Betty Sapp is the director of the National Reconnaissance Office — the smallest of the five major intelligence agencies, with 3,000 military and civilian personnel. | National Reconnaissance Office 'We are getting left behind' The nation's spy satellite chief calls for empowering the 'doers' by reducing the 'reviewers.'

Betty Sapp was first assigned to the Pentagon's highly secretive National Reconnaissance Office as an Air Force major more than two decades ago.

"I got to the NRO and I thought, 'Where has this been all my life?'" she recalled in an interview. "They were paying attention to mission outcomes and they were all committed."


Sapp, 62, now runs the agency responsible for building, launching and operating the nation's spy satellites that spent its first 30 years shrouded in near total secrecy before its existence was even publicly acknowledged.

Established in 1961, the NRO first made its mark with the Corona satellite reconnaissance program. "That first Corona flight collected more intel over the then-Soviet Union than all the U-2 flights had up to that time," she said.

The NRO, with 3,000 military and civilian personnel, is the smallest of the five major intelligence agencies, which also include the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

"We are about a tenth of the size of NSA," said Sapp, who took over as director in 2012. "I think that's a good thing."

The NRO's annual budget remains classified, but Sapp discussed proposals to elevate the Pentagon space mission, including with a possible standalone Space Force, as well as efforts to reenergize the "original go-fast" mentality that is part of the NRO's acquisition mantra.

"We have some of that same urgency in terms of where adversaries are going both in their own space-based capabilities and in their counter-space," she explained. "But we don't quite have that same level of risk tolerance or the processes that support a lot of going fast."

She cited the need to lower the ratio between what she calls the "doers" and the "reviewers," the ballooning set of overseers in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill that have slowed the acquisition process.

"How this all comes out, I don't know," she said of the reform push. "To just reorganize the doers, I think, we will have fallen short. A lot of what's in the way of the doers is the processes above them."

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This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

How do you define the agency, and how has it evolved?

The NRO was created to get space-based capabilities as quickly as possible. The president and the advisers at that time were worried about the vulnerability of [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] systems and that was sort of borne out when [U-2 pilot] Gary Powers got shot down.

They had started this effort to get to space. The NRO was especially formed to actually do that as quickly as possible. We were the original go-fast agency.

The Corona was our first program. We changed the course of ISR for the nation. That first Corona flight collected more intel over the then-Soviet Union than all the U-2 flights had up to that time. That was a point in time when we had a national urgency and a recognized need to accept risk, to go fast.

I look back on that today because we have some of that same urgency, in terms of where adversaries are going both in their own space-based capabilities and in their counter-space. But we don't quite have that same level of risk tolerance or the processes that support a lot of going fast.

Do you think the agency has lost some of that 'go-fast' mentality?

The NRO is still very innovative and very agile. If you look at the way we were formed, we stayed the same from our beginnings. We are small, flat — end to end. We are about a tenth of the size of NSA. I think that's a good thing. It is end to end — everything from research and development to acquisition to operations and launch. We can make decisions internally very quickly.

When you talk about actually getting something done, there are a lot of people out there helping us. In the old days, I could go from my idea and just go build it. I can't do that anymore. I had exactly one budget line that I could move around to any program I wanted to, without permission from anybody. Nobody really watched me in terms of acquisition.

Now, that is not true. Now, I can't start any program without having a signed requirements document. The last program I took through that process took two years to get that signed requirements document. So it is two years before I can even start.

When did all the process overkill you speak of take root?

It was changing even when I came to the NRO. We went from black where we didn't get a lot of attention at all — aside from very high levels — and we came out in 1992. And that started changing a lot of things. The people on the Hill, the people in the Pentagon who were used to watching Air Force space, [wanted to know], 'If I have control over here, why don't I have similar controls over there?'

Those are the kinds of questions that take you down to where the Air Force will complain how many people watch them. I have all their watchers, plus the ones on the [intelligence community] side. So, I have double the fun.

I get the [Joint Requirements Oversight Council] in the Pentagon and equivalent on the [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] side. In Congress, I get the four [defense] committees, plus two that are strictly IC. So, I get six. There is a lot of gates. I can make the decision inside the NRO as to what I think should be done, I can show them the analysis and the architectural looks and all the data that says this is the best way to meet requirements, but there has to be a lot of people who need to agree before anything starts.

But presumably more gates were put up out of a need for more oversight. What is the right balance?

I don't know that there is any good answer. I think you are right. Every process was put in place because someone made a mistake somewhere.

With every mistake, they added a process. And with every mistake, maybe, they added a new process control. But clearly, we have gone too far. When we see adversaries moving very quickly and being willing to take more risk, more mistakes, we have got to react to that. We are not in that position and we are getting left behind.

Every reform effort we talk about tends to look at reorganizing the space doers. The ratio of doers to reviewers is off. We need to change that ratio. It needs to be more doers and fewer reviewers. And the reviewers need to be the ones who can say 'yes.' Right now, you have to see a whole lot of people who can only tell you 'no' until you can get to see the people who can say yes.

There are efforts to try here. I think there is more thought about 'how do you go around existing processes.' I have exceptions to the rule. I think we need to fundamentally change the baseline process. There are folks on the Hill that understand they're part of this. There are folks who recognize this is a broader problem we need to take on. We really need to reshape the way we do things.

What are your highest priorities or challenges?

The first priority is sensitivity. We have had the same mission throughout our history. ... What's changed are the targets we go after. We started out looking for big, big things that didn't move very fast and listening for things that shouted at us all the time. Now, those targets have radically changed. Now, they are very small things that move very quickly, know how to hide, know how to learn and change. We are listening for things that whisper at us occasionally.

The second priority is speed. And I look at speed in different dimensions. Once the user has the need, how quickly can I field something that is responsive to that need?

No matter what I do with the broader process, space systems take a while. Even if you talk cube sats or small sats you are talking awhile to get new capability in space. But it doesn't always require new space hardware.

Nowadays, you can upload new capabilities to space systems just like you can upload new capabilities to your phone. And we do that. And you can do new things on the ground to get new capabilities from existing space systems. So, we do that.

There are other dimensions of speed, too. A second one is, once I know I need to build something how quickly can I get there? That does require a different asset in space.

And once I collect in space, how quickly can I get it to a user? We've always focused on that aspect of speed, but now we are not just concerned about people in Washington or people at [combatant commands].

We are concerned about users at the tactical edge. They don't have a lot of communications bandwidth. You can't send them a whole imagery file and they don't necessarily have a lot of analytical support on site. So, what can we provide them that gives them what they need on their timeline?

The third big priority is resiliency, survivability. That's not just my space assets. That is the whole mission string. Now, I have to be worried about what's in space, I have to worry about the space to ground, and I have to be worried about my processing facilities. Survivability is the new one. The other two have been traditional missions for us.

What could Congress, the Defense Department, or the industry do differently to help you?

There is innovation and ingenuity out there. We just need to take full advantage of it. We have always used a range of launch providers, but the fact is there hasn't been a range out there.

As we see the number of launch providers — especially the small launch providers — come into the mix, that allows you to make different architecture trades.

If the only launch provider out there is charging you $350 million a launch, you stack everything you possibly can on every satellite because you don't want to pay that cost very often. If you can get a launch for $60 million or lower than that that makes a difference architectural trade. If the launch cost goes way down, you could go to more distributed architectures, integrated architectures with big and small. That gives you better capability for a good cost point and more resilience as well. Those are the things we have planned for the future. We are more than capable of taking advantage of those opportunities as they mature.

With all the plans for a Space Force, how do you think the Pentagon best reorganizes its space mission?

How this all comes out, I don't know. To just reorganize the doers, I think, we will have fallen short. A lot of what's in the way of the doers is the processes above them. I think people are focused on that.

We have a great relationship now with the Air Force. We've always had that. From the beginning of the NRO, they've made up a substantial piece of the NRO personnel complement. I think that's a huge strength — a national space cadre, even as loosely organized as it is today.

We have cooperated on launch. The Air Force does other things like missile warning and communications. Our missions don't really overlap, but now we have this shared threat. And we have much more in the way of cooperation and touch points now than we ever did. We rehearse, practice together. We have some shared developments in terms of making sure we understand what is going on around us.

As I watch what is going on, or what could happen, I just want to make sure the current interface, the current working relationships we have with the Air Force, are preserved and they are sustained in the reorganization. That is my selfish concern for the NRO. I want to make sure those touch points we have now with the Air Force are sustained.

Most of the new things that are set up in the Pentagon, they go out of their way to say 'it doesn't actually take any authorities from the existing office.' That's always the starter line. It's an interesting debate.

CORRECTION: A previous version misstated Betty Sapp’s age. She is 62.

