There's an interesting article over at USNWR about the condition of our spy satellite program. I don't know whether it's valid or not, and can't because the program is so secret (even though some of the curtains have been raised in the last few years) that it remains relatively opaque. I do agree with this part, though, which is at the core of the problem:

"Any time you have secrecy," says Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a defense think tank, "performance and accountability suffer."

The article raises some other disturbing questions as well. Among others, why is this man:

Peter Teets, was forced to resign as president of Lockheed Martin Corp. in 1999 because of management failures in its Titan rocket program, according to government and industry sources. The NRO and the military lost three satellites during Teets's run as Lockheed Martin's top boss. In one case, a rocket blew up on launch; in the two other cases, the satellites were launched into useless orbits. Teets declined to discuss his removal.

...holding down two jobs, as both the head of the NRO and an undersecretary for the Air Force? And not to defend Boeing, but wasn't there a conflict of interest for him to be involved with the decision to shift launch contracts from that company to Lockmart?

In many ways, I think that military space is even more ripe for reform than NASA, if for no other reason than our lives may depend on it in the near term. Unfortunately, it may prove just as resistant.

Rand,

Your comments are off-base in a couple of ways.

1. The head of the NRO is ALWAYS a USAF under-secretary. Goes with the job. NRO is jointly owned by the USAF & the CIA ... this keeps the *operational* side under USAF control & lets the CIA decide on collection priorities and analysis of data collected.

2. Re: Boeing vs. Lockheed, the FIA award (*in 1999* - note the timing when you think about Teets leaving Lockheed) was of course a big shock to Lockheed as it was the first time in over 24 years that they were not the lead contractor on a major surveillance satellite system. The reverberations shook Lockheed's management hard. They announced they would contest the award but after looking more closely, admitted they didn't have a leg to stand on. Those unspecified "NRO contractors" that are quoted with criticism of Boeing ... they couldn't be Lockheed folks could they??? Not exactly the most neutral evaluators. On the other hand, if those "contractors" are from, say, the Aerospace Corp. then I'd pay close attention because that's their job.

The big issue with FIA is that Lockheed kept proposing and building small incremental changes to their long time architecture for new system. What was desperately needed -- and what was asked for in the Request for Proposal -- was a complete change in approach. Boeing proposed an innovative new architecture that took much more advantage of modern software and electronics, especially for sensor fusion. Lockheed just proposed more of the same. Boeing's approach was risky & there have been problems, but to a fair degree that was inevitable. And while the article doesn't mention it, there were EXTENSIVE analyses and simulations done re: the tradeoffs in design and the risks of the project.

Re: NIMA taking responsibility for integrating commercially-captured imagery, one reason for that is that NIMA for the last 5 years has built & refined a really powerful software capability to integrate & deliver specific info out of huge imagery databases. My old employer provided the key technology for that. Just what they SHOULD be in charge of, then. NRO is for unique, national security data collection systems. Different mission.

Just some context for the USNWR article ...

Two other points:

First, Congress mandated a strict cost cap on FIA well before the technical analyses were completed. That's fine for buying a car or a house, but a lousy way to procure a critical national security capability that pushes the state of the art (and if it didn't it wouldn't give use the national advantage we need!).

Second, there is no way in h*ll, on earth or in space that commercial satellites can begin to provide the coverage, bandwidth or maneuverability necessary to meet the mission of NRO. No way, no how, even if we WERE willing to put advanced sensors on them.

I'm wondering who's been lobbying whom to have this story break right now. Lots of politics going on re: both budgets and intel.

Thanks for the background, Robin--it's a world in which, as I said, I don't have a lot of understanding. I worked at Aerospace for a couple years early in my careers, and did some defense-related stuff at Rockwell, but most of my experience has been on the civil side.

But a question--is the AF undersecretary that oversees NRO the same one that should be making general launch decisions for the Air Force? After all, there are many payloads that are shades less than black that will be affected by such decisions.

My question also relates to just how broad his non-NRO portfolio is, and if it's sufficiently so as to defocus some of his attention there.

> But a question--is the AF undersecretary that
> oversees NRO the same one that should be making
> general launch decisions for the Air Force?

I'm not sure what your exact concerns are, but a lot of those decisions are made by the CINC of US Stategic Command. That's who the launch ranges report to and where most space procurement requirements come from. http://www.stratcom.af.mil/

Two distinctions are useful here.

First, distinguish operational control from policy oversight. USAF does the launches and vehicle tracking for all NRO satellites. Unless there is a major conflict of resources, the NRO director / undersecretary doesn't get involved. If there is such a conflict, that is a national policy issue and will be made in the civilian chain of command with input from the highest levels up through DOD & into the White House.

Second, keep in mind that *launches* are a small part of the mission. NRO's job is to gather and reconcile user requirements, develop RFPs and put them out to bid, evaluate the bids & technologies, oversee the builds & tests, all before the launch occurs. Then, they are responsible for managing the collection & dissemination of the information being captured. Actual operations of the launch & I believe of satellite commanding is done by USAF in the normal way they handle other space assets.

For FIA, several years were spent building and validating a detailed "value model" that captured the capabilities that different users wanted and their relative importance to the various missions of those user communities. That then has also to be traded off against such things as cost, technical capability, weight, fuel required to retarget the satellite etc. etc. I can't find the online reference at the moment, but several unclassified papers have been presented on the process used in this modelling activity ... I think in MORS (Military Operations Research) publications / conferences a year or two ago.

A major simulation was also built to validate expected performance of different designs. This all had major Congressional oversight because these models were explictly used during the procurement source selection (evaluation of bids), a first. This was a $12 Billion + procurement -- it was not done lightly or in a slap dash manner.

Comment discussions like this are just one more reason I read this blog. Thanks all, and KUTGW!