Rockville, MD. –
Amid an increasingly complex threat environment and rising demand for the data it collects from its overhead architecture, the National Reconnaissance Office is challenging the commercial sector to innovate with a focus on agility and speed, as well as technology that can scale to meet mission needs.
"We have considerable capability, but it's not infinite,” Bill Adkins, principal deputy director of the NRO, said Thursday at the AFCEA INSA Intelligence & National Security Summit. He noted the importance of building speed and agility into NRO systems in order to reprioritize capabilities in response to real-world events, including threats to its space systems from adversaries and crises and conflicts around the world. “Getting the data to our users is more important than ever."
The NRO is building speed and agility through its space-based architecture, combining its traditional, exquisite satellites with proliferated systems that add resilience and persistence. Over the past few years, the NRO has put more than 200 satellites on orbit, resulting in a massive increase in the amount of data it collects and delivers. While that offers significant advantages, it also poses a challenge.
"We're trying to find more needles in bigger haystacks, and we don't have enough humans to go through all this,” Adkins said. “So we have to figure out how to leverage tools like AI to be able to get through that data at speed and at scale to support our customers."
Adkins credited partnerships with commercial providers and advancements in commercial launch operations, spacecraft, buses, and other components with the NRO’s ability to proliferate its architecture efficiently and affordably.
"The government engineers saw the value in what's going on in the commercial world, what was out there and available to buy at scale, and marry that up with government-specific payloads,” Adkins said. “Integrating those together enabled the proliferation at a price point and a performance point that was feasible and affordable."
Adkins called on the industry professionals in the audience to keep innovating, emphasizing that the NRO needs more than just good ideas.
"I think a big problem now is scale," Adkins said, "whether it's more satellites, more data, more of everything. While people may have a great idea, alone that's not enough. It's got to scale so it can be implemented in a mission. Commercial has a huge part to play in that.”
Adkins noted that the NRO’s expertise in acquisitions and the availability of different contracting models offer opportunities to a broad array of commercial providers. Broad Agency Announcements, Other Transaction Authorities, and Commercial Solutions Openings are just some of the mechanisms for bringing new ideas and technologies to the NRO.
"If there's one thing I think we would like to have, it is more competition, more competitors — not just to come in to show us what your latest, greatest thing is, but to be able to take something that actually has meaningful mission impact and be able to scale that."