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The
Space News article by Colin Clark ["NRO Loses Decision
Authority on BASIC Imaging Satellite Program," March 10, page
1] stated that senior defense officials have stripped the National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO) of its procurement and milestone
authority for the Broad Area Satellite Imagery Collection (BASIC)
satellite program. It appears that the NRO had jumped the gun on
initiating a BASIC space hardware procurement, a process that now
has been arrested until the acquisition undergoes accelerated due
process by a Joint Analysis Team, recently convened at the behest of
John Young, the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition,
technology and logistics.
Thank
goodness for the cooler heads over at the office of Director of
National Intelligence and senior levels of the Defense Department.
The NRO has no plausible justification for building and operating an
expensive government system when there are commercial alternatives.
Recall
that this is the same NRO who brought us the Future Imagery
Architecture (
FIA
) program, a
staggering tale of mismanagement and cost over-runs that was
extensively detailed in a November 2007 New York Times article by
Philip Taubman, "Failure to Launch: In Death of Spy Satellite
Program, Lofty Plans and Unrealistic Bids." Taubman described
FIA
as "perhaps
the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of
American spy satellite projects."
FIA
was, without even a
touch of hyperbole, a FIAsco, or in Taubman's words, a
"debacle." Despite actual expenditures approaching $10
billion, five years of schedule slip, and with projected cost
over-runs estimated at $13 billion when the program was canceled in
2005, all that has been launched into orbit so far is some
inoperable space junk that had to be shot down in February by the
Navy.
So
how then did the rogue NRO get the BASIC program onto the drawing
board in the first place? It seems that a cornerstone of the
justification came from a study submitted July 16 to Vice Adm.
Robert B. Murrett, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency, and NRO Director Donald M. Kerr. The report,
"Independent Study of the Roles of Commercial Remote Sensing in
the Future National System for Geospatial-Intelligence (NSG) Final
Report," known as the Marino Report, was written by Peter
Marino, chair of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Advisory Group. Kerr has since moved to the No. 2 position in the
Director of National Intelligence office.
The
report recommends that the
U.S.
government build
and launch a constellation of mid-resolution satellites, like those
proposed in the BASIC program, but perhaps permit commercial
entities to either use the satellites for commercial purposes or buy
satellites alongside the government, thereby lowering the companies'
satellite acquisition costs. The Marino Report would have the
government meet their internal Tier 2 mid-resolution imaging
requirements with NRO-built classified proprietary satellites.
To
put it plainly, the Marino Report is flawed. It is as if the answer
was whispered into the study panel's ears by the NRO before the
study began. And what was the answer? That the NRO needs to build,
launch, own and operate lots of satellites just like the ones the
commercial remote sensing firms — GeoEye and DigitalGlobe — are
launching.
Amongst
its other weaknesses, the Marino Report makes a number of crucial
misjudgments. The report states an overriding requirement that:
"The
U.S.
government cannot
rely on or be dependent on any external entity to responsively get
needed data." This statement carries the false implication that
only NRO-owned and -operated satellites can meet this requirement.
However, fully cleared U.S. commercial firms such as GeoEye and
DigitalGlobe can, through service-level agreements specifying
tasking priority such as those developed for the NextView program,
provide the same assured access to imagery data as the government
gets from its own satellites. Moreover, commandeering provisions
could be established for times of national emergency.
The
Marino Report goes on to assess that the government would face a
higher risk in getting its needed capabilities from commercial data
providers than it would from its own proprietary birds. Well, if the
NRO is going to manage the program then that judgment becomes very
dubious, if anyone has learned anything at all from
FIA
. In the meantime,
both DigitalGlobe's and GeoEye's NextView satellites, though
somewhat delayed, are making fine progress with one on orbit and the
other headed for the launch pad. Both systems can perform broad area
collection.
The
Marino Report makes a key omission when it fails to discuss one of
the great benefits of commercial remote sensing data: it can be
shared with anyone. While NRO source imagery remains classified and
locked behind a firewall, commercial imagery can be readily used by
soldiers in the field, shared with allies from any nation, and used
by every first-responder in
America
. This is a benefit
of immeasurable importance to the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency's emerging mission.
And
finally the Marino Report makes what appears to be a lame attempt to
circumvent repeated presidential policy directives to the
intelligence community to utilize commercial remote sensing.
National Security Presidential Directive 27 – U.S. Commercial
Remote Sensing Policy of 2003 states that the U.S. government shall
"rely to the maximum practical extent on U.S. commercial remote
sensing space capabilities for filling imagery and geospatial needs
for military, intelligence, foreign policy, homeland security, and
civil users." It further unambiguously defines commercial
remote sensing as "privately owned and operated space
systems." The Marino Report has the temerity to suggest that
satellite manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin Space Systems are
"commercial" entities, almost no different from GeoEye and
DigitalGlobe. Please.
Most
damning, it is unclear whether the report's recommendations would
leave the commercial remote sensing companies with a viable business
model, given their reliance on revenue from the National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. It looks like the NRO is swooping in
on the customer, unwilling to cede its long-held turf providing
broad-area mid-resolution imagery to the National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to support mapping.
The
NRO has a higher mission in satellite imaging: to provide very
high-resolution imagery from a constellation of very exquisite,
agile platforms in near real-time. This mission is vital to national
security. The NRO is having difficulty meeting this Tier 1 mission,
because of its internal disarray as evidenced by spectacular program
failures like
FIA
. The agency clearly
needs to expend its monetary resources and management attention on
solving this critical national requirement. Why then does the NRO
insist upon mounting programs that can be amply fulfilled by the
commercial remote sensing industry? It reminds you of Talleyrand's
dismissal of the revivalist Bourbon kings after the French
revolution: "They have learned nothing, they have forgotten
nothing."
Some
oversight is required here. The NRO simply must learn to accept that
the commercial remote sensing industry is very cost effective, can
serve the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency exceptionally
well, and is here to stay. I implore John Young's Joint Analysis
Team, chaired by Josh Hartman, to accept the inevitable migration of
the Tier 2 imagery requirement to the commercial remote sensing data
providers under the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
service-level agreements. Any other outcome would contravene both
the spirit and the letter of National Security Presidential
Directive 27.
Edward
Jurkevics is a principal analyst at Chesapeake Analytics Corp.,
whose clients include the
U.S.
government and
commercial remote sensing firms.
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