WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Defense announced Thursday the launch of the “Secure Space Network,” an initiative to deploy nearly 50 Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities — SCIFs — across the United States, in an effort to open classified work to smaller businesses that have struggled to clear the security bar for defense contracting. The technical reality, as ever, is exacting.
Per the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a SCIF is any “area, room, group of rooms, buildings, or installation certified and accredited as meeting Director of National Intelligence security standards for the processing, storage, and/or discussion of sensitive compartmented information.” The facilities are constructed to defeat physical forced entry, audio eavesdropping, and electronic spying. For many small firms, that construction standard is precisely the problem.
Building and maintaining a certified SCIF is costly and complex, and the expense has functioned as a quiet barrier to entry for companies that might otherwise bid on military work. The Secure Space Network is designed to lower that barrier by providing access to shared, accredited spaces rather than requiring each business to stand up its own. “We must make it easier for capable companies to contribute at every level of the mission,” said James R.
Mismash, Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Growth and Director of the Office of Small Business Programs, in a release.
“Industry has identified access to classified environments as a major barrier, and the Secure Space Network directly addresses that challenge by opening the door to classified work for more companies.” Mismash added that, with “strong partnership across the agency and support from Congress, this effort will strengthen our supplier base and help deliver the capabilities our warfighters need faster and at greater scale.” Under the hood, the design is built to scale.
The initial production run will create a repeatable capability to expand secure facilities as requirements grow, and the architecture includes scalable production capacity to “surge” capability for rapidly increasing accredited security workspaces. The effort is led by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment’s Office of Industrial Base Growth. Facilities may be placed at military installations, industry-focused locations such as APEX Accelerators, and other “mission-relevant” sites.
The department’s release did not specify the size of each SCIF, the program’s budget, or a timeline for deployment — the detail that matters, as ever, will be in the delivery. The initiative forms part of broader efforts to strengthen the defense industrial base and streamline processes for companies of all sizes, with the near-term question being how quickly the first tranche of secure space comes online and which small suppliers get through the door first.
