Obscured by the attention focused on the Quadrennial Defense Review and various mobility studies is a Defense Acquisition Board review of the future of Global Hawk—the highly praised unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle that was rushed while still in development to the war in Afghanistan. The news is good, according to a decision memo from Kenneth Krieg, DOD’s acquisition point man who also serves as the chairman of the DAB. His memo states, “The board members agreed that this program is critical to providing a persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capability to the warfighter.” Though that fact is completely obvious, it’s still good to hear a DOD official say it outright.
The Space Force and NRO will build a large number of targeting satellites to go in low-Earth orbit, the USSF’s top intelligence officer said May 2—keeping with the service’s emphasis on proliferating its assets. For months now, the two organizations have been working on a program to develop satellites that will…