Troy Meink, the NRO’s principal deputy director, speaks April 9 at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.
COLORADO SPRINGS—The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) next month will conduct the first launch of its operational proliferated architecture, with a total of five launches planned this year.
The NRO is building the proliferated architecture across different orbits to provide more resilient imaging and signals intelligence, dramatically increasing the number of satellites it plans to operate. Troy Meink, the office’s principal deputy director, said in a speech at the Space Symposium here that the first operational launch for this architecture, NROL-146, is planned for next month from Vandenberg SFB, California.
“We’ve already launched a number of demonstration satellites over the last few years to verify cost and performance,” he said. “We wanted to make sure that when we went into high-rate production that we had everything sorted out and we do. This launch will be the first launch of the actual, operational system.”
The launch comes amid a debate within both the intelligence community and the Pentagon about moving away from small numbers of large, so-called exquisite satellites in higher orbits to large numbers of small satellites in low Earth orbit. The NRO’s proliferated architecture plan follows the latter model, also favored within the Pentagon with the Space Force’s Space Development Agency. The proliferated architecture will be more resilient, while also providing more timely intelligence, Meink said.
Following the six launches this year, the NRO expects additional launches through 2028 supporting the architecture.
In addition to its own architecture, the office is working to increase the amount of commercial imagery it can purchase. Its Commercial Program Office is looking to continually increase available commercial imagery, while also using more Broad Agency Announcement contracts to bring in commercial capabilities.
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