Statement for the Record 

Ms. Betty Sapp 

Principal Deputy Director, National Reconnaissance Office 

Before the House Armed Services Committee 

Subcommittee on Strategic Forces 

8 March 2012 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY THE 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 Turner, Ranking Member Sanchez, and distinguished 

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

today on behalf of General Bruce Carlson (USAF, Ret.), the 

Director, National Reconnaissance Office (DNRO), to discuss the 

NRO fiscal year (FY) 2013 National Defense Authorization Budget 

Request for National Security Space Activities. It is an honor 

for me to appear alongside our mission partners from the 

Department of Defense (DoD), Ambassador Greg Schulte, 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 

partnership 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 the 

opportunity to meet in another setting to fully discuss with you 

the breadth and depth of NRO capabilities, partnerships, and 

value of the NRO contributions to National Security. 

 DNRO Priorities. Since taking the helm at the NRO three 

years ago, Director Carlson established four goals for the 

organization: launching capabilities when scheduled, ensuring 
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our acquisition programs remain in the “green” (meeting cost, 

schedule, and performance), ensuring strong continued investment 

in research and development, and expediting operational 

availability of our systems while maximizing life expectancy 

(over expected life) for on-orbit systems. To attain these 

goals, we focus on executing acquisition programs on time and 

cost through an evolutionary approach to realizing revolutionary 

new capabilities – an approach made possible by strong research 

and technology investment. 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 state of the NRO today. Last year we executed the 

most aggressive launch campaign in over 25 years. We 

successfully launched six satellites in seven months and this 

year with the same determination we’re scheduled to launch four 

more in five months with the first scheduled launch later this 

month. Our ability to sustain such high tempo is due both to 

the diligent efforts of our program teams who successfully 

acquire and deliver these complex systems on time, and our 

strong partnerships with the Air Force launch community. These 

successful launches are a very important and visible reminder of 

the space reconnaissance mission the NRO started over 50 years 

ago, and continues with such great success today. We are 
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committed to smart acquisition investments and practices to 

ensure the continued coverage and availability of our vital 

National Security systems and we work tirelessly to deliver 

these systems on time and within budget. 

The NRO remains committed to using the qualified launch 

vehicles that meet our requirements and are consistent with the 

need for assured access to space. The health of the launch 

industrial base and enhancing assured access to space is 

essential to the success of our programs and their launch 

platforms. The NRO is committed to improving the launch 

industry, as demonstrated by the joint NRO/Air Force development 

of a new Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) acquisition 

strategy aimed at sustaining the launch industrial base while 

stabilizing launch costs. In addition to EELV, the NRO plans to 

compete launch services for appropriate missions, consistent 

with the new, joint Air Force, NRO and NASA coordinated strategy 

for new entrant launch vehicles certification. The NRO, Air 

Force, and NASA, have jointly agreed on this new entrant launch 

provider strategy 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 
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ensure our Nation’s launch and space industrial base remains 

strong enough to meet our mission requirements. 

From launching and operating the most technically-capable 

systems to continued operations of legacy satellites 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. Director Carlson and I are both 

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 third 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 
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accurate financial reports have been validated, and we are 

successfully positioned to continue to sustain this clean audit 

into the future. 

EVOLUTIONARY ACQUISITION 

Maintaining a healthy space industrial base, coupled with 

delivering programs on cost and schedule, is a matter of 

critical importance to our national security. Evolutionary 

acquisition practices, used successfully for decades by the NRO, 

can help us sustain our industrial base in the future. We can 

also leverage and extend our acquisition success by

institutionalizing proven best practices. A careful look at 

many of our past successful programs reveal common threads such 

as leveraging proven designs and platforms, and introducing 

payload enhancements incrementally into programs of record. 

We will continue to implement evolutionary acquisition 

techniques using proven best practices to control costs and 

achieve reliable and consistent acquisition results. We will 

use multi-vehicle purchases for production stability, coupled 

with investments in new capabilities, while sustaining factory 

and satellite constellation health to improve cost and 

acquisition efficiency. The evolutionary acquisition practices 

could help stabilize our industrial base and allow us to acquire 

satellites more efficiently. 

NRO CONTRIBUTIONS: CRITICAL TO THE FIGHT 
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Lastly, I would like to highlight the real bottom line for 

the NRO---our support to the warfighter. More than a decade 

after the attacks of September 11th, the NRO continues to 

contribute everyday to ongoing operations around the globe. We 

currently have more than 55 personnel deployed around the globe 

in direct support of the warfighter to ensure we’re rapidly 

adapting to the needs and changing threats to our Nation and the 

men and women in harm’s way. 

In 2011 alone, NRO provided extremely valuable intelligence 

supporting more than 15 operations to capture or kill high value 

targets in combat areas. In addition, NRO supported more than 

120 tactical operations locating Improvised Explosive Devices, 

helping to prevent the most lethal attacks against our ground 

combat forces. These tactical support operations also included 

support to ground and air tactical actions; counter-terrorist 

actions; and maritime anti-piracy/interdiction. We also 

provided vital overhead support to 17 critical Combat Search and 

Rescue missions. In addition to ground combat operations 

support, NRO supported 33 Strait of Hormuz transits ensuring 

U.S. Naval Forces had the intelligence assistance needed for 

safe passage. 

In both the U.S. Central and African Command Areas of 

Operations, NRO has developed and deployed more than 25 

reference emitters which have been used over 13000 times, and 
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provided a significant enhancement in our ability to geo-locate 

surface to air missile radar systems. This new capability has 

allowed U.S. and Coalition military forces to be extremely 

precise in targeting these significant threats. 

The NRO’s Ground Enterprise Directorate has recently 

fielded highly advanced, state-of-the-art systems that have 

significantly increased the relevance and value of timesensitive data and products for Combatant Commanders. Ongoing 

counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism activities have 

underscored the tremendous impact of these systems in support of 

combat operations throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. As such, 

the warfighters’ demand for time-sensitive products and data has 

dramatically transformed both the Intelligence Community 

production center’s and their customer base. NRO has responded 

with an accelerated fielding of these ground systems that can 

quickly support finding and alerting potential insurgent events 

and meeting United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) 

requirements for near-real-time situational awareness of the 

battlespace. 

 In addition to rapidly developing and deploying 

capabilities in support of the warfighter, the NRO is also 

proactively involved with pre-deployment defense and 

intelligence training initiatives to include integration into 

core curricula at the Army’s Intelligence Center of Excellence 
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at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Our NRO Mobile Training Teams 

provided the Army’s I Corps and III Corps with training on 

National Intelligence capabilities available in theater 

CONCLUSION 

The people 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 attain the NRO vision of “Vigilance From Above” by 

executing 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 visit the NRO 

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.