“People at the NRO and others hiding in unmarked cubicles in other parts of northern Virginia started breathing into bags like never before,” said one DoD about the 2018 SSA transparency policy.

Wallis Laughrey, Raytheon Vice President for Space and Airborne Systems, says it is possible that the Air Force will keep both Raytheon and Northrop Grumman as Next-Gen OPIR GEO payload providers “if funding is available.”

US may face destabilizing Russian interference with NTMs “while demand for strategic intelligence on Russian strategic nuclear forces from space-based NTMs goes up significantly,” says Michael Gleason.

“I don’t trust the Air Force, on its own, given its existing structure to properly prioritize space,” Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Adam Smith says.

Large networks of small, cheap satellites derived from commercial technology would be harder for China or Russia to kill than a handful of expensive, exquisite military-unique birds. But who gets to build it?

“Launching hundreds of cheap satellites each year as a substitute” for current milspace systems “will result in failure on America’s worst day if we relay on them alone,” Wilson says.