AB Andrew Berglund On The Space Policy Show

“Businesses are not going to increase manufacturing capacity based on a kind of promise. Industry might hear a demand signal from the warfighter community, but it may be so divorced from the budget process and the acquisition process that the actual demand is years down the road. It's one thing for the government to say we want to buy more of your stuff, but a lot of that risk is front-loaded on industry to make those commitments today.”

The Space Policy Show · Policy · November 2026

Context

Andrew Berglund splits government interventions in the space supply chain into supply-side money and demand-side signals. On demand, he says industry needs a credible, budgeted order before it will build capacity.

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Transcript

The Space Policy Show Around 27:46 into the episode

Andrew Berglund

…that moves you further and further from where the commercial market is going, you have to be willing to pay for that. And you have to be willing to find a supplier, work closely with that supplier to ensure that you can sustain that technology, that you can sustain access to it over the long term.

Colleen Stover

…things, but also hitting on the idea of trusted, right? How can you trust the supplier, especially for national security things, missions and parts? So what other, Andrew, what other kinds of things is government doing to kind of try to help shore up the space industry in terms of supply chain?

Andrew Berglund

Yeah, so I think the simplest way to sort of bucket it is to think about what the policy interventions are on the supply side and what they are on the demand side. So on the supply side, we're trying to help firms either establish a production line, improve the quality of their product, maybe expand their product offerings. So that can be things like loan guarantees, purchase commitments, sort of the Defense Production Act type funding, the type of funding that comes through legislation with the CHIPS Act several years ago. What we're trying to do is, in part, buy down the cost of research and development and scaling production for companies so that they can supply more of what we want, right? So that's kind of the supply side case. On the demand side, it's pretty, you know, this is, I think, the one that gets industry really excited because they're like, just buy more of. Our stuff and we'll make more, right? Like the market can solve this problem. That is, you know, a big part of the story for what the Department of War is trying to do with acquisition transformation, with the creation of portfolio acquisition executives. You're trying to shorten the cycle between decision-making and funding, right? And put more of…

Colleen Stover

Interesting. Yeah, I like how you divided those to the supply and the demand side. Jackie, you want to add to some of that?

Jacklyn Buhrmann

Yeah, I think it's such an interesting problem because, you know, the space industry, government is such a huge consumer in that industry still. I mean, I know that commercial space is growing rapidly, but I think we're still in a place where a lot of applications and a lot of development is…

Colleen Stover

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about that? I mean, because I'm thinking they obviously have to navigate their own investors too, if they're going to be a true commercial company. Talk, do you have some more to say about maybe that kind of government as an anchor customer versus the kind of a…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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