FYI,

"OpEd - NRO: Stop Competing With Commercial Remote Sensing Firms"
Space.com
http://www.space.com/spacenews/archive08/JurkevicsOpEd_041408.html

: 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.

Mark Reiff