Former Pentagon official-turned-industry advocate Charles Beames warns of China's big push into small satellites
China's heavy investment in smaller, cheaper satellites threatens to snuff out the burgeoning American market and leaves the Pentagon no homegrown industry to buy from, warns the chairman of the SmallSat Alliance, an industry group that advocates for companies that build and launch small satellites.
“The senior people [at the Defense Department] … all now have bought in. I think they get it,” said Beames, who previously served as the president of Vulcan Aerospace, a precursor to Stratolaunch, which hopes to launch rockets from the world's largest airplane. “But you look at the money that’s actually going this way, it’s tiny compared to what the Chinese are doing.”
Most of our time is on the Hill, but we also … have a background in defense and in the intelligence community, so we hit them all.I curate membership a lot because they really need to be on board with this vision I articulated. So for example, the big companies some of whom see us as a threat, they’d love to be members, but they’re not welcome.
The reason why it’s of concern to us, and the reason why I think they are very focused on it, is … whether everybody realizes it or not, this next generation of industry will be what the U.S. Defense Department relies upon for a good part of its defense work. If the Chinese strategy is to counter our new and growing small sat industry, it’s a great grand strategy frankly for curtailing the U.S. ability to maintain space superiority.
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