US official confident about Boeing spy satellite
Reuters, 10.28.03, 5:10 PM ET
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
[EXCERPT]
WASHINGTON, Oct 28 (Reuters) – The Pentagon mapping and imagery
agency on Tuesday said it was "very comfortable" about next-
generation spy satellites being built by Boeing Co. after $4
billion in cash infusions and a major overhaul.
"Right now, the cost schedule and performance parameters are in
balance. We may not fund everything that people had in their
mind’s eye way back when, but it will be a very healthy, robust
program," retired Air Force Gen. James Clapper, director of the
National Imagery and Mapping Agency, told reporters at a briefing.
Lawmakers this year backed plans to overhaul the classified
Future Imagery Architecture program, slated to cost $10 billion
to $25 billion, despite major cost overruns and delays.
The Pentagon’s Defense Science Board underscored the extent of
FIA’s woes in a scathing report, concluding that the program,
which was designed to improve satellite coverage by orbiting a
larger number of spacecraft, was "not executable."
Clapper said big improvements had been made since the science
board report, including creation of a joint management office run
by NIMA and the National Reconnaissance Office.
"I’m very comfortable with it now," Clapper said of FIA, which
will be equipped with digital optical and radar sensors.
He also dismissed as "hyperbole" concerns that delays in new
programs, coupled with the age of existing satellites could
result in a gap in U.S. satellite capability.
"I suppose you can always postulate some series of catastrophes
that would pose this threat of a gap … or the risk of the
nation going blind, but I frankly don’t see a whole lot of prospect
for that," Clapper said.
But he said it was important to ensure that the U.S. was not reliant
on a single satellite system, one main reason Clapper said he backed
increased use of commercial imagery.
"I think a lot of this gap talk is a bit overblown," he said.
> WASHINGTON, Oct 28 (Reuters) – The Pentagon mapping and imagery
> agency on Tuesday said it was "very comfortable" about next-
> generation spy satellites being built by Boeing Co. after $4
> billion in cash infusions and a major overhaul.
> "Right now, the cost schedule and performance parameters are in
> balance. We may not fund everything that people had in their
> mind’s eye way back when, but it will be a very healthy, robust
> program," retired Air Force Gen. James Clapper, director of the
> National Imagery and Mapping Agency, told reporters at a briefing.
I’m going to try to get a transcript of all of this, but apparently
the briefing was at "a Defense Writers Group breakfast."
Also
Well, maybe worry a little bit.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/1000470.asp
‘Eyes in the sky’ flying blind?
By Lisa Myers, Doug Pasternak and the NBC News
Investigative Unit, NBC News
2 December 2003
[EXCERPTS]
The National Reconnaissance Office launched a new ocean
surveillance satellite Tuesday morning in California. Experts say
it’s sorely needed because there are too few U.S. spy satellites
to track all the world’s current dangers. An NBC News
investigation has found there are major problems with the old
satellites already in orbit.
MANY SPY SATELLITE experts fear that the planned next-generation
satellite system, which has encountered technical troubles and
massive cost overruns and is now years behind schedule, will not
be delivered before the old satellites die out.
[snip]
"The United States spy satellite program is in something of a
crisis," says [Loren] Thompson [of the Lexington Institute].
"Its photoreconnaissance satellites are having trouble keeping up
with the threat, and the enemy has learned how to hide a lot of
its transmissions from the electronic eavesdropping satellites,"
he observes.
Moreover, the targets are no longer static missile silos; they’re
terrorists on the move. "Today we’re looking for guerrillas, we’re
looking for terrorists. Finding those sorts of targets with our
existing satellites is nearly impossible," says Thompson.
MORE SATELLITES NEEDED
And there simply aren’t enough photographic or eavesdropping
satellites up there now to cover all the world’s hot spots.
National security sources tell NBC News that U.S. spy satellites
were pulled away from tracking al-Qaida in Afghanistan because of
the war in Iraq. And, on some days, sources say the United States
has no intelligence satellites at all watching Russia’s nuclear
arsenal. "Our spy satellites are so few in number," says Thompson,
"that even when we have them all trained on a single country, most
of the time they’re out of range and can’t see what we need them
to look at."
How can this happen? A former director of the National Security
Agency tasked with eavesdropping for the U.S. military and
intelligence community blames the agency in charge of building
satellites, the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, for
squandering resources. "We’re not getting what we could get for
the money and we’re probably not getting the performance we used
to get."
[snip]
…former NSA director Lt. Gen. William Odom and others say the
NRO’s focus on developing intelligence-collection capabilities
solely deployed in space has hindered the nation’s ability to
gather critical intelligence. "The NRO will spend everything it
can in space at the expense of collection systems on the ground,
in the air and at sea," says Odom.
[This is very reminiscent of the late John Millis' remarks about
"the agency that eats the NFIP" five years ago:
http://jya.com/hpsci-millis.htm
OTHER SPY TECHNOLOGIES
Satellites still have a crucial role to play, but the advancements
of new technologies are making their utility far more limited than
they once were. In order to eavesdrop on fiber-optic lines, for
instance, the lines need to be physically tapped on the ground.
These communication modes do not provide signals that can be
picked up by spy satellites lurking overhead.
[snip]
The [Future Imagery Architecture] delays are not inconsequential.
Intelligence sources and military space experts say the delays in
delivery could cause a significant satellite gap. "It would expose
us to significant risks because it would interrupt our ability to
cover most areas of the world with high-resolution imagery," says
William Schneider Jr., chairman of the Defense Science Board. "And
because we are very dependent on that imagery to make intelligence
assessments, it would severely weaken the ability of the president
to have a full picture of what’s going on," he warns.
[Which implies interesting things about the net utility of
US non-overhead-imaging intelligence.]
TESTING LACKING
The problems with the next-generation satellites under development,
says Schneider, were very significant. "Systems were being designed
that could not be built for the price they were estimated to cost."
As a result testing was drastically reduced on the new satellites.
"The lack of testing made it impossible for you to verify your
systems design, and because you couldn’t verify your systems design,
you didn’t know if it was going to work when you completed the
construction of the satellite," he says.
Meanwhile, the NRO insists these problems are being corrected and
that $4 billion is being poured into the $25 billion program to get
back on track.
[snip]
Let’s hope the NRO is right about the "corrected" part.
> Well, maybe worry a little bit.
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/1000470.asp
Seems to be a popular theme in the newsrooms:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/business/04boeing.html
Boeing Lags in Building Spy Satellites
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
December 4, 2003
[EXCERPTS]
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 – The Boeing Company is running more than
a year behind schedule and billions of dollars over cost on a
highly classified program to build the next generation of
reconnaissance satellites, forcing the government to shift an
estimated $4 billion from other spy programs, senior government
officials said on Wednesday…
[snip -- most of the story is a rehash of stuff already reported]
Last July, Boeing was denied more than $1 billion in Pentagon
orders after it was found in possession of proprietary documents
from Lockheed Martin, but those documents were related to a 1998
competition to develop a rocket for military satellites rather
than to the next-generation satellite program itself.
[Early on in the stolen-documents story, there was a report in the
5 May 2003 Wall Street Journal that some FIA-related ones were
involved: http://tinyurl.com/xp84. I haven't seen anything more
about that.]
…other senior government officials, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said they thought there was still no more than a 50-50
chance that Boeing would meet its new scaled-back goal for
launching the first of the new generation of satellites in 2006.