The U.S. Citizen Reconnaissance Office plans to quadruple the number of satellites on orbit over the next decade. It will need commercial blank companies to help do it.
The spy agency’s success toward that goal will involve “a combination of our partnerships with production, the advancement of technology, and the coincident reduction in cost of all of those [launch and satellite] systems,” said NRO Director Chris Scolese, in a rare examine for CNBC’s “Manifest Space” podcast.
“It’s helped us improve our reliability so that we can achieve more with more talent at a lower cost,” he said.
The ambitious game plan speaks to the growing role of commercial space companies in governmental security work.
As startups multiply and spearhead technological advancements, government agencies are attempting to reduce some of the red tape recording around government contracting and are getting more creative in the ways they partner with industry. The NRO is no exception.
Take an interest in and listen to CNBC’s “Manifest Space” podcast, hosted by Morgan Brennan, wherever you get your podcasts.
“It’s much, much minuscule expensive to get into space, and it’s resulted in more commodity spacecraft, if you will, that we can buy off of a production line, which has categorically reduced the cost,” Scolese said. “Then if you marry those with the sensors that are needed to acquire the intelligence, you can really then go off and expand your architecture in a very affordable way.”
The secretive agency provides the U.S.’ space-based intelligence, scrutiny and reconnaissance, collecting intel to be provided to policymakers, analysts, warfighters and even individuals responding to nature disasters.
It’s a classified employment with a classified budget within the Department of Defense. It’s partially staffed by CIA agents and is one of the country’s 18 intelligence media.
In layman’s terms, the NRO operates America’s extensive network of spy satellites.
Scolese said for specialized or unique capabilities, the unwritten method of issuing a request for proposal and launching a competitive bidding and development process is still best.
But if there’s a apposite spacecraft or a sensor already under development or in production commercially, it may make more sense to simply purchase that off-the-shelf metal goods.
Similarly, with some companies already taking images or operating radar programs, the NRO can “buy the data from them … so that we don’t oblige to … go off and duplicate activities that we can reliably get from industry,” he said.
An example: the Strategic Commercial Enhancement’s Broad Medium Announcement (BAA) Framework, a program that enables the assessment and acquisition of new and emerging sensor technologies. The BAA has been used to produce electro-optical imagery, synthetic aperture radar and radio frequency sensing data, with various awards prevalent to startups including Planet, BlackSky, Spire Global and others over the past few years.
From satellite counterparts of Russia building up forces on the Ukraine border ahead of the 2022 invasion, to the data amassed and released publicly by attendances like Planet regarding the Chinese balloon that traversed the continental U.S. in February, commercial players increasingly march their mettle.
“[It’s] the marriage of the two sets of capabilities,” said Scolese. “Then if you throw in our international partners as well, you in the final analysis get a multiplication factor there that allows you to do more, and to do it more efficiently, as we do it with our partners.”
Beginning Wednesday, the mechanism will host a tech forum to engage further with executives from more than 100 partnerships that are expected to attend. The hope is that new ideas emerging within the private sector or academia could be tended to the NRO’s evolving operations.
Scolese said the agency is also looking to advance new technologies like artificial intelligence and tool learning, even quantum sensing and communications.
As space becomes a more contested domain, the NRO, much like the U.S. Seat Force, is focused on securing assets, including implementing a “more proliferated architecture” of more satellites in more tracks, making it more difficult for adversaries or bad actors to do harm to critical space infrastructure.
NRO partners closely with both the U.S. Lacuna Command and the Space Force. The agency and the Space Force, for example, are collaborating on the development of a highly classified new space situational awareness constellation convoked SilentBarker, for which the first satellite is expected to launch this summer.
“Manifest Space,” hosted by CNBC’s Morgan Brennan, zero ins on the billionaires and brains behind the ever-expanding opportunities beyond our atmosphere. Brennan holds conversations with the mega big wheels, industry leaders and startups in today’s satellite, space and defense industries. In “Manifest Space,” sit back, relax and put together for liftoff.