Bruce Carlson, director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), is a serious manager on a mission to drive down costs and push intelligence to the warfighter. The NRO is celebrating its 50th year as an agency, a strange anniversary since the agency only became to be known publicly just a few years ago. The NRO is one of the U.S.'s most secretive agencies and deploys the nation's spy satellites.
The agency has launched six satellites in seven months, a feat unmatched before in the agency's history and intends launching four more soon. But Carlson said at the outset of his presentation how important he feels his responsibility to use taxpayer money wisely. In an era of increasing budget cuts, the NRO is watching its dollars. The NRO, despite its size, was one of the largest donors to the last budget cut said Carlson. He explained that he attributes the efficiencies to the way his agency manufacturers satellites. "Though we cut a great deal of money (in the latest round of U.S. budget cuts), we didn't have to sacrifice any of our core capabilities," said Carlson.
But the theme of this year's GEOINT is "integrated intelligence" and Carlson wanted to make sure that he is doing his part to put information in the hands of more people. Carlson said that he has several integrated intelligence programs in development and that these "joint collaboration cells" have been certified by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Carlson believes that his agency can move the delivery of intelligence far from the point of acquisition all the way to the warfighter. He said that 95% of the geointelligence produced produce for NGA is classified at the "secret" level. That is, the bulk of information collected is not hard to deliver; and yet only 5% of soldiers have direct access to these data and Carlson wants to change this situation.
One solution is moving to a cloud environment but there are challenges. "The biggest impediment to moving to cloud is the legacy equipment that was built in a stovepipe; they were designed that way; but over time, when you go to many different systems, you've created a mound of people and systems that are hard to maintain…but I think it's doable," said Carlson.
In summary, Carlson said that the gap between the technological advantage that the U.S. has with other nations is huge. "What I am worried about is other countries going after us and ... people exploiting this as one of our Achilles heels," he said.
