[palmer]

They've probably got the same virus that has infected NASA.

[Ben Hecks]

Thanks for the post!

[FairOpinion]

Interesting article, butI think it's very much slanted against the NRO, not mentioning any of their successes. Since it is such a top secret organization, it's hard to know, or rather impossible to know what is really going on. They may need to reassess things, this one program may be in trouble, but I am sure that we need those secret satellites.

They are certainly no substitute for human intelligence and other things, but are an integral part of our intelligence operations.

I doubt that there is a "shift away" from NRO, just that previously all other type of intelligence was pretty much ignored and 9-11 demonstrated that even the best satellite imagery or electronic intercepts, or whatever they do, are no substitute for intelligence on the ground.

[FairOpinion]

Oh, and as for the cost. People always ignore the right comparison: how much does just one terrorist attack cost us vs. the cost of preventing it.

The cost of prevention doesn't even compare to the cost of attacks, especially if we include the direct and indirect costs. I think the 9-11 attacks cost us over $80 B in direct cost and much more in cost to the economy, the airlines, lost travel, and so on.

[Texas_Jarhead]

All NRO need do to reduce cost is outsource this stuff to India or China. </ sarcasm>

[FairOpinion]

Good grief! I just looked at US News website, and they not only made the bad judgment of publishing this article, but they have this as their cover story, along with similar stories bashing military satellite programs.

The Watchdogs aren't watching

Birds of a (pricey) feather (The Air Force's satellite program is also costly and riddled with problems)

[wideminded]

The thing I find confusing is why spy satellites have seemingly not helped to find the WMD in Iraq. I am assuming that Saddam still had major WMD programs. Yet we don't seem to have a single clue about where he stashed the evidence. The satellites also didn't seem to help find Scuds in Gulf War I. And they seemed to have had problems identifying armored vehicles in the Kosovo war. Apparently they can focus on particular areas at particular times but:

1. We don't seem to have adequate methods for scanning an entire country to search for particular patterns.

2. There seems to be some problem in following a situation continuously to spot changes and movement.

[George W. Bush]

The failure of NRO is, in part, spurring the development of long-range robotic spy drones. The newer ones are being designed for stealth, to evade radar and to mask any heat signature. The new visual stealth technology (LCD panels on at least the underside of the plane with cameras on top to relay a picture of the overhead background) will probably debut on these robotic drones. Then they'll be largely invisible even at close range to visual, infrared, and radar.

I expect that NRO will become increasingly irrelevant as the flexibility and capability of robotic drones increase. The cost of the giant spy satellites, their vulnerability to anti-satellite weapons, their reliability problems and their generally predictable orbital schedule (allowing the enemy to hide assets when they pass) are pitted against the lower cost and flexibility of drones.

Drones are the future.

[Publius6961]

Ok you convinced me!

Let's get rid of satellites, the NRO, the NSA, the CIA and the FBI.

Did I forget anything?

Inshallah!!

where are the WMDs dammit!

[Nick Danger]

One of the more brilliant comments I ever heard on this phenomenon came from IBM's Thomas Watson, Jr.

After breifing the press and the securities analysts about IBM's latest reorganization into a number of independent business units, he was aked, "But didn't you have a big reorganization only five years ago where you centralized everything? Would you say now that that was a mistake?"

His answer was that neither centralization nor decentralization was the right answer. The right answer was to periodically shake things up, to break down all the sclerosis, empire, and fiefdoms that would accumulate under either system, by shifting back and forth between them at surprise intervals.

This is essentially what Bush did with Homeland Security. He took a bunch of brain-dead bureacracies that hadn't had an idea in ten years, and ripped everything out by the roots and planted it somewhere else.

Rumsfeld is doing the same thing in the Pentagon. It has the brass hopping mad, but that's the point... break up the fiefdoms, identify fresh talent that was being overlooked, and get some juices flowing again.

The intelligence community probably needs a dose of the same thing, as does the Department of State.