NRO official examines commercial ISR challenges

Integrating commercial technologies into national space systems carries risks for government systems and private sector innovation, according to an intelligence official. 

Troy Meink, the National Reconnaissance Office's principal deputy director, said one of the organization's biggest challenges is folding in commercial technology to existing systems.

"A number of things have changed in the market. And a big part of it is billions – many, many billions and billions – of dollars have been spent on the microelectronics and the advances that have been made there. So how do we incorporate those really commercial state of the art technologies into our systems? It is not easy," he said during a virtual event hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance on March 3. 

Meink said the biggest challenge with incorporating commercial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance technology is satisfying requirements for government systems without suppressing innovation.

"If we go and dictate all that across the entire commercial community, we're potentially going to break some of them and or really suboptimize the innovation and what they're trying to do," he said. 

"How [companies] process and disseminate data is dramatically different. So making sure that we have flexibility to incorporate that into architectures is critical," he said, adding that it was important to develop a standard way to communicate so companies understand "how they work with us…with what we're trying to do without totally changing their business case in the way they want to operate."

On top of building and managing a network of U.S. spy satellites, the National Reconnaissance Office is also charged with acquiring satellite imagery from commercial providers, having taken over the task from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in 2017. 

But the key to working with different providers, the NRO principal deputy director said, is by being flexible in a way that optimizes capability and still delivers what the government needs.

"You really have to be flexible," he said, "we have a leveraged commercial market, we can't go in and be heavy handed and change it all."