The U.S. has always provided economic, technological, and diplomatic leadership to promote freedom and democracy and to ensure a stable and peaceful world order. At this moment in history, when competitor nations and adversaries are seeking to shape the world order to benefit their interests, and are taking aggressive actions to expand their influence and control, it is essential that the U.S. continue to maintain its leadership position.
In the Space Domain, the U.S. seeks to maintain freedom of action as a critical national security need. Recognizing that adversaries are proliferating advanced electronic warfare, missiles, hypersonic vehicles, and anti-access/area denial capabilities to counter U.S. force projection, the U.S. national security space community must deploy asymmetric capabilities at scale and at speed to ensure freedom of action and ensure the ability to maintain long-term leadership as well as to rapidly win a conflict.
Razor’s Edge Ventures, a multi-stage venture capital firm that invests in technology companies solving significant challenges in national security and high-growth commercial markets, has founded BlackVe to address this challenge. BlackVe is a premier space systems firm enabling new asymmetric strategies so the U.S. can prevail in the multi-dimensional Space domain.
BlackVe’s Vision for rapid delivery of National Security Space capabilities is to achieve the entire deployment timeline, from design through engineering, integration, and testing, to launch and operations in months, not years.
We won’t know what we need until we need it. But when we need it, time matters. Days matter when lives are on the line.
BlackVe’s goal is to go from concept to operations in timelines measured in months, but the vision is less about the exact number and more about the ability to rapidly respond to future unknowns without being constrained by slow processes.
Our adversaries are rapidly deploying and testing aggressive space capabilities, and the US will need to innovative inside the adversaries’ innovation cycle time. Winning the cycle time competition is critical to deterring a future space conflict. What’s considered a best practice today is 24 months from declared need to prototype in a LEO orbit. We need to do far, far better, and to operate in any orbit. This is particularly important for National Security space capabilities, where early deployment can be a significant advantage, and rapid response to new developments or adversary actions can be critical. BlackVe executives have deep personal backgrounds in National Security space as well as extensive contacts with experts in the field.
BlackVe’s vision is an audacious one that will inspire and challenge us to innovate and develop new technologies and processes. This will ensure the US a leadership position in National Security space for the foreseeable future.
Experience from other industries has shown that a combination of technology and process improvements can transform traditional ways of working and can lead to dramatically reduced timeframes. In the software industry, companies routinely implement new capabilities in a manner of days whereas in the past, multi-year development schedules were common. In the medical field, vaccines can now be designed, developed, tested, and deployed within months, a process that previously took decades. Retailers have leveraged computers and data analysis to revamp their supply chains and logistics to maximize availability and revenue. Manufactures have used a focus on quality to achieve their goal of just-in-time production.
Innovative technologies, processes, and best practices were the key to success in these industries, and they will be the key to realizing BlackVe’s vision. The space industry today is at a juncture of technology, capital, commercial opportunities, geopolitical interests, communications, sensing, and computing technologies, and artificial intelligence advancements where all the ingredients necessary for rapid change are present. Commercial space firms are showcasing innovative approaches and technologies for the future. BlackVe will seek to leverage these developments.
BlackVe will deliver mission capabilities in a matter of months using innovative processes, new technologies for design and engineering, automation and artificial intelligence during the development, integration, and testing process, and significant new technological capabilities in operations.
We will do so in partnership with a wide array of organizations in industry and government. We have relationships with key suppliers and technology partners. We are part of the Razor’s Edge Ventures ecosystem which includes many firms that focus on national security issues, and we share technologies and processes with them.
Our people are among the most experienced space industry veterans, many of whom have significant government backgrounds as well.