The Rise of Surveillance

A number of recent congressional commissions have reviewed the Intelligence Community's agencies involved with space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). In the past, recommendations for some form of merger involving the National Security Agency (NSA), National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) have been proposed as a way to potentially improve space-based ISR performance. The Joint Staff has also recently asked whether this option should be pursued. Based on historical research and a survey of the general topic literature, this paper argues that a merger between these three agencies will not improve the current- space-based ISR performance because its problems aren't related to structure. Instead, the root problems are due to a missing space-based surveillance tool and a changing information process. This paper recommends following the guidance from the latest four congressional commissions from the November 2000 through January 2001 timeframe that recommend merging the NRO with the Air Force space efforts and concentrating on developing and deploying a space based surveillance system as the most effective way to improve space-based ISR performance.