IP: PLEASE FIX THE BROKEN NRO or better yet the admin.

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

A comment from a very experienced Dcer:

"The problem is not with NRO.  The problem is with congress failing to
give the Pentagon and DoD the funding for the programs and R & D.
This is a very short sighted govt.  Most of the DoD  R & D funding
has been redirected to homeland security.  The DoD is working on a
shoestring.  I hope that makes you feel better.
"

------ Forwarded Message
From: "John F. McMullen" <observer () westnet com>
Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 08:14:25 -0400 (EDT)
To: johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com
Cc: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>,
Subject: [osint] PLEASE FIX THE BROKEN NRO

> From OSINT
---------- Forwarded message ----------
"The National Reconnaissance Office knows how to build one hell of an
office building. They have the nicest office complex in all of
America, granite and marble, soaring stainless steel and glass, and
mahogany desks in private offices.... But where are those
revolutionary satellites that they promised us?"

That question was posed was Dave Thompson, CEO of the space industry
contractor Spectrum Astro, in an unusually revealing, iconoclastic
and blunt speech at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs
on April 11.

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is the intelligence agency
that designs, builds and operates U.S. intelligence satellites.

"Over the past decade, the NRO has posted a sorry decline into
mediocrity...," Mr. Thompson said. "The NRO has suffered a shocking
decline in the technical performance of its satellites over the past
several years. They haven't told you about that because it's been
kept behind those doors."

Mr. Thompson went on to recite a litany of NRO technical failures
which have not previously been publicly disclosed.

"At an unclassified level, let me describe how serious this is, and
this is only the tip of the iceberg. Satellites, where the primary
mission payload failed a few days after launch. Satellites -- where
components got so hot that they actually melted causing mission
failure due to thermal analysis failures, something that we've known
about since the 1960's. Satellites -- which after spending billions
of dollars in development cannot perform their basic housekeeping
functions, which we've been demonstrating again since the 1960's.
Satellites -- which again, after spending billions of dollars in
development, the primary payload does not meet its basic performance
specifications. It's the NRO's own version of the Hubble Space
Telescope... Many satellites never even got launched as they
meandered their way through years of technical and program management
mismanagement. Yet no one was held accountable."

"I can't even describe many more technical disasters, as it would be
too revealing. Everything that I just described to you, and much
more, was just swept quietly under the rug."

"Please fix the broken NRO," Mr. Thompson concluded.

See the text of his speech here:


http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/thompson.html

Other background on the NRO may be found here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/nro/index.html



------ End of Forwarded Message

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