Nuclear Weapons

FY 2008 NRO Budget Book Released

11.06.08 | 1 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

The National Reconnaissance Office has released a heavily redacted version of the Fiscal Year 2008 Congressional Budget Justification Book for the National Reconnaissance Program.  It provides a few intriguing glimpses of the intelligence agency in transition.

“Ten years ago, a user might be satisfied with an image or a signal intercept; now users demand fused, multidiscipline, multi-phenomenology information tailored to a specific location or area of interest,” wrote Donald M. Kerr, then-director of the NRO.

“The mission of the NRO remains the same– the research, development, acquisition, launch and operation of overhead reconnaissance systems and other missions as directed to solve intelligence problems,” the budget document stated. “However, the focus of the NRO and the way it executes the mission will change.  NRO’s priority for the future is to increase the value of the information its systems can deliver, chiefly through a variety of improvements in ground systems for rapid, adaptive, multisensor tasking, processing, exploitation, cross-cueing, and dissemination.”

Development, acquisition and operation of intelligence satellites are still the main business of the NRO.

“Careful stewardship of limited budget resources is increasingly critical as the NRO undertakes the daunting task of designing and building the next generation of satellite systems,” the document said.

“In general, IMINT [imagery intelligence] acquisition programs meet established performance requirements but are less successful in achieving cost and schedule goals,” the document acknowledged.

The NRO budget book was released in redacted (declassified) form in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Federation of American Scientists.

publications
See all publications
Nuclear Weapons
Report
Nuclear Notebook: Russian Nuclear Weapons, 2023

The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons, and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987.. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]

05.08.23 | 1 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Video Indicates that Lida Air Base Might Get Russian “Nuclear Sharing” Mission in Belarus

On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]

04.19.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Was There a U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accident At a Dutch Air Base? [no, it was training, see update below]

A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.

04.03.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
STRATCOM Says China Has More ICBM Launchers Than The United States – We Have Questions

In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]

02.10.23 | 6 min read
read more