{"id":15749,"date":"2025-07-17T06:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T06:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/15749\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T06:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T06:49:07","slug":"defense-policy-nominee-has-advocated-merging-nro-and-ssc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/15749\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense Policy Nominee Has Advocated Merging NRO and SSC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Combining the National Reconnaissance Office with the Space Force\u2019s Space Systems Command could help turbocharge national security space acquisition, argues Mark Berkowitz, the Trump administration\u2019s nominee to be assistant secretary of defense for space policy, in a newly published essay he coauthored.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Berkowitz is awaiting Senate confirmation and was not available for comment. The essay appears in the book, \u201cContested Space: Ensuring Effective U.S. National Security Space Capabilities in an Increasingly Contested Environment,\u201d which was recently published<\/a> by by the nonprofit National Security Space Association.\u00a0\t\t<\/p>\n

In the essay, Berkowitz and coauthor Chris Williams, a former Defense Department official, argues that the Trump administration should tighten the relationship between the two organizations, including a potential merger, to improve coordination between the Space Force and the intelligence community with regard to space technology. A closer relationship<\/a> would help Space Force acquirers benefit from NRO\u2019s special authorities and vast experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Williams spoke July 15 at the Washington D.C. book launch, along with other contributors. He said\u00a0merging NRO with Space Systems Command, the Space Force\u2019s main acquisition organization, would create a \u201csingle, agile\u201d entity to \u201cenable closer collaboration, utilize best of breed acquisition practices and result in more integrated mission architectures.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A single organization could \u201cpromote a common culture focused on rapidly delivering advanced space capabilities to national and defense customers, enhance technology sharing, improve communications between the various [acquisition] organizations and more,\u201d Williams said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Space Force could also benefit from a merger because it would be able to leverage the NRO\u2019s special purchasing rules, Williams added. \u201cOne of the reasons the NRO is so effective is because of those very unique acquisition authorities and the Space Force does not have similar authorities in many respects,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s worth looking at how those might be blended.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

A less radical alternative: Moving Space Systems Command from its Los Angeles Air Force Base headquarters in California to co-locate with the NRO in Chantilly, Va. That too could be controversial, Williams acknowledged. Co-location would \u201cenable closer collaboration and integration of acquisition activities \u2026 and promote efforts to create synergies, both within DOD and between DOD and the NRO space programs that could potentially result in long term cost savings.\u201d\u00a0\t\t<\/p>\n

He and Berkowitz suggest other ways to forge tighter bonds: a common training curriculum and career path for acquisition professionals and \u201cshared adoption of common systems engineering, modeling and simulation architecture,\u201d said Williams. \u201cIt\u2019s very wonky, but important stuff.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

Williams insisted their essay, and indeed all the ideas in the book as a whole, are not prescriptive. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t say, \u2018You must do X, Y, and Z.\u2019\u201d Instead, the authors lay out policy options the administration should consider, leaving it up to policymakers to weigh the pros and cons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Merging or even co-locating Space Systems Command with the NRO would be a massive undertaking, Williams acknowledged in a short interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. Politics, as well as policy considerations would come into play. Congress would have to approve any reorganization and local politicians would protest, he said: \u201cDon\u2019t take that out of my backyard!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Others would argue that the costs and the disruption of a cross-country move would kneecap Space Systems Command for the crucial years running up to 2027 \u2014 the date by which China\u2019s \u00a0President Xi Jinping has demanded that the People\u2019s Liberation Army be ready to take Taiwan by force if needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dislocation, moving people across the country, that\u2019s a big deal,\u201d Williams said, \u201cThere\u2019s a cost associated with it, and there\u2019s also the time and energy that\u2019s spent. The question is, is it the right thing to do? Are those near-term costs worth the long-term benefits? Those are decisions the folks in the government have to make.\u201d \u00a0\t\t<\/p>\n

When the Space Force was set up in the first Trump administration, the intelligence agencies and their oversight committees on Capitol Hill successfully fended off<\/a> proposals to move NRO into the new service.<\/p>\n

But Williams said the new administration is open to proposals for disrupting the status quo.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Trump is anything, he\u2019s a rock-the-boat kind of guy,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThis administration is interested in doing things differently \u2026 so maybe we\u2019ll see some of these issues addressed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Williams noted that many Defense Department posts remain vacant, even six months after the inauguration. New Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink, a former Air Force officer, spent the past decade at NRO, including the past five as its deputy director.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the new administration starts filling out some of their key people, as those people start occupying their new jobs and engaging together, my hope is they\u2019ll have more time and energy to devote to this,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0\t\t<\/p>\n

Former NRO Director Jeffrey Harris, a member of NSSA\u2019s advisory board, welcomed the proposal, pointing out that the NRO had originally been founded to ensure the project to build the nation\u2019s first photographic spy satellite, Corona, would be completed rapidly and avoid interservice disputes. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Army was trying to get their booster [rocket] to work, while the Air Force was trying to get theirs \u2026 And President [Eisenhower] finally said, \u2018This is actually sort of important. Why don\u2019t we organize to get the job done?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so the NRO was formed in 1960.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As an intelligence agency, the NRO functions under different rules, out of the public eye, and can draw \u201cthe best and the brightest\u201d from across the community, including the Air Force, Space Force, CIA, and Navy, Harris said, \u201ccivilian and military, fully integrated under a common command structure across research, development, acquisition, procurement and operations, allows us to move with speed and agility.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

Rivalries continue, however. In the mid 1990s, when he was NRO director, a bureaucratic fight over a small military payload on an NRO satellite caused a costly delay. \u201cThe satellite had $6 million worth of defense investment on it, and the money had to be moved from one defense account to another,\u201d Harris recalled. \u201cI was spending $10 million a month waiting for $6 million to move.\u201d SNAFUs like that could be avoided if NRO and Space Systems Command were more closely linked, he said. \u201cWe have the people to figure out how to go do the mission\u2014if we can get the [acquisition] systems to appreciate that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Combining the National Reconnaissance Office with the Space Force\u2019s Space Systems Command could help turbocharge national security space…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[14926,14927,14928,14929,79,193,14930,14931,14932],"class_list":["post-15749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-assistant-secretary-of-the-air-force-for-space-acquisition-and-integration","tag-mark-berkowitz","tag-national-reconnaissance-office","tag-nro","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-acquisition","tag-space-systems-command","tag-ssc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}