Battle For NRO Takes Shape As Space, Air Forces Grapple With Acquisition

WASHINGTON: As DoD struggles to decide how broad the new Space Force’s buying powers should be, the future of the builder and operator of America’s spy satellites, the NRO, is now uncertain.

Insiders say the wisdom of maintaining the long-standing and often hard-fought split between “black” and “white” space is once again being questioned.

On the military side, said one official close to the debate, the central question is ‘Why should the Space Force be different than any other service?’ The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines all handle their own classified research and development, procurement, and training, so, the reasoning goes, why shouldn’t the Space Force?

Senior Air Force and space leaders have complained loudly in recent months that the size of the Air Force budget is often misconstrued in funding battles on Capitol Hill because a large chunk is tied up in classified funds, mostly for space, that are passed through to other agencies, mostly NRO. Indeed, in an interview with Air Force Magazine in January (her first), Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett said DoD was evaluating whether that money ought to be put into the Space Force’s future budget.

The Intelligence Community is, of course, fighting back — arguing that, if anything, it ought to be the other way around. You want to take OUR money? Well, IC types say, acquisition authority for all intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data from all types of sensors, including satellites, ought to be put into our hands. This is because NRO is a joint venture between DoD and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

These source stress that the DNI actually is responsible for setting the formal requirements for classified satellite data and, more importantly, contributing most of the money for their development, production and operations. So, they say, DoD should not take acquisition authority over them.

(Technically, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency serves as a clearinghouse for military requirements that it then transmits to NRO as the basis for their imagery satellite development and acquisition, including from commercial sources. That said, the NGA reports to the DNI.)

“It doesn’t matter where the DoD puts its space activities. So, the question is — do the DNI and SecDef decide it is better to end the joint activity and place space reconnaissance in the Space Force,” one old intelligence hand said. “This debate always seems to forget that there are many other users of NRO information than DoD.”

Whither Space Acquisition?

Part of the DoD debate about the relationship with NRO has been spurred by the congressional mandate to explore how future Space Force acquisition methods might benefit from copying NRO practices, and to ensure that systems planned by the two are aligned and not  duplicative. The 2020 National Defense Acquisition Act (NDAA) required the Air Force to prepare a report on the issue that was due earlier this month.

But rather than issuing a separate report on working with the NRO, DoD decided to address DoD-NRO acquisition “alignment” in its first report on space acquisition, a spokesman for Space Force chief Gen. Jay Raymond confirmed. (That report, which, as Breaking D readers know, punts a decision on the chain of command for a future Space Force acquisition executive, was due to Congress by March 31 but is languishing in internal review.)

As explained by the seminal 2016 report on space acquisition by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), DoD follows Title 10 acquisition authorities for most space acquisition — although it does also have Title 50 authorities. According to GAO, NRO follows Title 50 acquisition authorities for buying satellite ISR. The NDAA asked DoD to look at how Space Force might benefit from using NRO’s practices once its new acquisition executive office is put in place — a Senate-confirmed position Congress said must be filled by October 2022.

“We have had very robust and vibrant discussions with the NRO about their acquisition authorities and how they execute them,” a senior DoD source told me in a written statement. “The Department of the Air Force’s Alternate Space Acquisition System report includes recommendations for the [Space Force] to adopt the best of breed authorities and practices. Adoption will allow us to further align and synchronize programs and architectures,” the source added.

However, the upcoming report does not touch directly on the question of a possible take over of NRO’s space acquisition authority by the Space Force.

That said, another USG source closely watching the debate characterized DoD’s approach to the acquisition issue as possible “baby steps” toward a Space Force land grab. DoD, the official said, may be “slowly removing the dirt under Chantilly (where the NRO’s Four Towers HQ sits) for them to have no choice but to slide down into a yet-to-be-monikered [Space Force] ISR command.”

What we do know for sure is that senior DoD officials are extremely aware, almost to the point of paranoia, that even discussing the issue of NRO being subsumed by the Space Force is playing with fire. This is certainly not the first time the divide between black and white space has been hotly debated.

A Tangled Oversight Web

The venerable spy satellite agency has a fiercely loyal contingency of supporters on Capitol Hill — in part for political reasons. Congressional oversight of IC bodies is complicated by overlapping jurisdictions, and the NRO more so than most because it receives both funding under the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) and the National Intelligence Program budgets.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) are the authorizing committees for NIP funds. The HPSCI also has authorization authority for MIP funds; but the divide changes in the Senate. There, the SSCI is not the authorizing committee, that falls to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

As for appropriations, the House and Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittees on defense have funding authority for both NIP and MIP annual spending.

All that said, HPSCI and SSCI members are extremely powerful, and vigorously exert their influence over both the authorization and appropriations processes.

In fact, the 2020 NDAA explicitly prohibits DoD from folding the NRO into the Space Force in part due to these political considerations. Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, one of the driving forces behind the creation of the Space Force and then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee, admitted as much in 2018, citing the need to keep discussion of Space Force within his committee’s jurisdiction.

Thus, the NDAA specifically states that no NRO funding is to be transferred to the Space Force. Instead of giving the Space Force acquisition authority for spy satellites, it establishes a Space Acquisition Council that includes NRO. The council will be chaired by the new Space Force assistant secretary for space acquisition and integration once that spot is filled, and it will report to Barrett. By law, it will include: the Air Force undersecretary, a newly created assistant secretary of Defense for space policy, the NRO director, the Space Force chief and the head of Space Command. The council held its first meeting on April 9 (oh, to have been a fly on that wall!)

Likewise, President Donald Trump’s Space Policy Directive-4, signed Feb. 19, 2019, also specifically instructed DoD to not include NRO in its legislative proposal on the establishment of a Space Force. One might note, however, that it did not rule out an eventual reorganization.

To Merge or Not To Merge: That is the question

For its part, NRO is a wee bit sharpish about the question of a potential shift in authorities for classified ISR satellites. Spokeswoman Laura Lundin provided me the following statement:

“As a member of the IC and a Defense element, the NRO provides vital space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) in support of national strategic and tactical customers. The NRO provides tremendous value to the Nation and the national security domain. The NRO’s unique role bridging the IC and DoD customer sets–combined with our end-to-end responsibility from R&D through acquisition to launch and operations–enables us to support a wide range of customers while maintaining agility to innovate within the space domain. We believe the current construct bridging the IC and DoD communities is an asset to the Nation.

While the military services organize, train, and equip personnel for the joint force, including IC elements such as the NRO, NSA, and DIA, the IC elements are not, and should not, be part of the military services.

As outlined in Space Policy Directive-4, the U.S. Space Force does not include NASA, NOAA, NRO, or other non-military space organizations and recognizes the need to retain a focus on those unique missions while also building unity of effort and collaboration. The NRO continues to support the DoD as a critically important customer and continues to work closely with our U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command partners, as well as the Department of the Air Force and other military services.”

While NRO’s own position is crystal clear, the 2016 GAO study points out that numerous studies, dating back to the 2001 Space Commission Report led by Donald Rumsfeld, have recommended the merger of all DoD space acquisition bodies and authorities, including NRO, into one executive office.

As GAO famously reported, some 60 organizations have a finger in the DoD space acquisition pie, eight of which have acquisition management authorities, including NRO and Space and Missile Systems Command (SMC), which now is part of Space Force. In other words, there is nobody really in charge of space acquisition within DoD — which accounts for the ponderous process that results in satellite programs often taking a decade or more from design to launch.

On the other hand, GAO noted, NRO has a much more streamlined satellite acquisition process that involves only a handful of personnel. (Hence the above-mentioned congressional report on Space Force possibly taking up some NRO acquisition practices.)

Bureaucratic Baggage

Complicating the ongoing discussion about exactly what acquisition powers Space Force should have vice NRO is the heavy bureaucratic political baggage involved in the often testy relationship between the Air Force and NRO. The military space community has long complained that NRO does not play well with the other children — a tendency that solidified under the previous NRO director Betty Sapp. Sapp, as Colin reported extensively back in the day, instituted a cone of silence around the spy agency, while at the same time assiduously courting Congress.

In arguing for moving “black space” acquisition to the Space Force, several sources pointed out that the increasing need for for tactical ISR already is driving greater demand by commanders in the field for commercial imagery, including through NGA. 

Indeed, the Space Development Agency (SDA) plans to develop a constellation of low-cost satellites to allow detection and tracking of ground targets beyond-the-line of sight in near-real time — a capability desperately desired by the Army, which is working on the effort with SDA via the service’s TITAN multi-domain ground station effort. Meanwhile, the Army itself is testing out its own small satellite concepts including for reconnaissance.

All-Domain Operations: Is A New Relationship Required?

In addition, several DoD sources asserted, a separate NRO increasingly makes less sense as the US military moves to implement a new warfighting strategy based on All-Domain Operations. One of the key tenets of all-domain is the need to seamlessly link all sensors to all shooters. While acquisition management is slightly sideways to that effort — which involves sorting out the changes required to chain of command, force organization, doctrine and technical capability — the issue of command and control of assets is central.

Indeed, DoD and the IC in August struck a deal with NRO that gives Space Command the authority to order NRO satellites to take protective measures, such as maneuvering, if they come under attack.

That agreement, however, does not give Space Command any authority over actually tasking the satellites (i.e. ordering them to focus or refocus on a particular target area). Tasking authority remains solidly with the DNI, one IC-savvy source said. And the DNI — as of Feb. 20 Acting Director Richard Grenell — is unlikely to give that authority up easily.

(Grenell was appointed after the withdrawal of Trump loyalist Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe following questions about his qualifications. Ratcliffe was nominated by President Donald Trump in August 2019, after the July resignation of Dan Coats, who had clashed with the White House.)

Better integration of NRO and military space operations is precisely the raison d’etre of the National Space Defense Center (NSDC), which was created in 2017 under Strategic Command. (Sapp, Breaking D readers may recall, fought fiercely against the original establishment of the NSDC.) The new deal, struck by a high-level DoD-IC task force working to implement SPD-4, which was supported by current NRO head Christopher Scolese, reinvigorates the NSDC’s mission.

“After months of analysis and deliberation, the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense have agreed to align US space command and the NRO into a new unified defense concept of operations (emphasis ours) at the National Space Defense Center,” said Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire at the time. “As part of US Space Command, the National Space Defense Center is a joint DoD-Intelligence Community organization and will become the center of gravity for defending our vital interest in space.”

However, ensuring that space can support All-Domain Operations also means ensuring that when space systems are developed and procured, they must be technically capable of working with all the military services. They also need to be organizationally capable to be responsive to commanders on a fast-paced battlefield.

That is precisely what the Air Force and NRO have fought over for all these years.  As noted above, satellite tasking is controlled by the DNI rather than the Secretary of Defense — and military leaders have complained loudly and often about NRO ignoring their needs.

NRO supporters, however, stress that the organization, and the DNI, have to make judgements about strategic-level priorities — because high-value, high-fidelity imagery is precious and in high demand from all its clients.

Further NRO says it already has incorporated all-domain operations into its own strategy and is working closely with DoD to help ensure everyone is on the same page.

“Multi-domain (or All Domain) operations is a key element of NRO’s strategy – both in terms of data we provide and how we coordinate with our IC and DoD partners,” Lundin said. “We support both national decision makers and warfighters in all domains through the collection of intelligence. Shortening the intelligence cycle – that is, getting intelligence data from “sensor to shooter” as quickly as possible – remains an NRO priority. The NRO provides multi-domain intelligence by collaborating with our IC and DoD partners including coordination of space operations through the NSDC to ensure operations of our assets are in synch.”

And so, the debate rages on.