Spysats: win some, lose some



http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/eye061907.xml

Fall Launch Of GeoEye-1 On Track
Jun 19, 2007
By Michael Fabey/ Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

Commercial satellite imaging company GeoEye is on schedule to meet the
fall launch of GeoEye-1, being built by General Dynamics, according to
Mark Brender, GeoEye vice president of communications and marketing.

Dulles, Va.-based GeoEye's program to build its improved satellite is
being partially underwritten by the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency (NGA). Under NGA's NextView program, the agency agreed to pay
$500 million to GeoEye and competitor DigitalGlobe for future imagery
over a five-year period with better resolution than it receives under
its current ClearView program. Wall Street institutional investors
shelled out about $300 million to help GeoEye develop and build
GeoEye-1.

The company started trading in September 2006 on NASDAQ and has been
one of the fastest growing publicly traded companies in the defense
and intelligence sector. GeoEye's (formerly Orbimage) acquisition of
Space Imaging helped catapult it from the smallest U.S. commercial
imagery satellite operator to the largest in the world in five years.
Earlier this year, GeoEye purchased MJ Harden, which does aerial
imaging.

Another ingredient in the company's growth has been the online demand
for images from orbit. "It's been a sonic boom for the industry,"
Brender told The DAILY.

To that end, GeoEye-1 should help the company tap that market even
more fully. The next-generation satellite will be unclassified, with
multispectral capabilities. DigitalGlobe will provide black and white
images.

The new satellite will offer significant panchromatic, or black-and-
white (PAN), Multispectral (MS) and Ground Sample Distance (GSD)
improvements over the Ikonos satellite, launched in 1999. For example,
with both satellites flying just a little above 680 kilometers,
GeoEye-1's PAN GSD at its nadir will be 0.41meters, compared to 0.82
meters for Ikonos, GeoEye said (see charts p. 6-7).

The spacecraft being developed for NGA will be able to do even more
than provide better resolution. Outfitted with the Global Positioning
System (GPS) satellite network and the Star Trackers system, the new
spacecraft will be able to provide nearly instant mapping and
remapping, according to GeoEye.

NGA is in charge of providing imagery, especially unclassified
imagery, to the Pentagon and other government entities. The agency has
7,000 unique users, including 70 different agencies stretching across
the Defense Department, civilian emergency squads and the intelligence
community.


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http://public.cq.com/docs/cqt/news110-000002537553.html

CQ TODAY
June 21, 2007 - 10:43 p.m.
Fight Over Secret Satellite Program Is Revived
By Tim Starks, CQ Staff
It has been more than two and a half years since John D. Rockefeller
IV and Ron Wyden took to the Senate floor to criticize a secret
intelligence program that, they said, was inefficient, too expensive
and, in any case, unnecessary.

The senators didn't name the project, but at the time, it was widely
identified as the successor to the "Misty" program of stealth
satellites that cannot be detected in orbit. Republican leaders
considered disciplinary action against the senators for talking about
a secret program - even though they didn't identify it.

Now, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, has done
essentially the same thing the senators did back then: talked about a
major spy program without indicating which one.

And McConnell didn't just criticize it; he said he was killing it.

At a June 19 conference, McConnell told the audience that one piece of
advice he had received upon taking the job this year was to "kill a
multibillion dollar program. I've done that, but word isn't out yet."
He did not answer a reporter's question about which program he had
killed.

Lawmakers and aides on the relevant intelligence committees refused to
talk about the program. Defense analysts, however, say they believe
McConnell was referring to the same program that Rockefeller, D-W.Va.,
and Wyden, D-Ore., had criticized.

Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute who
also does consulting work for defense contractors, said an industry
source had told him McConnell could only have been referring to the
same program.

Steven Aftergood, the publisher of Secrecy News, and John Pike, an
expert on space policy who directs GlobalSecurity.org, also agreed
that the Misty successor was most likely the program that McConnell
had decided to kill. In 2004, the program was reported to have doubled
in cost from $5 billion to nearly $10 billion.

"Evidently, the DNI concluded on his own that problems with the
program warranted termination," Aftergood said.

Appropriators Annoyed
Whether McConnell will be more successful than the senators were in
killing it remains to be seen, however. The project has strong support
in Congress, especially among appropriators, who kept it funded over
the years despite objections from members of the Senate Intelligence
Committee.

This year, lobbyists for the program are expected to cite successful
anti-satellite tests by China in urging appropriators to continue to
fund the satellite project.

"The conflict between the authorizers and the appropriators has been
that even though money was withheld (by intelligence authorization
bills), money for this program was still allocated," Aftergood said.
"That's not the way things are supposed to done."

But this year, sources said, the House Intelligence Committee, led by
Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, shifted funding away from the
program in its fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill (HR 2082).
The bill's funding levels are classified.

And if McConnell is withdrawing support for the initiative, that could
tip the balance toward the demise of the program.

In keeping with the secrecy surrounding the program, appropriators
will not comment on whether they plan to include funding for the
initiative when they take up a fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations
bill.

John P. Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations
Subcommittee on Defense, declined to comment on Wednesday beyond
expressing frustration with McConnell's disclosure that he had killed
an unnamed program.

"He takes us out to a SCIF (secret compartmented intelligence
facility) to tell us about it, then he says that in public?" Murtha
exclaimed.

Intelligence authorizers, however, have been closely scrutinizing
satellite projects this year. The Senate Intelligence panel, in an
unclassified committee report accompanying its fiscal 2008
intelligence authorization bill (S 1583 - S Rept 110-75), complained
that half of the intelligence community's space acquisitions had grown
in cost by 50 percent.

The House Intelligence panel's vaguely worded unclassified report for
its authorization measure says the bill "compels the administration to
address critical overhead architecture issues that have been festering
for some time and have been made worse by a series of acquisition
failures."

Although the report provided no details of those failures, reports as
far back as 2004 said that the spy satellite system being built by the
Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office could only take photographs
during the day time and could be rendered ineffectual by bad weather.

A Rumsfeld-Backed Program
Former Defense Secretary Donald R. Rumsfeld and his intelligence
undersecretary, Stephen A. Cambone, had been supporters of the system,
sources said. So, too, was Florida Republican Porter J. Goss, the
former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and until last
year the head of the CIA.

But McConnell and Cambone's replacement at the Pentagon, James R.
Clapper Jr., have turned a skeptical eye on the intelligence
undertakings of Rumsfeld and Cambone. Clapper, for instance, began
shortly after his confirmation in April to shut down the anti-terror
database known as Talon, a controversial program that at one point had
monitored anti-war groups.

Still, an intense lobbying effort could sway lawmakers to continue
support for the program, Aftergood said. Lockheed Martin is said to be
the lead contractor for the program. Company officials declined to
comment.

"It's safe to assume that they are lobbied by the industry
participants whether or not there's significant activity in their
district," Aftergood said. "One of the inequities of classified
contracting is that the contractors who are beneficiaries of a program
are cleared for access while skeptics or critics on the outside are
not."

That lobbying advantage could be bolstered by the anti-satellite
(ASAT) laser that the Pentagon reportedly confirmed was tested by
China in January.

"You would think that because of the Chinese ASAT test that some of
this may be revisited," Aftergood said.

He predicted that the industry pitch on Capitol Hill would include the
argument that "the whole idea behind this program is that 'I'm going
to make a satellite or constellation of satellites that the Chinese
can't shoot down.' "

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