NRO Director Chris Scolese highlighted speed, innovation, and strong partnerships as keys to the NRO’s success in a June 18 address to the Maryland Space Business Roundtable.
Addressing an audience of more than 250 professionals from industry, government, and academia, Scolese discussed how the NRO is leveraging partnerships to manage the challenges of a contested space environment, while capturing its biggest opportunities. “The NRO is moving faster than ever before,” Scolese said, “enhancing design and manufacturing, diversifying launch capabilities, managing vast data collections, and forging new business relationships to build capability; and doing it all at speeds that were not possible even five years ago.”
According to Scolese, the NRO’s many stakeholders – including the warfighter, policymaker, and first responder – rely on the NRO to deliver data faster, and in formats useful for their application. To deliver capability faster, he said the NRO is “looking at everything from R&D, to acquisition, launch, and operations; providing opportunities for new organizations from government, academia, and industry to surface innovative technologies and to rapidly demonstrate the creation of new capabilities.”
Scolese emphasized that partnerships have evolved to become a true strategic advantage for the NRO, by increasing capability, improving resilience, and providing opportunities for new ideas to flourish. He pointed, in particular, to academia and commercial enterprises – including new entrants with emerging technologies and tools – with whom the NRO is working to surface new ideas that enhance mission success.
“Our commercial collaborations are flourishing because we have broken down barriers to doing business with the NRO to take advantage of commercially-available data as well as commercially-available products,” Scolese said. “This is enhancing the viability of the commercial sector even as it delivers greater efficiency and effectiveness for the government.”
Such changes are enabling the NRO to accelerate the incorporation of commercial innovations into its mission, helping it to achieve some of the fastest design-to-launch results in its 60-plus year history.
Scolese also pointed to the NRO's new Space Reconnaissance Lab, launched just 18 months ago, as a hub where the public and private sectors can converge, facilitating the deep integration of novel technologies into the nation’s space architecture.
“Technological innovation is critical to our success,” he emphasized. “Wherever it’s taking place and for any purpose – be it national security, the advancement of science, or commercial application – the NRO is positioning itself at the forefront of the latest thinking in order to accomplish our mission.”
Scolese shared that the NRO’s future investment needs will include increasingly sensitive detectors with greater bandwidth, improved materials, and faster computers. He also referenced the NRO’s need for cutting-edge skills and tools in artificial intelligence and machine learning to make its systems and data more accessible and effective.
Scolese also spoke to automation as another critical area of innovation for the NRO. As additional satellites and new phenomenologies are brought forth, together with the increasing sensitivity of these assets, he said the NRO will be producing exponentially more data. “To efficiently use the constellation, we’ll need to more deeply understand the data it’s feeding us, and deliver that data to the user in the most useful format. Advanced data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robust networks will allow us to accomplish these goals efficiently and responsively," Scolese said.
As he closed his remarks, Scolese returned to the significance of partnership, emphasizing the importance of working together to ensure our nation’s leadership in space. “Make no mistake, we need you,” he told the audience, “your ingenuity, your problem-solving, and your persistence as only this community can deliver.
“I invite you to bring your best ideas, your most ambitious concepts, and most advanced capabilities to the table – be it launch, operations, an innovative technology, or tool. You will find the NRO has an attentive ear. If we can adapt your solution to enhance and assure mission success, we will.”