On April 3, the National Reconnaissance Office successfully launched a classified intelligence satellite into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Notwithstanding the usual operations security measures, amateur satellite trackers were able to locate the satellite in orbit within a few hours and even to videotape its passage overhead.
Last week’s launch is the first of four scheduled launches of NRO satellites in the next five months. Last year, the NRO launched six satellites over a seven month period.
“We are in the middle of a launch campaign with an unprecedented operational tempo across national security space programs,” said Gil Klinger, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, at a March 8 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee.
“Many of our space capabilities have become the ‘dial tone’ of national security,” Mr. Klinger said. “And like the dial tone of our telephones, we take their availability and presence for granted, noticing only when there is an unplanned service interruption.”
By intelligence community standards, the NRO has demonstrated exceptional financial management, said Betty Sapp, NRO principal deputy director.
“For the third year in a row, the NRO received a clean audit opinion on our Financial Statements, a truly unprecedented accomplishment within the IC,” she said at the March 8 hearing.
The NCARS Act would amend the National Security Act of 1947 to establish a durable, coordinated federal approach to national resilience.
Federal data is a diverse ecosystem with well over 500,000 datasets – including those tackling Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD).
To build an affordable, modern grid powered by clean energy, we need more than the right policies; we must also upgrade—and, in some cases, redesign—PUCs to regulate in the public interest and effectively implement new policies.
X-Labs seek to expand on what FROs have shown is possible: the generation of foundational infrastructure for entire new fields of research science.