Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: PLEASE FIX THE BROKEN NRO or better yet the admin.
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 09:20:24 -0400
A comment from a very experienced Dcer: "The problem is not with NRO. The problem is with congress failing to give the Pentagon and DoD the funding for the programs and R & D. This is a very short sighted govt. Most of the DoD R & D funding has been redirected to homeland security. The DoD is working on a shoestring. I hope that makes you feel better. " ------ Forwarded Message From: "John F. McMullen" <observer () westnet com> Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 08:14:25 -0400 (EDT) To: johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com Cc: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>, Subject: [osint] PLEASE FIX THE BROKEN NRO
From OSINT
---------- Forwarded message ---------- "The National Reconnaissance Office knows how to build one hell of an office building. They have the nicest office complex in all of America, granite and marble, soaring stainless steel and glass, and mahogany desks in private offices.... But where are those revolutionary satellites that they promised us?" That question was posed was Dave Thompson, CEO of the space industry contractor Spectrum Astro, in an unusually revealing, iconoclastic and blunt speech at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs on April 11. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is the intelligence agency that designs, builds and operates U.S. intelligence satellites. "Over the past decade, the NRO has posted a sorry decline into mediocrity...," Mr. Thompson said. "The NRO has suffered a shocking decline in the technical performance of its satellites over the past several years. They haven't told you about that because it's been kept behind those doors." Mr. Thompson went on to recite a litany of NRO technical failures which have not previously been publicly disclosed. "At an unclassified level, let me describe how serious this is, and this is only the tip of the iceberg. Satellites, where the primary mission payload failed a few days after launch. Satellites -- where components got so hot that they actually melted causing mission failure due to thermal analysis failures, something that we've known about since the 1960's. Satellites -- which after spending billions of dollars in development cannot perform their basic housekeeping functions, which we've been demonstrating again since the 1960's. Satellites -- which again, after spending billions of dollars in development, the primary payload does not meet its basic performance specifications. It's the NRO's own version of the Hubble Space Telescope... Many satellites never even got launched as they meandered their way through years of technical and program management mismanagement. Yet no one was held accountable." "I can't even describe many more technical disasters, as it would be too revealing. Everything that I just described to you, and much more, was just swept quietly under the rug." "Please fix the broken NRO," Mr. Thompson concluded. See the text of his speech here: http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/thompson.html Other background on the NRO may be found here: http://www.fas.org/irp/nro/index.html ------ End of Forwarded Message For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- IP: PLEASE FIX THE BROKEN NRO or better yet the admin. Dave Farber (May 01)