A decade ago, the space technology company Stellar Exploration needed about three years to build, test and deliver a small satellite propulsion system. Today, the same system takes about a year. Increasingly, customers are requesting deliveries in half that time.
“That’s not reasonable, but people have no hesitation asking,” said CEO Tomas Svitek. “In the last year, there’s much more emphasis on speed.”
That push is reshaping how companies approach national security space work, where the ability to move quickly is eclipsing traditional priorities such as cost and, in some cases, even technical performance. Executives say meeting tighter timelines would be easier if customers scaled back extensive documentation requirements that are often written into contracts.
Government officials have begun to frame the shift in strategic terms.
“Speed is now a strategic requirement, not simply an efficiency goal,” Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, the U.S. Space Force chief of space operations, said in February at the Air Force Association Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado. “As technological advances compress decision timelines and reshape the character of warfare, the Space Force must align development timelines with operational demands.”
The urgency reflects mounting concern over threats to the satellites that underpin U.S. military operations and economic activity. Officials say adversaries are moving faster than the traditional pace of government acquisition.
“Space systems take years to develop and threats evolve within weeks or months,” William Adkins, National Reconnaissance Office principal deputy director, said in April at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. “Our adversaries are not waiting, and neither can we.”
To compete, “all of us must take advantage of disruptive technology faster than our competitors, whether for national security or economic security,” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said at the Space Symposium.
Spiral development
For the Space Systems Command’s Commercial Space Office (COMSO) this emphasis on pacing means “incentivizing speed, even at the risk of taking some regrets on the capability side,” Col. Tim Trimailo, COMSO director, said on SpaceNews’ Space Minds podcast.
It’s no longer enough for contractors to pledge speedy deliveries. When submitting proposals, companies must offer evidence to prove their proposed timelines are realistic.
“Show me the data behind a schedule that says, ‘I can move fast and I can deliver,’” Trimailo said. Evidence of capital expenditures to increase production capacity, for example, “can give you a leg up in winning those contracts.”
Price still matters. Technical capability is where the Space Force is willing to take more risks.
A policy of spiral development, which often begins with a minimum viable product and proceeds through frequent upgrades, is replacing the traditional approach, where government agencies only accepted satellites or sensors that met extensive technical requirements.
If the next iteration of a capability will be delivered shortly, “I don’t have to get to 100%” of “what I would call lower-level or nice-to-have requirements,” Trimailo said.
Mindset shift
Industry executives at the Space Symposium said they welcomed the renewed emphasis on speed. The shift extends beyond military space to NASA, where Administrator Jared Isaacman restructured the Artemis program to increase the cadence of lunar flights.
Isaacman is telling contractors to share ideas for technology that will deliver 80 or 90% of NASA requirements if it would cut delivery time in half.
“We’re working here with our teams. We want to go faster, but it is a bit of a mindset shift to say, ‘you don’t necessarily have to meet every single requirement,’” Kristin Houston, the president of L3Harris space propulsion and power systems, told reporters.
“Speed is good for everybody. Speed reduces the cost of the program. Speed gets that capability on orbit faster,” said Jeff Hanke, L3Harris’ space systems president.
To accelerate technology development and manufacturing, companies are investing independent research and development dollars. Still, government contracting remains time-consuming.
“The government has to go through their process quicker and make sure you get on a contract quicker,” Hanke said.
Artificial intelligence
AI tools also are helping companies accelerate space system design, development and production. Arcfield relies on AI tools to speed up model-based systems engineering.
“Where we can apply AI and pick up an additional pace, let one person do the work of 10 people, that’s a huge force multiplier and it increases our speed,” Arcfield CEO Kevin Kelly said on the Space Minds podcast.
One of Arcfield’s AI tools “ingests specifications, all the documentation for legacy systems, and produces a digital model of the legacy systems and of current systems,” Kelly said. “It saves us thousands of hours of work.”
Culture of compliance
In speeches delivered at contractor facilities across the country, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon “will eliminate unnecessary technical standards and compliance requirements that add little or no value to fielding lethal capabilities” as a way to accelerate the pace of acquisition.
At the Space Symposium’s space law and regulation track, speakers said they welcomed that approach and were eager for guidance on the new rules.
“We’re certainly hoping for more in the way of clarity on our obligations so we can be efficient and make sure we’re helping our teams get to those mission-focus goals,” said Janna Lewis, Astroscale US senior vice president of policy and general counsel.
For instance, contractors were notified in 2025 when the Trump Administration removed affirmative-action requirements from federal contracts.
“We as a company looked at that and said, ‘we can stop requiring our suppliers to certify compliance to those regulations,’” Kelly Garehime, Sierra Space general counsel and chief ethics officer, said on a Space Symposium space law and regulation panel.
Will the Pentagon now loosen or scrap rules related to cybersecurity, mission assurance, safety or data protection?
“We’re going to have to review the compliance requirements with our customers and make sure that we’re getting formal notification,” Garehime said, either through contract letters or Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreements.
Contracting officers could, for example, issue letters or OTAs to remove specific Federal Acquisition Regulation and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation clauses from contracts.
“We can’t be left as a company to pick and choose” among compliance obligations, Garehime added. “There’s real opportunity here to work hand-in-hand with the customer.”
This article first appeared in the May 2026 issue of SpaceNews Magazine with the title “Racing to deliver.”
