WASHINGTON, September 12 — The Department of War has launched the Secure Space Network, an initiative to deploy roughly fifty mobile Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs) so that smaller suppliers and supply-chain firms can reach the classified contracting process. The program was announced last week and is led by the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment’s Office of Industrial Base Growth. The mobile facilities will sit at military installations, industry-focused sites including APEX Accelerators, and other mission-relevant locations, according to the Pentagon.
The department says the effort will enable more defense suppliers to take part in classified development, collaboration and production by broadening regional access to accredited secure workspaces.
The Catch-22 the network is meant to break
Large prime contractors are all but required to operate numerous permanent SCIFs, which can feature acoustic baffling, electronic surveillance countermeasures, reinforced physical barriers and strict entry controls. Building one is costly. Experts note that basic facility security adds a minimum of fifty dollars per square foot to the cost, while high-end facilities can run a thousand dollars or more per square foot over normal construction costs, as previously reported.
Federal agencies require a verified secure environment before awarding Top Secret or Sensitive Compartmented Information work. That can put smaller and enterprise contractors at a disadvantage and create a steep Catch-22: they cannot win classified work without a SCIF, but often cannot justify the multi-million-dollar cost of building one without first securing the work.
The Secure Space Network aims to address that barrier. “This effort will enable more defense suppliers to participate in classified development, collaboration, and production by broadening regional access to accredited secure workspaces,” the Pentagon explained.
Competition, and the industrial-base argument
It could also increase market competition and in turn speed up the delivery of critical defense capabilities by expanding the pool of companies able to transition from unclassified work into classified work. James R. Mismash, Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Growth and Director of the Office of Small Business Programs, said: “We must make it easier for capable companies to contribute at every level of the mission.
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.
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.” Although the program will provide the physical space, participating companies will still be required to independently obtain the necessary facility security clearances and meet government compliance standards to handle classified information. The network will provide the physical and technical workspace. The mobile secure facilities promise to be both scalable and rapidly deployable while still providing enduring secure collaboration capacity.
“Together, these capabilities will drastically expand where government and authorized industry partners can conduct classified work,” the department added, suggesting it will result in a larger and more capable supplier base. The initiative is designed to expand the pool of companies available to collaborate directly with government teams and compete for classified defense work.
What to watch next is whether the mobile SCIFs actually clear the accreditation pipeline at the pace the department implies, and whether the smaller firms the program is aimed at can carry the facility clearance overhead that the network does not cover.
