Even the once-vaunted National Reconnaissance Office, builder of Americas spy satellites, is having serious trouble managing the enormously complex and expensive satellite programs under its wing.
Ive confirmed that, for the second time since early March, the NRO has been stripped of Milestone Decision Authority on a program — the power to decide whether a program can progress from one stage of a program to the next stage. The program is so highly classified that we cant discuss its name or what it does. The confirmation came from a former senior intelligence official.
In early March I broke the story that the NRO had had decision authority withheld by senior intelligence and defense officials about a new program called BASIC, or Broad Area Satellite Imagery Collection. Questions were raised in the Pentagon, by industry and Congress about whether BASIC would violate the Bush Administrations national space policy directing the military and intelligence community to rely on commercial satellites for general mapping purposes. There were also serious concerns raised about whether the NRO could, on a broader basis, successfully execute the program.
At the time, DNI and NRO officials were careful to note that milestone decision authorities are reviewed every year for all intelligence agencies. But sources in the intelligence community made it clear to me then that the NRO has stumbled badly in recent years and needed the sort of close program supervision that the NSA and Air Force have been subject to for the last few years.
The Pentagon stripped the Air Force of decision authority for space and several other programs in March 2005 by Michael Wynne, who was then the Pentagon’s acting acquisition czar. That authority was restored for several non-space programs in January 2006 but the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technloogy and logistics, John Young, still retains that authority for unclassfied space programs.
– Colin Clark
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Someone please clarify how it’s a good idea to use commercial satellites for military and intelligence mapping. Do they use the same crypto modules as home-grown sats?
Commercial satellites cost much less to build than do those of the NRO. Their data can be distributed much more extensively — to allies and to troops on the front lines who may not have security clearances needed to see TS/SCI or higher classified data. And the formal policy of the US government is that we shall rely on commercial imagery as much as possible.
This policy sounded crazy to me also. Then I reconsidered. By using commercial satellites for general mapping duties they are freeing-up the truly expensive and specialized satellites to focus on intelligence.
NRO leaders have said for at least ten years that they must have a mix of satellites serving the country’s various needs, including commercial — and there are. Fact: NRO’s satellites are never able to fill all the requests received on any day. The current discussion revolves around how best to incorporate commercial satellites and under what rules will they operate.