Statement for the Record

Ms. Betty Sapp

Director, National Reconnaissance Office

Before the House Armed Services Committee

Subcommittee on Strategic Forces 

25 April 2013

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY THE 

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

STRATEGIC FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
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INTRODUCTION

Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Cooper, and distinguished 

Members of the Committee, I am pleased to appear before you 

today on behalf of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to 

discuss National Security Space Activities. It is an honor for 

me to appear alongside our mission partners from the Department 

of Defense (DoD), Mr. Douglas Loverro, Deputy Assistant 

Secretary of Defense for Space Policy; Mr. Gil Klinger, Deputy 

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space and Intelligence and 

General William Shelton, Commander, Air Force Space Command.

The NRO’s close relationship and continuing collaboration with 

our mission partners are vital to maintaining our Nation’s 

superiority in space. 

The unclassified nature of today’s hearing precludes me 

from discussing many details of NRO programs, as well as sharing 

some of our greatest successes. However, I welcome additional

opportunities to meet in another setting to discuss with you NRO 

capabilities, partnerships, and value of the NRO contributions 

to National Security. 

NRO Priorities

 The NRO remains committed to maintaining its stellar record 

of acquisition and program successes, while also delivering a 

more capable, resilient, and affordable future NRO architecture 
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to respond to emerging threats and dynamic mission needs. Over 

the coming years, the NRO will incorporate revolutionary new 

technologies into our architecture that will provide enhanced 

support to the warfighter while also improving the resiliency of 

our systems. These technologies are made possible in part by 

our investments in research and development, and we will 

continue these strong investments to drive enhanced future 

capabilities. We also continue to improve our relationships 

with our key mission partners to adapt on-orbit systems and 

capabilities to support current warfighter needs.

State of the NRO 

I would like to begin with a few words about the current 

state of the NRO. Last year we executed yet another successful 

launch campaign placing four satellites in orbit in six months,

and we’re scheduled to launch two more in the second half of 

this year. These successful launches are a visible testament to 

the diligent efforts of our program teams who successfully 

acquire and deliver these complex systems, and each one 

signifies that a new system will soon be providing enhanced 

intelligence capabilities to the warfighter. We are committed 

to smart acquisition investments and practices to ensure the 

continued coverage and availability of our vital National 
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Security systems and we work tirelessly to continue to deliver 

these systems on time and within budget. 

The NRO remains committed to maintaining the health of the 

launch vehicle industrial base to provide our systems with 

assured access to space. The NRO, in partnership with the Air 

Force, recently finalized a new Evolved Expendable Launch 

Vehicles (EELV) acquisition strategy aimed at promoting 

competition among launch providers while also stabilizing launch 

cost and sustaining the industrial base. Under the strategy, 

the NRO and the Air Force will procure 36 EELV booster cores 

over 5 years from the heritage Atlas and Delta lines, while also 

reserving up to 14 booster procurements for competition among 

all certified launch vehicle providers. To that end, the NRO, 

Air Force, and NASA, have jointly agreed on a strategy for 

certifying new entrant launch providers, such as Space 

Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Orbital Science

Corporation, to facilitate competition, avoid undue duplication

in the certification process, and ensure the Government is 

receiving the most cost effective launch services to meet our 

required performance. We are dedicated to working with the Air 

Force, NASA, and commercial space providers to ensure our 

Nation’s launch and space industrial base remains strong enough 

to meet our mission requirements. 
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From developing and acquiring new capabilities to launching 

and operating the most technically-advanced systems, the NRO 

remains the premier space reconnaissance organization in the 

world. The unique composition of our workforce is one of our 

greatest strengths. As you know, we draw our personnel from 

across the DoD and Intelligence Community (IC), recruiting the 

best and brightest acquisition, operations, and engineering 

personnel from the space community. The talented people of the 

NRO allow our significant and continued mission success, and 

enable our ability to provide the very best information from the 

warfighter to the policymaker. I am confident that by 

continuing to leverage current successes and community workforce 

strengths, the NRO will continue to provide the Nation with the 

premier space reconnaissance capabilities for National security.

For the fourth year in a row, the NRO received a clean 

audit opinion on our Financial Statements, a truly unprecedented 

accomplishment within the IC. This positive outcome was the 

result of continued hard work across the NRO workforce and the 

culmination of a diligently planned and executed effort to 

continue our achievement in effective financial management. 

NRO’s internal processes for proper funds management and 

accurate financial reports have been validated, and we are 

successfully positioned to continue to sustain this clean audit

into the future. 
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Additionally, our Ground Enterprise Directorate continues 

to make considerable headway in moving us toward a more 

holistic, “horizontal” ground enterprise – a single networked 

information collection and distribution system more responsive 

to user needs, more resilient in the face of projected threats, 

and much more efficient and effective in providing mission 

capabilities.

SPACE PROTECTION

 The NRO fully recognizes that space is an increasingly 

contested and congested environment. While foreign nations 

understand our country’s reliance on space and seek means to 

deny our space advantages, our ability to operate in the 

presence of threats helps to deter foreign actions and maintain 

a strategic advantage. To that end, the NRO has worked jointly 

with the Air Force to align the NRO’s space protection 

activities with Air Force Space Command, the DoD, and the 

broader space community. The collaboration across the defense 

and intelligence communities enhances the NRO’s capability to 

effectively plan for emerging threats, and greatly strengthens 

the architecture to ensure continued operational freedom.
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NRO CONTRIBUTIONS: CRITICAL TO THE FIGHT. 

Lastly, I would like to highlight the real bottom line for 

the NRO – our support to the warfighter. In addition to 

traditional NRO ISR systems and support, we provide a wide array 

of focused capabilities to help solve specific, critical ISR 

needs in the Afghanistan area of responsibility. We’ve brought 

dozens of innovative ISR solutions to the fight. These 

services, products and tools directly contribute to the highest 

priority missions, to include: counter-Improvised Explosive 

Device (IED) efforts; identifying and tracking High-Value 

Targets; countering narcotics trafficking; and special 

communications.

However, the most important capability we provide to the 

fight is our people – our on-site problem-solvers. We typically 

have about 75 men and women deployed into harm’s way on any 

given day serving as liaison officers to units, providing 

technical expertise, or supporting those focused NRO programs. 

Every day, they have a direct and positive influence on combat 

operations and mission success, to include saving the lives of 

U.S. and Coalition forces. 

I’ll cover just a few highlights, but trust me when I say 

that we bring a lot more to the fight. We partnered with the 

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to provide airborne 

Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) imagery. LIDAR has been 
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very effective in mapping the rugged terrain of Afghanistan, 

improving force protection, operational planning, and 

situational awareness. 

In the counter-IED effort one of our most successful 

programs continues to be RED DOT. RED DOT takes the various 

sources of indications and warnings we receive, combines them 

into an integrated picture, then sends them out directly to the 

tactical user, to include the HUMVEE on patrol. Last year 

alone, RED DOT indications resulted in the removal of more than 

235 IEDs from the battlefield – a huge success for the program, 

and a real life saver for our men and women in harm’s way.

A real strength of the NRO is our ability to fuse multiintelligence data to support warfighter intelligence needs. We 

have helped the warfighter visualize large volumes of data 

temporally and spatially, establishing patterns of life, 

identifying the unusual within a multitude of fused data sets, 

and integrating full motion video data with automated multiintelligence tipping, cueing, and alerting capabilities. Our 

cutting-edge solutions combine GEOINT and SIGINT, and span the 

space, air, and ground operational domains to improve the 

warfighter’s common operational picture and enhance his 

effectiveness in finding, fixing, and finishing targets. 

Additionally, the NRO has developed numerous advanced 

capabilities for Personnel Recovery and Friendly Force Tracking, 
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and our quick-reaction capability solutions have been employed 

with resounding success in counter-IED, homemade explosive 

materials detection, and special communications missions 

worldwide. 

 

CONCLUSION

The men and women of the NRO embody our core values of 

Integrity and Accountability, Teamwork Built on Respect and 

Diversity, and Mission Excellence. It is our highly skilled 

personnel who ensure we execute our mission to provide

“Innovative Overhead Intelligence Systems for National 

Security.” Driven by our extraordinary people, the NRO will 

continue on the path of delivering acquisition and operations 

excellence, as well as the unparalleled innovation that is the 

hallmark of our history and the foundation of our future. We 

encourage you to continue visits to the NRO, our mission ground 

stations, and satellite factories for detailed discussions on 

how our systems directly support the national security of the 

United States. 

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for 

your continued support of the National Reconnaissance Office and 

the opportunity to appear before you today.