Military satellite imagery to be obtained from competitive commercial market
Capitalism in space: The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is shifting how it gets the government’s military satellite surveillance imagery so that instead of having a long term contract with one company, multiple satellite companies will compete to provide the data.
Under this new imagery procurement, the NRO plans to buy products from multiple vendors and move beyond the current single-supplier arrangement that the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency signed more than a decade ago with DigitalGlobe, which is now Maxar Technologies. The NGA in 2017 turned over responsibilities for commercial imagery procurement to the NRO, while the NGA remains the primary buyer of commercial geospatial data analytics.
The NRO is expected to select at least three U.S. suppliers and structure the program with onramps for new providers. The agency also will require vendors to sign “end user license agreements” so imagery can be shared across government agencies without additional licensing fees.
This change illustrates how other government agencies are following NASA’s lead and shifting from controlling everything to buying the needed product from the open market. While NRO was getting imagery before from a commercial company, Maxar, depending on a single vendor limited competition and innovation while raising costs.
Buying the data from multiple companies means that NRO will get more choice for less cost.
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Capitalism in space: The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is shifting how it gets the government’s military satellite surveillance imagery so that instead of having a long term contract with one company, multiple satellite companies will compete to provide the data.
Under this new imagery procurement, the NRO plans to buy products from multiple vendors and move beyond the current single-supplier arrangement that the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency signed more than a decade ago with DigitalGlobe, which is now Maxar Technologies. The NGA in 2017 turned over responsibilities for commercial imagery procurement to the NRO, while the NGA remains the primary buyer of commercial geospatial data analytics.
The NRO is expected to select at least three U.S. suppliers and structure the program with onramps for new providers. The agency also will require vendors to sign “end user license agreements” so imagery can be shared across government agencies without additional licensing fees.
This change illustrates how other government agencies are following NASA’s lead and shifting from controlling everything to buying the needed product from the open market. While NRO was getting imagery before from a commercial company, Maxar, depending on a single vendor limited competition and innovation while raising costs.
Buying the data from multiple companies means that NRO will get more choice for less cost.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
It’s a positive story for commercial space, but in terms of national security, it seems like moving the deck chairs on the Titanic.
This summer’s Afghanistan withdrawal was proof positive that the Global American Empire that bestrode the world since 1945 is dead and buried.
We used to have foreign policy elites in this country that were well educated, intelligent, and historically literate. It’s civilian foreign policy elites that are supposed to set direction for our nation’s military strategy. What we have now in the realms of foreign policy and military strategy is a complete clown show.
Well – at least we have the consolation prize that commercial space is getting fed at the trough.
I wonder how NRO will be sure that deep in the bowels of the image processing machine at commercial company B (owned by the CCP behind 8 cutouts or employing a cell of CCP computer specialists at the company), pixel manipulations are NOT done to prevent NRO from seeing something is there.
I guess you fly multiple companies assets over the same spot to check? Or have some check sum algorithm to show deep faking?
Seems like there is some risk here.
Doubting Thomas – your scenario could become a made for TV Streaming series ‘based on true events’. Consider these 2 news items – the highest grossing movie last weekend was not the James Bond movie; rather it was a Chinese war film celebrating a victory against the US in the Korean war. And according to the Daily Mail UK, the CIA just admitted that its informants were executed by Iran and China after a communications system was breached.
The situation of Americans in their COVIDSTAN bubble and disconnected from world events reminds me of a scene starring Captain Barbossa who was a main character in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. In the scene he corners Keira Knightley, and he blows up her understanding of reality with his line: “You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner… you’re in one!!!” Then she mentally falls down a ghostly rabbit hole.
We have need for many such Captains to shake us up so that we understand the reality we’re in now. To paraphrase the hauntingly good Captain Barbossa, to us today he should say : : “you best start believing in conspiracy theories, YOU’RE LIVIN IN ONE!!!!”
So instead of the eye of Big Brother, we are also under the gaze of innumerable little brothers. I feel SO safe…
Doubting Thomas,
Another less difficult but valuable leak would be the tasking information. What exactly is the US focusing on?
Back in the 1970’s they launched the Earth Resources Techology Sattlite (ERTS)so i guess it did like Space Lab and was burned up afterwards