WASHINGTON — The Space Force has awarded what the service calls the first “operational” contracts under its still-nascent Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) initiative to six space monitoring firms, Space Systems Command (SSC) announced. The contracts are short term and designed to test military demand while the command’s Commercial Space Office (COMSO) continues to wrestle with thorny legal issues that have bedeviled the program from its launch in 2023. The six new contracts — issued to Australian firm EOS Space Systems, Canada’s NorthStar Earth and Space, InTrack Radar, Anduril (via its acquisition of ExoAnalytic), Slingshot Aerospace, and LeoLabs — are worth a total of $1.37 million, an SSC spokesperson told Breaking Defense. CASR is the Space Force’s planned version of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) for leveraging commercial airlines to support military logistics operations when needed, managed by US Transportation Command (TRANSCOM). The concept is that commercial space firms could be called upon in wartime to surge delivery of satellite-derived capabilities. According to SSC’s Thursday press release, the contracts were let through the “General Services Administration contract framework” used by the Joint Commercial Operations cell to buy commercial data and services. Industry sources who have received similar contracts from the JCO cell have said they tend to run for no more than six months. https://breakingdefense.com/2026/10/space-force-reveals-first-6-operational-contracts-for-civil-reserve-support-in-space-monitoring/