Subject: Spysat industrial base in decline?
From: thomsona@netcom.com (Allen Thomson)
Date: 1995/10/12
Message-Id: <thomsonaDGCHxt.EK8@netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy,alt.war,alt.politics.org.cia
U.S. Spy Industry's Contraction May Cause Technology Slip
by Pat Cooper
Defense News, 1-8 October 1995, p.25
[EXCERPTS]
U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities face certain decline
unless the government steps in to stop the steady erosion of the
industrial base that supports eavesdropping. The technological
capabilities of the intelligence community could be lost and
never recovered... The intelligence industrial base is
contracting alarmingly faster than the rest of the defense
industrial base, Robert Kohler, executive vice president and
general manager of TRW Avionics & Surveillance Group, San Diego,
said Sept. 22. Before joining the company, Kohler directed the
CIA Office of Development and Engineering, which develops
intelligence-collection technologies.
More than 75 percent of the intelligence industry base has been
eliminated since 1990, compared with about 20 percent for the
rest of the defense base, Kohler said.
[According to Kohler,] Without sophisticated technology, such
as spy satellites... and the ability to eavesdrop on potential
aggressors...the U.S. intelligence cannot function. Commercial
products cannot supply most of these capabilities.
To save the industrial base, Kohler is urging a drastic increase
in government research and development funding for spy agencies.
In particular, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) should
plow half of its annual budget into developing new technologies,
Kohler said.
Several items in this article strike me as being rather
strange, unreallistic or at least in need of substantiation.
What in the world does he mean by the statement that more than
75% of the intelligence industry base has been eliminated since
1990? Is this reflected in any other information about the
fortunes of TRW, LockMart, E-Systems etc.? How does this square
with the funding profiles which have been leaked and inferred, or
with the apparently expensive "recapitalization" plan for
spysats?
The assertion that commercial products cannot supply
intelligence capabilities seems specious. Optical and radar
imaging are pretty well in hand in the non-intel world, and signs
are that they will be further developed by the new imagery
providers. SIGINT draws on much the same technological base as
communications satellites, and that's an area which is thriving.
Moreover, there can be a lot of technological commonality between
the sensors on airbreathing (particularly UAV) and satellite
systems, so it's not as if even "purely military" technologies
will go unfunded.
I suspect that what Kohler means is that the commercial world
isn't going to come up with KH-11/8Xs and Magnum/Orions -- and in
that he's probably right. The thing left unsaid, and which he may
not even recognize, is that such monstersats are not particularly
suited to the military and national intelligence requirements of
today. Having to procure capability in a wider market rather
than specific hardware in the NRO's closed world would probably
be the best thing that could happen to the reconnaissance
community.
Finally, it seems that Kohler hasn't been reading the
newspapers these past few years. If he had, he sure wouldn't be
suggesting, presumably with a straight face, that the NRO spend
half its budget on R&D. Even if the money were available, one of
the major substantive complaints about the way military space has
been handled is precisely that it tended to be more R&Dish than
operational in its priorities.
All in all, I think what we have here is the plaintive voice
of a dinosaur bemoaning the onset of cold weather and fantasizing
about a return to the balmy past. It ain't gonna happen, and
that's a very good thing (if you're a mammal, that is).
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