A New Directive for the National Reconnaissance Office
Last month, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates issued a new DoD Directive (pdf) on the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that builds, launches and operates U.S. intelligence satellites. The new directive, which is unclassified, cancels and replaces an earlier directive (pdf) from 1964, which was originally classified Top Secret.
The new directive generally describes the mission, organization and management of the NRO, and does so with a fair amount of detail. It makes explicit, for example, the fact that the NRO is funded through both the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and the Military Intelligence Program (MIP), reflecting the agency’s dual role in supporting national policymakers and providing support to military operations.
The directive also makes reference to the normally sensitive subject of intelligence liaison relationships, stating, for example, that the NRO Director should “leverage overhead reconnaissance capabilities of foreign partners with whom NRO has an established relationship….”
See DoD Directive 5105.23, “National Reconnaissance Office (NRO),” June 28, 2011.
The very existence of the NRO itself was considered a national security secret until September 1992, when it was declassified by then-NRO Director Martin Faga. Some of his erstwhile colleagues “still haven’t forgiven me,” Mr. Faga said recently.
Satellite imagery of RAF Lakenheath reveals new construction of a security perimeter around ten protective aircraft shelters in the designated nuclear area, the latest measure in a series of upgrades as the base prepares for the ability to store U.S. nuclear weapons.
It will take consistent leadership and action to navigate the complex dangers in the region and to avoid what many analysts considered to be an increasingly possible outcome, a nuclear conflict in East Asia.
Getting into a shutdown is the easy part, getting out is much harder. Both sides will be looking to pin responsibility on each other, and the court of public opinion will have a major role to play as to who has the most leverage for getting us out.
How the United States responds to China’s nuclear buildup will shape the global nuclear balance for the rest of the century.