u201d demonstration on one or two satellites can be good enough to buy a plane or a tranche.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not your customer\u201d<\/h2>\n

At the Defense Innovation Unit, 90% of contracts go to non-traditional companies, said Maj. Gen. Steven \u201cBucky\u201d Butow, senior adviser to DIU\u2019s director. But founders need to know where DIU sits. \u201cYou need to know who your customer is, and we\u2019re not your customer,\u201d he said. DIU prototypes and validates. The portfolio acquisition executives buy.<\/p>\n

To get companies across that gap, DIU\u2019s Bridge program offers firms on DIU contracts what Butow called concierge services for the usual walls: facility and personnel clearances, SCIF access and authority to operate on government networks.<\/p>\n

When he\u2019s involved in a company\u2019s first DIU effort, his first question is \u201cWhat\u2019s your path to revenue?\u201d The urgency is real, he said: \u201cRight now, when we don\u2019t have budgets, the people in this room are the people we\u2019re most concerned about, because you don\u2019t have a lot of runway.\u201d<\/p>\n

The clearance catch-22<\/h2>\n

Col. Tim Trimailo, director of the Commercial Space Office at Space Systems Command, described the Space Force\u2019s answer to the same wall in a fireside chat moderated by Milbank\u2019s Dara Panahy. Startups, he said, can\u2019t get a contract without a clearance and can\u2019t get a clearance without a contract.<\/p>\n

COMSO\u2019s ACES program (Access to the Classified Ecosystem for Space), announced last week and built on DARPA pathfinding work, starts that process earlier. When a program office needs a classified conversation with a company, COMSO can add security classification specifications to SBIR projects, use cooperative research agreements or no-cost contracts, and help with facility clearances. \u201cThis is not circumventing any existing processes,\u201d Trimailo said.<\/p>\n

The view from the startup side<\/h2>\n

Momentus Chairman and CEO John Rood, a former under secretary of defense for policy who has also worked at Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, described the other end of the table. SBIRs are \u201cinsufficient to run even a small business on,\u201d he said, though winning one competitively shows investors the idea has merit. The government system, he said, \u201cis really optimized for large contractors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe only have one kind of money. It\u2019s called cash,\u201d Rood said. \u201cEvery quarter is a survival quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews DIU\u2019s Maj. Gen. Steven \u201cBucky\u201d Butow (left) in conversation with Viasat Government\u2019s Fred Taylor at the MilSat Symposium. (Photo: SatNews) Three Pentagon officials took the MilSat Symposium stage at Silicon Valley Space Week on Wednesday afternoon. Each gave startups the same advice: bring something that works. Space Development Agency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91468"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}