Certain aspects of today’s launch of NROL-69 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station were well understood … the name of the payload (NROL-69 aka Hummingbird), the launch time, the Falcon 9 booster, the launch site – Launch Complex 40. But many other aspects that the geekier side of us wants to know … the eventual positioning of the spacecraft, spacecraft dimensions and mass, the purpose of the spacecraft, orbit, design life, etc. aren’t available. Here’s why –
If you’re not a launch follower, you don’t care. But if you are one of the few members of the spaceflight community who will stand in a 2AM cold rain chanting “I think it will clear up by launch time” You may be wondering why they don’t tell us these seemingly small details.
That’s because the launch is for the “NRO” … the National Reconnaissance Office. In a phrase, NRO-69 is a super-spooky spy satellite launch of some kind. What kind of spying and on who? — well, all that’s all “need to know”, and surprise… the powers that be have deemed we don’t need to know. (Picture Obi-wan Kenobi waving his hand and saying “This isn’t the satellite you’re looking for ”…to which we blindly respond “This isn’t the satellite we’re looking for.”)
Organization, Reporting, and Funding
The NRO is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. federal government. It provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the National Security Agency (NSA), imagery intelligence (IMINT) to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
The NRO is considered, along with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), NSA, DIA, and NGA, to be one of the “big five” U.S. intelligence agencies. The agency operates from their headquarters in Chantilly, Virginia, and brother you can bet this is one federal agency that doesn’t work from home.
The Director of the NRO reports to both the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense in the grand scheme of things. The NRO’s workforce is actually a hybrid organization consisting of some 3,000 personnel from every letter of the government alphabet, including NRO cadre, Air Force, Army, CIA, NGA, NSA, Navy and US Space Force personnel.
The interesting thing is, other than a core staff, no one works directly for the NRO – it’s all other agency DOD employees and contractors that get the things done that benefit the NRO’s mission. (That makes it tough when DOGE comes around, huh?) In fact, A 1996 bipartisan commission report described the NRO as having by far the largest budget of any intelligence agency and “virtually no federal workforce.”
Regardless, the agency performs their mission quite well, making sure that the spy birds are in the air, the information they collect is disseminated to the right people, and of course using the latest in space tech to keep an eye on the bad guys. But no, they’re still not going to tell you what’s on that rocket.
