WASHINGTON, DC –
Amid an “incredible technological revolution,” the National Reconnaissance Office is working to develop the best systems that will give the best information possible to policymakers, intelligence analysts, and warfighters, NRO Director Chris Scolese said Thursday at a conference hosted by the Center for Strategic & International Studies and the Hudson Institute.
“We need to take advantage of those technologies and deliver them to the nation to minimize the challenges and threats that are out there,” Dr. Scolese said. “Not a trivial task!”
The conference, entitled “Delivering Space Capabilities for Warfighting Advantage,” drew more than 200 leaders from the space and defense industries and military, policy, and legislative communities, as well as an online audience. It focused on the changing needs of military space operations. Dr. Scolese noted that one way the NRO is seeing the evolution of space operations is in broader engagement with commercial partners.
“One of the big changes was commercial launch,” he said, explaining that industry helped reduce the cost of launch and increased its frequency, enabling the NRO to experiment more.
“When launch was expensive, you didn't want to put a cheap thing on an expensive booster. That just didn't make sense,” he said. “Now, we can put spacecraft up there at a higher pace, with shorter lives, to demonstrate technologies, demonstrate capabilities, and really allow us to mature those things that we're going to want sometime in the future. But we don't want to wait years and years. We want to get that proven now so the community can see the value of whatever technology it is.”
Lower launch costs helped enable the NRO to proliferate its overhead architecture. Over the past two years, the NRO has put more than 200 satellites on orbit, adding capability and resilience through shorter revisit times, increased observational persistence, and faster processing and transmission of data. That’s made it harder for our adversaries to hide, Dr. Scolese said.
“Overall, it's allowed us to have a much more efficient architecture and deliver a much better product to the nation and the communities that rely on us.”
The advancement of commercial space operations has increased competition for attracting talent to the NRO, Dr. Scolese acknowledged. But potential hires, including at universities and job fairs, are strongly compelled to the work the NRO does.
“When we tell them about our mission, there’s an excitement there,” he said. “And then when we can bring them in and they can meet the people there, they can see the commitment and the dedication and the excitement of our folks, and they want to come and work for us.”
The NRO is also working to build its own pipeline of talent, such as with an internship program that began in 2020 and attracts students from a competitive pool of applicants.
“We actually engage them in the design, development, and testing of the satellites, or the operation of the satellites, or in the research and technology areas that we're involved in. They get to see it, and they usually come back,” he said. ‘We want to work with them and make sure that they see what their future is at the NRO.”
To date, the NRO has hired about 35 percent of eligible former interns. To better compete with industry for talent, the NRO implemented STEM pay in 2023 to offer higher levels of compensation for in-demand, mission-critical technical skills. It also offers opportunities for current employees to obtain advanced degrees. But Dr. Scolese said those are not the biggest draws to working at the NRO.
“The main thing that keeps people engaged at the NRO is the mission. You’re doing something that has real value to the nation and the world,” he said. “That is number one. And number two, we are pushing technology every day. What engineer and what scientist and what mathematician doesn't want to be there, taking on the hardest problems and solving them?”