National Security Space: DOD Has Opportunities to Improve Its Use of Commercial Data and Related Services

A GAO report finds that DOD spent $76.8 million between January 2023 and September 2025 buying commercial space data and services through the Space Force's Global Data Marketplace, supporting missions like space domain awareness and tactical surveillance. The National Reconnaissance Office and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency made additional commercial purchases of imagery and analytic products.

The report's real finding is procedural: some Space Force officials cited licensing costs, unclear use restrictions and worries about long-term data access as reasons for hesitating to buy or use commercial data — problems GAO says could largely have been resolved by joining an existing monthly coordination working group they simply weren't part of, because information about it isn't widely available. JCO, which runs the group, told GAO it would be fine with people knowing it exists.

DOD agreed with GAO's recommendation to increase awareness of the working group, which is a notably modest fix for a national-security agency that apparently didn't tell relevant officials where the meeting was.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.