For decades its name could not be spoken outside of a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility or mentioned to someone without at least TS/SCI clearance.
It built wondrous satellites that did things like detecting missile launches from space that no one had believed possible until the National Reconnaissance Office did them.
But a string of failures, goofs and budget busters, combined with the increasing importance of intelligence gathered by air breathing assets such as Predator and Global Hawk drones, has led a prestigious commission of space experts to recommend that the NRO be merged with Space and Missile Systems Command to create something called the National Security Space Organization.
The recommendation is made by something called the Allard Commission, which was created by Congress last year. It is led by the national security space guru Tom Young, a former Lockheed Martine executive and the man who always seems to get the call to figure out how to fix space when things go wrong. Young has kept his panels recommendations under wraps but word began leaking out last week.
The plan would also lead to stripping the Air Force of its executive agent for space the person who serves the Office of Secretary of Defense as the lead on unclassified space acquisitions and transferring it to the new authority. This office will also have budget authority for all space programs.
This would include a combination of the NRO and SMC and other elements of Air Force Space Command to create a single National Security Space Command.
A veteran space intelligence expert, Bob Butterworth, rejected the Allard Commissions proposals, especially its efforts to integrate so-called black (NRO) and white (military) space. The effort to integrate is just misconceived, he said. People who even started out doing black-white integration mostly gave up after going through the first space based radar experience. Space Radar was an idea generated from the top of the Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon. It was supposed to provide the US with both moving target indication the ability to track trucks and tanks and highly refined strategic radar imagery of use to the intelligence community. The idea has foundered on the rocks of wildly differing requirements and enormous cost.
Integration exponents also argue that the space industrial base is largely shared between the two communities. Thus, integrating programs could save money and lessen the strain on the limited pool of engineers and other specialists needed to build satellites and their sensors.
That has not been documented. It is just hand waving as far as I can tell, Butterworth said.
For those watch these things closely, the Allard Commissions use of the NSSO name has caused considerable confusion in the rumor mill. Was the commission recommending dissolution of the NSSO, an office without budgetary authority that advises the Pentagons executive agent for space? No. It was suggesting creation of an entirely new organization.
Part of the NROs problem is that under current law no one really knows including congressional aides who help write the laws deciding this who is in charge of classified acquisition programs. This raises the question, who is in charge, and that is unanswerable, said a congressional aide. For background on some of this, see last weeks story on the BASIC program.
Does this mean the NRO will vanish? The name may change, the organization may be rebuilt but the functions wont disappear. More on this tomorrow.
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If you want to go black, please feel free. The rest of us like knowing state secrets :d
I’m glad to see someone else is discussing this; I posted about it on my blog and the Space Warfare Forum I moderate, but have only gotten e-mail replies so far.
Princeton Scotch wrote, “If unmanned aircraft can do the same thing less expensively with far greater persistence over targets, it seems the only place satellites help is over threat airspace in peacetime.”
They don’t do the same thing, but that’s a common misconception. It’s the difference between reconnaissance and surveillance — persistence over the target provides the latter, the ability to go beyond the range of other means provides the former. Putting the two together is possible, but it doesn’t optimize either one.
In the post below, I mistakenly attributed Cole’s statement to Princeton Scotch. My apologies.
Understand what you guys are saying. I had also read the U-2 article earlier which cued and reminded me that a stealthy UAS could handle most of the jobs currently handled by more costly satellites. Googling: “unmanned aircraft versus satellites” produces some interesting ideas for alternatives that are apparently already being considered by DARPA.
I can envision a B-2 or 2018 unmanned B-3 delivering persistent smaller UAS over a broad range of target areas flying well above 65,000′. Some might be stealthy smaller UAS. Others could be non-stealthy endurance UAS when the threat nation lacks air defenses capable of engaging the UAS. These UAS could carry either sensor-only or lightweight gliding munition payloads, or a combination of both. The capability of the unmanned B-3 to refuel, rearm, and recover the smaller stealthy or endurance UAS could also be considered.
Believe in coming decades of high fuel-expense and requirements for stealth, the future USAF must get by with fewer multi-purpose aircraft. A CSAR-X must do more than combat aircrew personnel recovery. A KC-X must do much more than aerial refueling. A B-3 bomber should take the B-2 cue and be few in number but with expanded capabilities. Perhaps even the F-22 could drop the same stealthy UAS with persistent and/or lethal capability. A rocket should also be able to deliver the same stealthy UAS for short notice missions.
Enough Buck Rogers, but seriously, can’t imagine that a stealth satellite would ever be less expensive than a stealth UAS…or as versatile.
And they shall call this new space agency Stargate Command.
Sorry.
In addition to less counter attack threats, aren’t space based assets much less likely to be compromised, in terms of the technology falling (not intended as a pun) into the wrong hands.
Other than the increased loiter time of newer aircraft, and the lack of a human inside, why are UAVs better than manned AVs.
When we started going to space, we already had the U2, right? So what were the reasons we went to space in the first place, and how are they less relevant now than they were 40 years ago? It’s gotta be more than the threat to the pilot’s life.
Joe, I hear you, but there probably are few pilots (B-2) willing to sit in a manned aircraft for 24 hours at time. The dirty, dull, and dangerous have always been primary UAS missions. Gary Powers found out the dangerous part with respect to U-2s. We certainly had the SR-71 for years and suspect it flew over the USSR at times which I believe prompted creation of the Mig-25. Today, it would be difficult for a non-stealth anything to fly over Russia or China whether manned or unmanned.
But recall that we were fixated on the nuclear threat back then. Missiles and bombers ruled the roost and the rhetoric if tough now, was nothing compared to back then. Don’t believe any nuclear-equipped power today believes it would use nukes on a similary-equipped nation…except perhaps Iran on Israel (suicidal). With that in mind, couldn’t we get by with fewer satellites now for Russia and China, using high-altitude UAS for everything else?
Believe there will be cuts in coming year budgets, and ISR satellites seem like areas where big bucks could be saved. Don’t think satellites will win the war on terror, and they certainly didn’t stop the Russians from invading Georgia.
Cut the overhead alone & merge these.
Save time & money.
Viable.
More funding for troops or other projects.
Naval Laser weapons & JSF & new SFCOM assult rifles & more forces for Afganistan.
CUT the DC bureaucracy alone.
The solution:
(1) Give up on the monolithic, do-everything satellites with their extreme development risk and and loss risk
(2) Let the R&D guys and engineers build and launch far more application-specific sats based on a common platform. The risk is lowered, failures are less expensive, and the engineers get to build their skill sets and talent pool thanks to many more sat iterations.
(3) Reduce the internal political and management empires with their suffocating risk-aversion that go along with the mega-sat projects.
(4) Take some risks, give the teams some breathing space and let them run with their ideas and vision.
Cole, while I agree that the tensions and rhetoric have lessened considerably since the height of the Cold War, the range of “acceptable” actions by nations has decreased. It is politically unacceptable to send U-2s over Russia and China.
If we stealth them up, there is always the danger that another nation will believe its something worse than a spyplane. We don’t want someone to mistake a stealthy Global Hawk for a B-2. The consequences of THAT would be too great.
There are distinct advantages to either types of platforms, Cole, whether atmospheric based or space-based. There are also distinct disadvantages.
Take care — and I leave you with a thought. Is it ‘out of sight, out of mind’, or, ‘out of mind, out of sight’?