When new entities fail, it’s most often due to the fact they don’t do what they do better than their competition (differentiated value proposition is the business term) and they lack investment in talent and technology. But there are other challenges.

“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.

NGA and NRO “have significantly overlapping Venn diagrams,” one industry source said, and they are still trying to “sort that through.” He added, “It’s not a nice clean line.”

“To be quite honest most of our space systems are not the leading edge technologies,” Troy Meink, head of GEOINT at NRO, said. “We’ve not kept up in many cases with the commercial environment.”

Modern space strategy, with its focus on resilience, requires “understanding the capabilities of each satellite and managing them as a constellation:” Jane Chappell, vice president of Raytheon’s Global Intelligence Solutions (GIS) mission area.

We’ve already got SMC and the NRO. What the heck will a Space Development Agency do that’s different, and why.

NGA HQ: The low grading noise you could barely hear yesterday was the sound of the tectonic plates of American intelligence shifting as the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Agency got new directors. The nugget of news is that Vice Adm. Bob Sharp replaces Robert Cardillo as NGA director and President Trump… Keep reading →

For insights about how the US military currently views the realities of space war, it’s helpful to consider the recently concluded annual Schriever War Game.

The scope of the Space Force appears to be growing, with a new Air Force memo spelling out all of the offices that will fall under the proposed new command.

The “separate but equal” sixth service (don’t forget the Coast Guard) will be created in stages, because, as Pence finally admitted publicly, it “requires Congressional action.” And, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Paul Selva, admitted today, if Congress passed the relevant laws in a year that would “unprecedented.”