Apparently there has been, or will be,
a Grand Unification.

[snip]

Or maybe not, or not quite.

Or maybe so. It will be interesting to see if Mr.
Negroponte weighs in on this and similar NROish
issues.



Perfect Harmony?
by Amy Butler
Aviation Week & Space Technology
April 4, 2005
pp. 51-54
[EXCERPT from p. 54]

Better collaboration between the NRO and Air Force
is producing the first "dual-use" system for the
military and intelligence communities in the Space
Radar program, Teets says. Rumsfeld and Porter
Goss, the director of the Central Intelligence
Agency, have signed a joint memo designating Space
Radar as the only system of its kind for the country.

"I don't think there is a single satellite right now
that is truly dual use," Teets says. "I think this
is breaking new ground. I really do."

Officials are planning a 2008 demonstration with
two one-quarter-scale satellites. The first full-
scale Space Radar satellite would launch in 2015.
The constellation would use synthetic aperture radar
to collect images through clouds and dust for the
intelligence community and provide near-real-time
data on moving ground targets like convoys for the
military. It is with this collaboration that [Teets'
national security space adviser Maj. Gen. Robert]
Kehler says the integration staff can help to make
the most of the government dollar.

"Left to its own devices, I think that perhaps we
could have had a situation where the NRO pursued a
Space Radar system and the Air Force pursued a
Space Radar system for different purposes," Teets
says. "The NRO has operated as a national agency
collecting national intelligence. I think it has
only been recently that we've started to really
find ways to get intelligence collected by NRO
assets into the hands of warfighters direct. I
think for a long time it was a huge struggle to get
nationally collected information into the hands of
the warfighter."

Among the earlier roadblocks were security
classifications and the technical complexity of
linking various collection and dissemination
systems.