The National Reconnaissance Office took umbrage at a recent Government Accountability Office report (see above) in which the GAO claims NRO priority in hiring personnel has deprived Air Force Space Command’s Space and Missile Systems Center of personnel with the highest space acquisition certification level. (About 50 percent of the NRO workforce comes from the Air Force.) NRO responded that the “shortage of appropriately qualified individuals at the right levels is a result of workforce management decisions made in the 1990s.” It maintains that NRO’s hiring policies “are not the causal agent,” instead the “current problem is there are not enough qualified people to meet all requirements.”
The Space Force on April 15 released two highly anticipated future-casting documents that describe what the service expects the space environment will look like in the year 2040 and lay out the force structure it thinks it will need to operate in that environment.