Photo: CSIS
This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on October 3, 2024. Watch the full video here.
Emily Harding: OK, everybody. Thank you so much for being here today. I’m Emily Harding. I’m the director of the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program here at CSIS.
And we are here today to talk about the power of presence in space. In the very recent past, a persistent presence in orbit was the sole domain of national governments. But over the last decade or so, we’ve seen a transformation and the start of a generational change. There is now a far wider range of nations sending stuff into orbit. Commercial providers have become a necessary part of nations’ national security picture.
And today we’re talking about NRO, which is a real American national treasure. It has been there for the duration, but so quietly that most Americans had no idea they existed. Today, however, they’re starting to come out of the shadows in a way that we have not seen before.
And we have with us today Dr. Chris Scolese, the director of NRO. He started his career as a naval officer working on nuclear propulsion. But from the sea, he turned to space and never went back. He had a long career at NASA, including becoming NASA’s chief engineer, acting administrator, and director of the Goddard Space Flight Center. And then, in 2019, he became the director of NRO, and he was the first Senate-confirmed person to hold that position. And that really was meant to communicate the seriousness with which the Senate took NRO’s mission, and also the oversight that they thought was required of this massive program that was so important to the country. I had the privilege of helping out with that nomination process, and it was – it was really interesting to see.
Both Dr. Scolese and my colleague Kari Bingen, who will introduce herself here in just a second, are super big brains when it comes to space policy, so I have dubbed myself the generalist on this stage who can try to translate some of the really exquisite capabilities they’re going to be talking about for a more generalist audience.
But first, NRO has brought us a video showing off what they do.
(A video presentation is shown.)
Kari A. Bingen: My name is Kari Bingen. I’m the director of the Aerospace Security Project here at CSIS. And it’s a real privilege to have you, Dr. Scolese.
I am struck by that video. And just think about it for a moment. The National Reconnaissance Office is an organization that’s been around over 60 years, but for a lot of that time didn’t exist. The government didn’t acknowledge its existence until 1992. So to be able to sit here and see a video like that is pretty, pretty spectacular.
And I also just want to emphasize, too, it is – it is incredibly unique to have a director of the National Reconnaissance Office here at CSIS talking publicly about the organization and about the mission. We’ve had a chance to talk at some trade association events and whatnot, but there’s a different audience here. And so we very much appreciate you coming out and talking to that broader audience and educating us.
I was fortunate to meet Dr. Scolese back in the 2018-2019 timeframe was you were getting ready to go through your confirmation process that Emily mentioned. And as we were thinking about it in the Department of Defense, where I was at the time, we wanted to ensure that that first Senate-confirmed director was not political; was focused on technical soundness, sound management, and very apolitical in the job. Because when you think about acquiring and operating satellites, that’s just not a political thing. So we were so privileged that Dr. Scolese said yes, you know, I will sign up for this mission and continue to serve the nation. So we’ve very thankful that you did.
We have about 30 minutes of Q&A that both Emily and myself will do with Dr. Scolese, and then we’ll open it up to audience questions both in person here and online. So if you’re online, go to the event website. There’s a button there to click to ask a question. We’ll get it here. And then also, if you’re in the audience, there’s a QR code here for the folks in person. So we do encourage your questions.
With that, I’m going to turn it back over to Emily.
Ms. Harding: So the floor is yours, sir. Tell us a little bit about NRO and the mission that you serve. If you had to explain to somebody who had never heard of NRO before what you do, how would you describe it?
Dr. Chris Scolese: Certainly. Well, first, thanks for having me here. And you don’t have to call me Dr. Scolese; please call me Chris. I’d appreciate that.
So the NRO, as has been mentioned, it’s been around for about 60 years, a little more than 60 years. For about half that time, we were a secret. And there was an important reason for us to be a secret at that time. But our fundamental mission hasn’t changed over that 60 years. Our job is to go off and collect from the vantage point of space what’s happening on the Earth and deliver that to the analyst, the policymaker, the warfighter, the first responder, whoever needs that information. And we have continued to do that over those 60 years.
And over that time, we have consistently innovated. We have consistently kept up with the times. Oftentimes, we have led technology because countries and people want to prevent us from seeing or finding out what they’re doing, so we have to stay ahead that way. We have technology and we need to stay there so that we can make our systems affordable and capable. And at the same time, we’ve also taken advantage of using, as you said, Emily, the capabilities that already exist. If it exists, why recreate it? With a strong commercial industry, we’re taking, you know, a lot of advantage of that.
And the other thing that’s really a difference in the last 30 years is the NRO used to have a contained workforce, if you will, and now we actually recruit and we bring in people. If you’re going to do that, you have to tell people you exist – (laughter) – or else they can’t find you.
So we have adapted over time. We’ve driven innovation. We’ve driven technology. We’ve taken advantage of it. And you know, we’ve stayed ahead of the competition, if you will.
Ms. Harding: So your role is one of both an intelligence agency and also a defense agency. And your point about workforce, if I’m right, once upon a time NRO pulled personnel directly from CIA and elements of the IC, and then also from the Defense Department. But now that you’re doing this open recruiting, you need a much broader swath of people. So can you talk a little bit about that dual role as an intelligence agency and also a defense agency?
Dr. Scolese: Oh, absolutely. You know, the – if you’re operating in space, you can see the whole globe. Therefore, that information should be made available to anybody that needs that information, so the IC or the DOD. It’s efficient to have one organization go off and do that within, you know, certain boundaries, of course, that we need to go off and look at. And that’s the role that the NRO has played.
And really, the difference has been how quickly do you need the data, and how much data do you need, and how varied is that data. You know, in the 1960s, when we were created, dropping buckets from the sky was fine. The world wasn’t changing that fast, or that need. There was one adversary at that time, the Soviet Union, that we had to deal with. As we progressed, we needed information faster and faster, and that’s true today. People would like information instantaneously, like they can – you know, like you can get with Twitter or X or whatever it is, right? And that’s our job, to deliver that information faster and to deliver the information that’s needed, which means different phenomenologies from what we had in the 1960s, which were mostly, you know, film capsules coming back with exquisite pictures of whatever it is that was – that was being looked at. Today, we have to look more broadly than that because there’s more complicated techniques.
So our fundamental job has stayed the same. And it – and we serve well both the Department of Defense and the intelligence community, and to the extent that they need it the civil communities, for doing that. And I think it’s an efficient use of resources. It’s a vantage point that takes advantage of, you know, holistically, the whole Earth. And it allows us to distribute that information quickly, and it allows us to coordinate with all those groups to deliver the information that, ultimately, is needed.
Ms. Harding: So before I turn it over to Kari to talk about some of the generational change, I remember the old TV show “24” and laughing when they were like, redirect the satellites from my cellphone. (Laughter.) It was like, if only we could – we could do that. But we’re getting closer and closer to that real-time look-in that you’re talking about.
I’m going to ask you to explain, though, dropping buckets from the sky, because that’s a literal thing that used to happen. So what did that mean?
Dr. Scolese: So in the 1960s it was very difficult to take pictures and beam them to Earth. I mean, today we have cellphones and, you know, anybody that was probably born after 1990 has no idea what film is. And the – so the most efficient way to get it was to put the camera in space; have the film with the camera; take the picture; roll up the film when you’re done taking all the pictures; put it in a – in a bucket, essentially a reentry vehicle; and drop it down to Earth with a parachute. And if you ever get a chance, go to YouTube and watch it. It’s CORONA capture of a film capsule coming down. An airplane would catch it in the air, and then it would go and get – the film would get processed and those imageries would be distributed.
But I think there’s one other thing that we should mention. The first really capable NRO satellite that delivered was called GRAB. It was about 20 inches. And it was – so it would be considered a cubesat today. And that one did transmit information to the ground directly, but it wasn’t images; it was locating where radars are.
Ms. Harding: Massive leap forward. Let’s talk about our leap forwards today.
Ms. Bingen: Well, it’s interesting as you’re talking about CORONA, there was a fantastic history that the NRO historian has put out there on CORONA and other programs. One of our team here at CSIS, Christina Nordby, actually found an NRO cartoon series.
Dr. Scolese: Yes.
Ms. Bingen: Legit cartoon series about the history of the NRO. So I commend that reading to folks.
But you go from the dropping film cannisters to building, you know, these very big, exquisite systems. Now, as the threat has evolved, the technology has evolved, you’ve talked about we are in a moment of generational change with our overhead architecture. Can you talk through what – explain, really, what that is.
And you’ve been out there in the press talking about a proliferated satellite architecture that NRO is pursuing. Talk to us about what you’re doing there.
Dr. Scolese: Sure. There’s a lot of things that are happening today.
You know, the first thing I’ll say is, you know, today, as we speak, we have satellites ranging in size from cubesats to the large, exquisite satellites that you’re talking about. That allows us to deliver the information that is needed in the best possible way. We’re also engaging, you know, commercial entities so that they can fill in gaps and take over part of the mission so that we can focus on those things that are extremely difficult to go off and do.
And the proliferated architecture is something that kind of addresses all of these things. We need to have persistence or fast revisit. Persistence you get by going into higher orbits, but that means you need much, much larger apertures in order to accomplish whatever the mission is, to go off and do that. Or you can proliferate your architecture, put more satellites up there so that a satellite is always coming over an area within a given reasonable amount of time that’s needed by the users. And that’s what we’re doing with a proliferated architecture. That’s enabled by a really rich commercial industry that’s building hundreds or thousands of satellites that allowed us to take those satellites, adapt them to our use at low cost, and apply whatever sensor is needed to go off and acquire the information that’s needed at whatever revisit time is required. So it gives us that capability, so it allows us to revisit, provide the information at a very high rate of speed and deliver it, you know, directly to the user.
The other thing it allows us to do is it allows us protection of that architecture. We all know that there are countries – you know, Russia and China are examples – that have developed ASATs that can take out satellites. Well, if you have a hundred satellites up there, you have to have at least a hundred missiles in order to take them down, and that gets to be much, much more complicated in order to deal with that. So it gives us a degree of resilience that we didn’t have before.
The other thing it gives us is an opportunity to refresh at a higher rate so that we’re constantly improving the technology as either the technology comes along or the threat changes or the mission changes to some extent. So that allows us to move at a much, much higher pace than we have in the past.
Ms. Bingen: What’s interesting is a lot of us in the aerospace community, we tend to focus on satellites. But when you’re getting to a point where you’ve got hundreds up there, some of the manual processes that we use, making sure analysts are looking at every single image that comes through, like, that model for me just is – you can’t sustain that model. So can you also talk about the – apply that generational-change thinking to what are we doing on – I’ll say on the ground side, the tasking, the processing, the analysis with some of these tools like AI technologies will bring?
Dr. Scolese: Yeah, absolutely. So it is changing. It has changed because, again, we can deliver information faster with the systems that we have if we can, you know, reduce that data very quickly into a – into a product that is needed. But you’re right, once you go to a proliferated architecture and you’re talking – you’re going from a few to – a few satellites to tens of satellites to now hundreds of satellites, you have to change a lot of things. And we’re in the process of doing that.
So operating a proliferated architecture means that it’s no longer possible to go off and for an individual sitting at a control center to say I know what this satellite is doing. So we have to have the machines to go off and help us there.
We need artificial intelligence, machine learning, automated processes to help us do that. Fortunately, Kepler helps us, you know, when it comes to that. But when it comes to tasking the satellites, asking them what to do, and figuring out which satellite is the best one to do it or which combination is, that’s where we’re taking advantage of, you know, advanced processing techniques, some of the techniques in artificial intelligence and machine learning, to do that.
And then you’re right, also now we’ve already been bringing down a lot of data, particularly in some parts of our constellation, so we have a head start on being able to go off and pull out from large databases the signals that our functional managers or our users need that they can go off and use very quickly. And we’re going to be applying that to the proliferated architectures as well.
Ms. Harding: Yeah. So let’s keep talking about that innovation theme. Kari mentioned AI. We’ve done some work here on the possibility of on-orbit processing so you’re not sending huge amounts of data down to ground stations; you can figure out on orbit what of these images is actually the most important and get it down quicker or to a more direct ground station. So talk about what you see ahead for this kind of con stellation and what fun toys we should look forward to in the near future.
Dr. Scolese: (Laughs.) Well, certainly, yes, on-orbit processing, we do it today, but we need to do more of it. And with the advanced processors that are out there, it’s going to allow us to do even more so we can deliver the information that’s needed.
But I think the real value is going to be coming from merging various datasets to deliver a product. Whether you do that on orbit or you do it on the ground – it’s probably easier to do it on the ground – but what you want to do is to get the information that’s needed to the ground so that there you can even speed that up. So we’re going to be using on-orbit processing more as we go forward.
And you know, the processing chips have gotten smaller and more capable and more available, so that’s going to really allow us to go off and do it. We just need to figure out how to make it work in space.
Ms. Harding: Details, details. (Laughs.) We know you’ll get there.
We were talking in the green room a little bit about quantum sensing, which I think is just so cool when we can make it work. Do you want to talk a little bit about where you are on that?
Dr. Scolese: Well, we’re all in the – you know, in the early phases of doing quantum sensing, particularly remote quantum sensing. And the advantage of this is you’re using fundamental physics to go off and do detections, which allows you to get information, you know, faster because you don’t have as much processing that’s needed. You’ll know what the differences are. It’s very difficult to spoof those things because you’ll know it. That’s one of the things that are there. And it has applications from, you know, communications, which is probably the furthest along, to measuring, you know, the gravitational differences on the Earth, or any planet for that matter. So there’s broad applications to it, and we’re in the process of working through all of that.
And we’re working with – in that particular case, since it is very early research, we do have an advanced technology group, and they’re the ones that are working it. And they’re working with not only industry, but also with academia to go off and develop those capabilities. And we’ve set up a research lab that will allow us – we were talking about going a little bit more public. Our research lab, we can do unclassified research. A lot of this is very fundamental research, so we need to have that opportunity to be able to go off and do that. In fact, next week we’re going to have an unclassified conference at the NRO talking about the technologies that we need, and offering the opportunity for others to come in in an unclassified arena to share their ideas and build the relationships that we need. We’ve routinely had classified conferences, but this is to open it up even broader.
Ms. Harding: So talk a little bit about NRO’s role as the fast follower in partnerships like this where we see the commercial sector or the academic sector actually pushing forward the bounds of the science and then NRO finds itself taking advantage of those discoveries and trying to partner with those groups. How are you envisioning trying to push NRO into that partnership role?
Dr. Scolese: It was a natural role. I mean, it kind of started out that way. You know, if you read the history books, there was a lot of that happening. You look at some of the pioneers, they called them, in the NRO, they came from industry that were, you know, researchers like Edwin Land, you know, the Polaroid camera. You know, you wouldn’t – you wouldn’t imagine that. Richard Garwin, who was a researcher at IBM, as well as, you know, university professor. So it’s in our DNA to go off and work with the community at the – at the leading edge of technology.
And it’s a two-way street. They’re developing capabilities, whether it’s, you know, new math models or new technologies, and we want to be engaged in working with them. Which is one of the reasons we’ve established this – unclassified opportunities for getting together. We’ve had it, but it’s been in – you know, tighter confines. This way, it opens it up so that we can – we can bring in even more. And at the same time, we have gone off and demanded and pushed technologies that ultimately end up on the other side, in the commercial sector or otherwise. So I would say it’s in our DNA to go off and have that relationship and make it work, and we’re continuing to go off and do that.
The neat thing now is there’s a lot more capability out there than there was when the NRO first started, when, as one of you said, it was largely government-run. You know, space was largely government. And most of the others was in individual technologies, not space technologies. That’s changed, so now we have that additional benefit coming to us.
Ms. Harding: So before I turn it over to Kari to talk about some of the intergovernmental challenges that we have, I want you to talk a little bit about hard targets and how you’re using those partnerships, how you’re using those advances in technology to go after the truly difficult intelligence questions, places where you cannot get people on the ground but you can see them from space.
Dr. Scolese: Well, you think you can see them from space – (laughter) – because they try and hide them, and that requires us to go off and do all the things that we talked about: the proliferated architectures, now you can’t hide because you’re constantly being looked at; greater persistence, again you can’t hide because we’re constantly looking. But there’s many other things. There’s camouflage, if you think about it. There’s lots of techniques that can be used. Which means we have to go off and look at, you know, very different phenomenologies. And we’ve developed capabilities and are developing capabilities that will allow us to defeat those types of activities.
And you know, quantum sensing is one of them. You can’t really hide from, you know, fundamental physics.
Ms. Harding: That’s a great tagline for NRO: You can’t hide from fundamental physics. (Laughter.)
Kari? (Laughs.)
Ms. Bingen: So I’m going to hit on an issue that I worked on when I was in the Pentagon and I know you’re in the middle of it day in, day out, which is this Title 10/Title 50 issue. So for those that aren’t following, Title 10 is the Department of Defense’s authorities/missions. Title 50 is the intelligence community’s authorities and missions. And you know, if I think about it from a DOD perspective, they’re starting – they’re putting more missions into space. GMTI – so ground-moving target indicator – is a great example of that. That is a mission that’s long been done by aircraft. But as the adversary gets better at their capabilities to keep us out it’s pushing us further and further back, those aircraft are vulnerable, so we’re going to space. But that’s a battlespace awareness mission; it’s not necessarily a traditional intelligence mission. But yet, you all are building the – that capability for our nation.
So, you know, you were talking about this generational change. How is that community wrestling with and thinking about, as more of these missions go to space, it’s not business as usual – it’s not the traditional way that we’ve tasked these systems, processed them, analyzed them – because speed is of the essence getting that information right to, say, the warfighter? So how are you thinking through those – some of those issues that are manifesting, I think, with this, but there’s probably more to come?
Dr. Scolese: Yeah. You know – you know, that’s really a good question, and you’ve given me a thing that will – that makes me think about it.
You know, building the satellites and operating from the vantage point of space doesn’t care about Title 10 or Title 50. It’s when it hits the ground and who uses it, right? So I actually think of these problems as a datacentric problem. We have to deliver the data at the speed and with the characteristics that the user – and it can be any user – needs.
So GMTI is, obviously, going to go off and need information on where an object is and where it is going, right, in real time. We need to deliver that data there. Others will be delivering, also, data. That data has to be fused into a product that is used.
This was the same problem that we had back when they were moving this to airborne, when now all of a sudden you’re remotely sensing it where, you know, the operator in the aircraft can’t necessarily see the object on the ground without the benefit of equipment. So, you know, we’re there, and we’re in the process of figuring out how do we bring all that data down, and how do we assimilate it in such a way that we can deliver, in this particular case, to the warfighter the information they need that’s going to keep that object, you know, tracked with high reliability?
So I think of it more as a datacentric problem. We can collect the data. That data could be used Title 10, Title 50. It can be used in the civil applications, wherever it needs to be. It’s how you, ultimately, fuse that data, assuming that you’re delivering it at the quality and at the time rate of – the time that they need it and the rate of time that they need it, and you’re able to provide the discrimination to detect the object.
Ms. Bingen: Well, and on ground-moving target indicator, GMTI, you now have this operational challenge presented to you of, you know, we have to track these vehicles, and we’re tracking them across multiple satellites. These satellites are handing off to each other. So you now have to be able to do all of that in real time.
You also have this other dimension which, you know, you’re collecting electro-optical color images, you’re collecting radar images, you’re collecting signals; you have to fuse that all together in real time. My hypothesis, though, is those technology challenges are solvable. And your engineers are doing a phenomenal job there, and I’ll want you to talk about that.
But some of the challenges where – you know, when you’re doing those kind of tasking handoffs, or you’re having to tip and queue between a signals collection system and an imaging system, there are policy challenges, there are cultural challenges. So can you talk through some of those pieces?
Dr. Scolese: Sure. Yeah. So we’re used to doing hard things, generally hard technical things. Policy things tend to be even harder – (laughs) – as you well know. And you know, you’re right; I mean, the technical challenges, we are in the process of solving those and we are making good progress. Some of those have been solved. Some of them, still work to be done.
The policy ones, we’re still in the process of working through all of those things. And they range from the mundane – how do we, you know, make sure that the information we’re giving to the user, the warfighter, is accurate, and who’s going to make – you know, who is going to do that in the field; I mean mundane in the sense of, you know, you would expect us to go off and do that – and some of it is more complicated, along the lines that you’re talking about, how do we integrate all of these different systems in a way that will allow all of that data to come down in a format that is usable to be put together, so that – so that we can deliver the product that’s needed.
And we are in the process of continuing to work through that. Again, we’re making a lot of progress there. We’re going through it. We put prototypes of the various satellites up there. That’s allowed us to see what they can do. It’s also allowed us to participate in exercises where we can go off and test those various things. We’re also doing tabletop exercises and gaming to allow us to go off and test things at the edges and say, what if, this? And then, you know, OK, now we need to adjust, you know, X, Y, or Z. And that’s helping us to identify are there policy areas or gaps that we need to go off and address?
From the building of the satellites, there’s really no gaps there. From bringing the data down, there’s really no gaps other than you have to make sure that you get it. But putting all the data together and making that a viable product at the end, that’s where we’re going off and doing it. We’re making good progress. The exercises are helping us an awful lot as we do that to get that done. And of course, that’s just a small subset of what’s up there. You know, in – by roughly December of this year – from last June till December of this year we’ll have probably launched 100 satellites. So we are going from the demo phase to the operational phase, where we’re really going to be able to start testing all of this stuff out in a more operational way.
Ms. Bingen: So that’s a challenge to the policymaking community, to get the policies – the authorities fixed, so that as those operational capabilities come online it’s seamless for the users.
Ms. Harding: And that is the hardest challenge of all.
Ms. Bingen: Oh my gosh, yeah. (Laughter.)
Ms. Harding: Absolutely. I love listening to a very smart engineer talk through a really complicated problem. You make it sound like it’s so straightforward and logical. Like, we do this, and then we do this, and then it works. If only policy was that straightforward. You used the word “mundane,” which I find really funny because even a mundane day at NRO – (laughter) – is still a pretty exciting day, with all the amazing work that you guys are doing.
I want to remind the audience to send in your questions. We’ve already got some online – actually, a bunch coming in from online. But scan the QR code and send them in, and we will ask Dr. Scolese, Chris, what he thinks about these questions. Before we do that though I want to hit on the topic of trust in intelligence, which is something near and dear to my heart. After a long career working in the intelligence world, I now have the privilege to be more out in public talking about what the intel space does, trying to debunk some of the worst myths, misconceptions. And your entry onto sort of a more public role in bringing NRO into the light, I think, is a great opportunity to talk about this.
Balancing classification with transparency. How are you envisioning that as a way ahead for the NRO? And then this new era of openness, one way that we saw this really be a huge intelligent success was the Biden administration’s decision to release a lot of information about the impending Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some of that was satellite imagery. Some of that was other intelligence. But the fact of being able to point to evidence that nobody could ignore, that this was a thing that was about to happen, I think, really prepared the world for what was going to be a ground war in Europe that we haven’t seen for decades. So talk a little bit about the way that the IC can operate more in the light, and also just why the American people should be really proud of the work that you’re doing.
Dr. Scolese: Well, I mean, you know, our job is to deliver information. And ours is – again, you know, we’re collecting photons and electrons and we need to turn that into a product, which is a lot easier to do in some respects from figuring out intention. Our job is to give unequivocal, clear data that comes from the satellite. So it’s an image or a signal. And we take those and make sure it works. So we’re checking calibration. We’re checking, you know, the satellite’s ability to point and deliver data, all of those things. So it’s really, you know, objective evidence of what’s going on.
The point you made is an example of how we’ve come to work very effectively with our commercial partners. Combining both the systems that we need to protect the information from and using the commercial imagery, we were able to share all of that data and be able to say, hey – well, not us, actually. The NRO doesn’t do that. But because we had that ability, we were able to give that information as unclassified information, and that was able to be shared with everybody.
At the same time, we’re also, you know, looking at our products and saying, you know, what really needs to be classified? I mean, it’s a broad question that is being asked more and more. And we’re part of answering that question.
Ms. Harding: Mmm hmm, for sure.
Ms. Bingen: If I can jump in on commercial – and I know you’re getting ready to ask some questions here too.
Ms. Harding: No, go for it.
Ms. Bingen: Is we at CSIS earlier this week unveiled a report called “Gold Rush: The 2024 Commercial Remote Sensing Global Rankings.” So we took inspiration from the Olympics. We did it in partnership with United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, Taylor Geospatial Engine, Taylor Geospatial Institute. But one of the reasons why we wanted to assess these worldwide commercially available remote sensing systems was to see what the state of competition looks like. And what was surprising in our results is, of all of the winners in different categories of electronic imaging, radar, hyperspectral, et cetera, the sector’s moving really fast.
Roughly half the systems on the podium were ones launched in the last three to four years. China is making incredible inroads in their technologies that they’re now selling commercially. So for us, there was this broader strategic narrative of, you know, what can the government do from a policy regulatory perspective, as a customer, as an investor, to ensure that our companies stay in the lead in the years to come? So all of that is to kind of come back to you. I mean, the NRO is buying data and, you know, leveraging these commercial capabilities. Where do you see that going? And what role is NRO playing in that – the viability, really, of the commercial sector?
Dr. Scolese: So, you know, our role is to buy the pixels or the data that’s coming back from those satellites, and deliver it to the community, principally our partners at NGA and NSA, but broadly – more broadly than that as well. And today we have a relationship with, I think, all of the U.S. providers that are in the report that you were talking about. And they span a range from we’re just getting to know each other, they may have a new capability or a new idea that they want to bring online so that’s kind of an early phase type of a thing, to demonstrations, which we’re doing, for instance, with the radar community right now that’s proving out to be very well, to contracts where we’re saying, yes, we want your data, you fill a niche, unquestionably, and you can take over this role from the national means, the government-developed systems.
So we cover that range. And we want to work with the commercial community to go off and share what we need. And we do that with our partners, again, at NGA and NSA. To say, these are the types of things that we need so they have an idea of where we’re at. And then if they can develop it, and we’ll work with them to develop it – as I said, we’ve got the range all the way from I’m thinking about it, to I’ve got some examples of what I want to do to, you know, we’re pretty far along that we want you to really try it out, to, yeah, it’s working, and we can – you know, we can count on it. That gives us the opportunity to go off and help nurture that community.
And over – you know, since we started this, about 2018, I think, time frame, we’ve grown the budget, and you know how hard it is to grow a budget, by about 50 percent. So, you know, that shows, you know, a real commitment to working it. And it shows a commitment by the government, right? Because the NRO can propose anything, but there’s many other organizations that have to agree that there’s value there as well. So, you know, the U.S. government is indicating that. And we want to continue to grow it even more as we’re going forward.
Ms. Bingen: That’s a good demand signal.
Dr. Scolese: Yeah.
Ms. Harding: Yeah. I just want to put another plug for Kari’s team’s wonderful report, the 2024 Commercial Remote Sensing Global Rankings, which we lovingly refer to as the satellite Olympics. So it’s a really good report. And you can look through it quickly at who’s accomplishing what, in what areas. And you can kind of see the gaps that we as a whole community still need to fill. And I think one thing that really came across to me from the report is the collaboration with allies and how important that collaboration with allies is.
Which actually takes me to our first question, from a CSIS intern, Ianni Nikas: How will cooperation with international allies work for NRO?
Dr. Scolese: Well, we’re doing a lot more with our international partners. We’ve always sort of had a relationship with the international community. And that’s growing, just like I mentioned commercial is growing. There is great capability that exists with our partners. And we want to take advantage of it. And they would like to work with us. So that’s a – that’s a great relationship. So we are greatly expanding that relationship. And I think it – the fact that we’re doing that makes people that want to keep us from doing things, makes them worry.
And to think about it, you know, we have now – typically we have launched from Florida and California. Over the last four or five years, we’ve launched from New Zealand with our partners there. We’ve launched from the U.K. And we’ve launched from Wallops Island, Virginia. So, you know, that shows international partnership. It also shows a diversification of our launch capabilities, that we can – you know, we can talk about. Because usually it has a little symbol on the rocket, so I can’t say it’s not NRO. (Laughter.) But, you know, I mean that’s just an indication of how much more broadly our international cooperation has grown.
Ms. Harding: Yeah. We have a question from Vivienne Machi from Aviation Week, that I’m actually going to throw to Kari first because I think it speaks to your background in commercial space as well as in the government areas.
Ms. Bingen: I thought I was the moderator today.
Ms. Harding: (Laughs.) Not going to get off that easy. So on Tuesday at CSIS, representatives of U.S. commercial remote sensing companies reflected upon the current challenges inherent to working with the U.S. government. You shared recently that the NRO is working with a broader swath of industry partners these days, including startups and new space companies. What does the NRO need from commercial space companies that it can’t already do? And what needs to be done, regulatory, policy-wise, for you to work with these vendors? So the reason I’m forcing Kari to answer this question first is because she’s been on both sides of this equation.
Ms. Bingen: Man, I thought I was going to be the questioner. (Laughter.) No, it’s a great question. And one of the areas that we emphasized in the report was the concept of integration. And, Chris, you mentioned this quite a bit in your discussion today is, you know, so long as commercial is thought of as the separate thing, it’s going to be a cost center, or folks are not going to want to use it. But if you can bring it in – you know, as you start with the baby steps, the ones that you’re thinking about, all the way up to the ones that you’ve got a deep partnership with, is if you can get those capabilities, experimenting with them, integrating them into your tasking cycles, your operations, into the platforms that your analysts use, it’s going to be much more seamless and integrated to them. And they’ll see the value of what commercial brings. But I think on the government side – and I apologize, I’m going to take some of your talk here is – you know, there are things that the government demands that maybe the commercial market doesn’t demand, or in a different way. So some of the security pieces, the supply chain pieces. Yes, the commercial sector cares about that, but the government really, really cares about that. But I’ll tee it up for you.
Dr. Scolese: I think Kari covered it well.
Ms. Harding: I knew she would.
Dr. Scolese: So the only thing that I’ll add, you know, from the commercial sector, is, you know, we’ve been talking about space systems, launchers. And – well, we’ve been talk about spacecraft delivering data. It’s broader than that. So everything Kari said. And we definitely want all of that, but to expand it. Commercial launch has helped us incredibly. Commercial spacecraft are allowing us to do a lot of things. It enabled our proliferated architecture. There’s also, you know, the data centers that we need, because we always talk about space. The cloud services are critical to helping us disaggregate our ground systems so that we don’t have one ground system operating everything. We can now disaggregate.
The developments in data processing, data science, artificial intelligence, those are all areas that we can take advantage of. And they have a lot of crossover, you know, between commercial and what we need on the government end. So I would just expand what Kari said to include those. So those are some of the things that we could we – could go off and take advantage of.
Ms. Harding: Great. OK.
From Jorge Carlos Arias Delgado from Florida International University: What has been one of the highlights of your career as an engineer and as the director of the NRO?
Dr. Scolese: (Laughs.) Well, as the director of the NRO I guess I can’t tell you. (Laughter.)
But, you know, actually, as one that does actually cover everything, you know, we do – and throughout my career, I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve been able to do some really neat things – build satellites that have looked at the Earth and left the solar system. You know, that’s pretty cool. But, you know, the other thing that I’ve really been very, very fortunate to have is to work with, you know, just great people. You know, just outstanding individuals. And I see them coming in every day. I see it in our interns and everybody else.
You know, they’re a team. Every organization I’ve been in, it’s been a team. People are driving with the same goals to deliver whatever it is we’re asked to deliver, and finding new and clever ways to go off and do it. So I would say that’s been, you know, the real highlight of my career, great people doing great things.
Ms. Harding: So, on that front, we have several questions that are coming in that are about that very question. If I wanted to work at the NRO, what are you looking for? What do you want in your people?
Ms. Scolese: Well, we clearly want smart, dedicated people that – in all fields. Because, I mean, we have to build, and design, and operate satellites. So clearly, you know, that’s our engineers, our scientists, our mathematicians. But we also have to know how much they cost, otherwise we won’t get our money, and we won’t know where our money is going, which would be bad. We need contracting officers. We need people that know how to hire people. So we need – we need all disciplines, basically, coming in to work at the – at the NRO.
But the main thing we really want are people who are really innovative and really committed to going off and doing things that have never been done before and making them a reality. I mean, that’s really what our job is, to go off and deliver the information that’s needed, because technology is going to change, and we have to keep up with it. But, more importantly, as long as there are people that want to do harm to the United States or our allies, there are also people who are capable of challenging us, either technologically or with better ways of hiding things. And we need to stay ahead of that. So we’re always going to be busy. We’re always going to be innovating. So there’ll never be a boring day at the NRO. (Laughter.)
Ms. Bingen: Can you – I’m going to pick up on Jorge’s question. I know you can’t tell us the details, but give us a hint. Like, what’s really at the leading edge? What excites you about what the NRO is doing, and where it’s really pushing the envelope for these – that young electrical engineer, or social scientist that wants to come work at NRO? What are they going to be doing?
Dr. Scolese: Cool stuff. (Laughter.) You know, it’s very difficult. I mean, you know, from a system standpoint about what we deliver is very hard. But from a technology standpoint, you can definitely say things. I mean, think about what we need in terms of optics. I mean, y’all know we’re looking at the Earth, right? I mean, you take a picture, we’ve been taking pictures. Got to have mirrors. You got to have lenses. You got to have stuff like that. You don’t have to build them all the same way. There are lots and lots of different ways of doing it.
I mean, look at Hubble Space Telescope, and look at James Webb, right? Hubble is a big monolithic mirror. James Webb is a bigger segmented mirror, right? We need to do those kinds of things. You know, think about the processing that we were talking about. Think about putting an NVIDIA chip, an AI system, into space, right? Those are things that that we have to go off and think about. You know, the detectors that we use need to be ever-more sensitive. Which means, you know, solid state – solid state physics is absolutely critical to what we’re doing. We want to make things smaller. So that’s necessary.
And think about the materials that we that we have to go off and use. Now you go off and you talk about those things. You got to have materials that are radiation hardened. They got to be able to take, you know, a relatively rough ride in the rocket. They have to deploy. So we need lots and lots of different capabilities out there. And we operate in a pretty severe regime. And then think about on the ground, where we’ve got to build networks that are, you know, reliable, but also hopefully invincible to cyberattacks. Because that’s the other gift that will keep on giving, right? We’re constantly going to be, you know, having to go off and deal with that.
And then think about programming. I mean, we always – you know, anybody that’s been an engineer or a scientist, or probably anybody nowadays, has programmed. But we got to get reliable programs that we can trust, right? So how do we go off and do that? So those are some of the areas that, without saying how we’re putting them all together, we’re working in. And we need to go off and really get really, really great people that want to go off and do that.
Ms. Harding: That’s one of my favorite things about the IC, and working in and with the IC, is that people say it’s impossible. You can’t do that. And they say, OK, hold my beer. (Laughter.) We’re going to figure it out. We’re going to make it happen.
So we have two questions that are on the subject of working with allies, especially allies that are not part of the Five Eyes construct. Jim Schwenk from Tawas USA says: Can you share your thoughts related to working with allied partners that are not within the Five Eyes, especially with all the additional allied space commands being available to enhance supply chain and resiliency through their industrial base?
And then from our very own Jacob Bradley, who’s one of the interns here at CSIS: Do you feel like your information-sharing and technology-sharing capabilities with our allies and partners lacks? So you’ve got the how are we cooperating together, and then how are we sharing information out as well?
Dr. Scolese: Yeah. So, you know, our supply chain is global now. I mean, there’s no question about it. And, you know, we’d like to work with our allies because we can, you know, have much higher confidence and trust in what’s going on there. So definitely, you know, we’re working across the spectrum, data sharing where we can. You mentioned, you know, the fact that there are a number of space commands. More importantly, there’s a lot of satellites that are – that are up there in space.
The better we can coordinate our operations in space, while it’s very big – (laughs) – there are still – there are still challenges that we – that we need to deal with, to avoid conjunctions. And the more we share, and we are, that information – typically, we work with Space Command that has that as their responsibility, space management, to get that done. But that also includes all of our allies and partner space development ones that want to operate responsibly in space, so that we can – we can go off and operate there. I think that pretty much covers it.
And then what was the other one, challenges in?
Ms. Harding: Sharing information back out.
Dr. Scolese: Yeah. I mean, we do share information. Now, again, it’s not the NRO. That’s not our job. I mean, we provide the information. But I do know that, you know, we do share. You have to ask –
Ms. Harding: You promised, we do share.
Dr. Scolese: Yes, we do share. You have to – you have to ask my colleagues at NGA and NSA how that’s done.
Ms. Harding: Right. One more from the audience before I turn it back over to Kari for sort of some closing thoughts, and we could have covered 15,000 more topics, so anything else that we’ve sort of forgotten in our hour today.
But Cal Biesecker from Defense Daily says: Regarding the 100 satellites that will have been launched since last December, are all of these NRO owned? And what will these new satellites enable you to do?
Dr. Scolese: So the answer is yes. They are NRO-owned, if you – if you mean it the sense that, is NRO going to be operating them? The answer is yes. And what are they going to be doing? They are part of the proliferated architecture to go off and get us reasonably high-resolution imagery of the Earth at a high rate of speed.
Ms. Harding: At a high rate of speed. This is the part about you can’t hide. Yeah, we’re constantly – this idea of persistence. Where you can get constant imagery of what’s going on in a particular place on the planet is just so important, especially if you are, like I was, an intel analyst sitting at their desk trying to figure out, like, has a thing happened yet? It’s invaluable. But over to Kari for final questions and thoughts.
Ms. Bingen: Well, and I am just – you know, when you just take a step back and think, I mean, this is a community that has long had few – little inventory to meet a whole variety of different needs. And now we’re getting to the point where you’re talking dozens to hundreds of satellites, where, in many respects, supply is less of an issue. I now start to think, gosh, that’s much more like Uber than it is, you know, the traditional way of doing business, right? (Laughter.) So how do we think about some of those different kind of models going forward? Or that we’re going to be so heavily reliant on the processing technology that you mentioned, artificial intelligence, automation, all those things.
We’re going to end – I’m going to give you the last word here, but I want to mention a couple of things. And, Chris, you mentioned at the very beginning, which is, you know, it’s the National Reconnaissance Office. There’s much that you – a tremendous amount that you do for providing national intelligence to senior leadership, providing tactical intelligence to warfighters. I remember being – doing trips – when we’ve done congressional trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, and those folks on the edge were receiving data from NRO satellites. But you also have a – really a civil mission there as well, as you’re supporting such a range of customers as well that are not within your traditional national security circle. So I’m going to throw that out at you.
But then also just mention, in the spirit of really being more transparent and talking about what the organization does, is we plan to follow this discussion up with some of your leadership team as well, and different aspects of the NRO mission. So we’re really looking forward to hosting other NRO leaders in the future here within the towers. But, OK, so last words is: Remind us of what you do beyond national security. And then also, looking forward, what does NRO look like in the next 10 to 20 years? Let’s end on that.
Dr. Scolese: OK. Well, that’s pretty good. So I’ll go back to it’s all about the data that we deliver, and making that available to the appropriate users. So to the civil community, I mean, if you think about some of the challenges that they have and where they need information quickly and reliably, it’s if a natural disaster occurs. And typically, you have limited communications, limited ability to move around.
And you want to know, to a first order, how bad it is and where are the ways that you can move in order to get resources to the people and the communities that need them. If you have the data and you’re delivering it at the pace that it’s needed, you can do that quickly. That’s part of what the NRO does. As well as supporting, you know, other activities. You know, we have a limited role in providing data for climate change and what have you. But I would say that’s a perfect example of where, you know, we’re in there.
You know, what’s the future going to look like in 10 or 20 years? You know, I’m always, you know, reminded about, you know, people that predict the future. Arthur C. Clarke had a good quote; look it up if you don’t know it. It usually involves, you know, getting it wrong. But you know, I believe the NRO will – there’s still going to be a need to understand what’s going on on this planet, what are humans doing and what is the planet doing. And you know, we’re going to need to continue to adapt to deal with that, and some of the things that we talked about are going to be there. But the one thing I do know is it’ll be a different generation of people that are up there – or, out there; maybe up there, too – that will be doing this, and you know, we need to continue to have, you know, really outstanding people going in there and making sure that we can deliver the information that’s going to be needed in 10 or 20 years, which is going to be different information to that’s needed today.
Ms. Bingen: And Emily and I have both been fortunate we’ve been able to walk the halls of the organization that you lead. And to your point, you know, these engineers, these scientists, the others that work there, I mean, they’re excited to be there. The mission and the technology is really cool. So thank you for all of your leadership and everything that you’re doing to keep our nation safe.
And if we can also – we’d like to thank some of the staff that supported this event today – so Christina Nordby, Kendra LaFave, and our fantastic streaming and broadcasting team here.
So again, Dr. Scolese, thank you.
Dr. Scolese: Thank you.
Ms. Harding: Thank you. (Applause.)
(END.)