Q&A: General Bruce Carlson (Ret.)
GIF 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 3 (April)
General Bruce Carlson (Ret.)
Director
National Reconnaissance Office
Carlson began his military career as a commissioned officer in 1971 after graduating with distinction from the Air Force ROTC program at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. He is a command pilot with more than 3,500 flying hours in 10 different aircraft, and saw combat as a forward air controller in the OV-10 Bronco. His various flying assignments included commanding the 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman AFB, N.M., the Air Force’s first stealth fighter wing.
His staff assignments included positions at Tactical Air Command, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, and the offices of the Secretary of the Air Force and Secretary of Defense. He also served as the director of force structure, resources and assessment on the Joint Staff; commander, 8th Air Force, Barksdale AFB, La.; and joint functional component commander for space and global strike, Strategic Command, Offutt AFB, Neb.
Carlson also served as commander, Air Force Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, which is responsible for development, testing, acquisition and sustainment of Air Force weapons systems. In that role, he had responsibility for 74,000 people and $59 billion annually.
Carlson holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and a Master of Arts degree from Webster University.
Carlson was interviewed by GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly.
Q: You began a recent speech by noting that people often say to you, “Given that there’s a lot of things wrong at the NRO, tell me some of the good things that are going on out there.” What’s the first thing you say in response?
A: The first thing I say is the people. I have been around the world, visiting all of our main ground locations, and we have a remarkable group of people. I meet with the program managers here every month, and they are a superb lineup of highly talented people. I deal every morning with all of the NRO infrastructure, and we tackle some very complex problems with satellites on orbit and the ground infrastructure that we have spread throughout the world. As you can imagine, because it’s aging, we do have problems, and I am amazed at how they can solve those problems in short order. I’ve visited almost all of the combatant commanders, and I get high praise for our people when I do that. In addition, we have people deployed to the fight, and they’re doing great work in very difficult places, doing demanding things.
Despite the fact that we don’t have the robust science and technology budget that I would like to have, we do some very innovative things. We have the Director’s Innovation Initiative, and we hand out $11 million a year, with a maximum of $400,000 per contract, to innovative, bright people who submit proposals. Our selection committee received 308 proposals this year. It’s become very popular. We can’t select them all, but we get some great thought pieces and remarkable work out of that. In addition, our Innovative Solutions Initiative does that on an international basis, so we get products from people all over. We also do technology fellowships, where people from industry come in and spend a year with us. We have an AS&T Advanced Futures Lab here in the building, where we have put together some innovative ways of doing business, connecting and integrating different kinds of intelligence.
Finally, over the past year or so, the organization has done a great deal to reach out and better serve our mission partners. Since I’ve been here, I’ve worked hard to make sure people understand that we’re only here to serve customers. We’re not here to develop things for NRO. We don’t have a product that we produce for ourselves. We produce products for other people, and I think that the relationships that we now have with the Air Force and other agencies that we serve and that provide our workforce are now as good as they have ever been.
Q: You also said that the upcoming launch of NRO vehicles over the next 18 months is your number-one priority. Why, and what can you tell us about your agency’s plans in this area?
A: Our fleet of vehicles on orbit is aging. The main reason is that we took a kind of hiatus from building and launching vehicles for about eight to 10 years, and we had a couple of failures. That put us behind, and now there will be a flurry of activity as we’ve attempted to catch up over the past few years. All that catching up has led to a group of satellites that will be ready for launch in the next 12-15 months. In addition to our covey of satellites that go up to replenish and replace, and also provide new capability, the Air Force has a series of ongoing launches of GPS, communications and other satellites, and NASA has vehicles, as do other customers. We have a very limited infrastructure from which to launch. We only have one pad on each coast to do heavy vehicle and one pad on each coast for Atlas Vs. Couple that with the fact that we have only one processing facility at each location, and one launch crew for both locations. If I want to launch on the West Coast, we have to migrate the crew out there, and then bring them back. I have done a bit to make them more robust and allow them to move faster and turn around quicker, but nevertheless, that contributes to the bunching up we’ve got right now.
We have a series of vehicles that have to launch, because of the aging fleet that we have in space now. I think it’s probably the most aggressive launch schedule that we’ve had at NRO for at least the past two or two and a half decades. We have our work cut out for us. We owe it to the taxpayers and our customers to get these vehicles into space and operating properly. We think that the new replacement and replenishment constellation that we’re putting up will not only replace and replenish, but also add significant new capabilities. We’ve advertised those capabilities, and now it’s time to live up to our reputation.
Q: How would you describe the current state of the launch industry, and what can you do to improve it?
A: I would characterize the launch industry as “at risk.” As I mentioned, we have a single support team and a single pad on each coast for heavy vehicles and a single pad on each coast for Atlas Vs. We have production issues, where we’re not shipping rockets to the launch pad as an entire unit, but are having to put them together on the pad. There is minimal investment being done for engines or future rockets. We’re at risk in this country. What can we do? I’m not in charge of launch, although I provide vehicles to be launched. So I can only work this problem at the margins. We’re involved in a couple of serious ongoing studies, and have conducted one in the past for the director of National Intelligence. We have implemented some of the recommendations that we made in our own study. Those will help us on the margins, but nonetheless they will help us make sure we adhere to our schedule.
For example, one of the recommendations was to develop an integrated launch schedule. By that, I mean that everyone at NRO who has a vehicle is now on a single launch schedule. Before, each group would organize their own launch, and then it was off to the races. But with the bunching up and limited resources that we have now, we couldn’t do that anymore. So we now have an integrated, NRO-wide launch schedule. It’s also important to remember that we have a remarkable reliability so far with our EELV fleet. Despite the difficulties we have had in production, we have had a remarkably successful launch history in the past few years.
Q: How would you evaluate the impact of cuts in science and technology programs, and how are you responding?
A: Our science and technology budget has been slashed about 50 percent in the last five years, so when I inherited the organization, it was not nearly where I wanted it to be. We have made a meager increase in the budget we submitted to Congress this year, and while I’m here we will continue to increase that every year. But it’s in tenths of a percentage point every year, because we just don’t have the funding to add much more. Our goal is to do three things. The first is to direct the research that we’re conducting, at least in major part, into those things that we can put on orbit. For example, 60 percent of the next generation signals intelligence constellation upgrades will come right out of our science and technology efforts. We’re working across the board to make sure that we direct study to things that are important.
Secondly, we think that a small part of the budget should be in the hands of a group of people who are thinking really hard about problems. There are creative people in this organization, and I want to make sure that they have some discretionary funding to go look at radical new things that we could be doing. Third, we need to support the warfighter, so we spend part of the budget on direct support for creative ways to provide intelligence and integrated information to the warfighters, and do it quickly. We’ve had good success at that. We have a strong outreach program to our customers, and we work hard to meet their needs.
Q: What is NRO doing to support the warfighter in the field?
A: We have deployed a large number of NRO experts, who are located not only with all of the combatant commanders worldwide, but also within the AOR. They are working immediate warfighter needs. Because of the kind of people we send, they are experts in what we can provide here at NRO. They are the kind of people who can make one phone call and get a switch turned, and suddenly there is information flowing to someone. They have been very helpful, and I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from combatant commanders about how well they know the system and how quickly they can get a problem fixed once it’s been identified. Secondly, we’re very active in interagency and other operational support efforts that are going on in the Washington, D.C., area. Equally important, we train every large Army unit that’s going to deploy. We get together with their intelligence team and make sure before they go that they know everything we can teach them on the latest developments in the intelligence business. We’ve worked very hard to respond to emerging intelligence needs from the combatant commanders, and I think they would characterize us as very responsive.
Q: What is the current status of the Next Generation Electro-Optical reconnaissance (NGEO) satellite program?
A: NGEO has unprecedented executive level support. We’ve gotten joint signatures from the director of National Intelligence and secretary of Defense to Congress, and that memo was approved by the president. So I think we have unprecedented unity in the executive branch on what it is that we need. NGEO is the system that will fulfill warfighter needs, precision targeting, worldwide disaster relief, support global climate change efforts and monitoring for WMD proliferation. It is the only system that will do that, and it is designed to fulfill those requirements. If you want to do some other niche things, we do build those satellites, and we have them in orbit now, where we fulfill niche capabilities or demonstration type missions. Also, we’re funded in the FY 2011 budget, and throughout the FYDP. Most important, it is what will sustain the constellation in the years to come. Additionally, it does a great deal of work in sustaining the industrial base, which is an aging and at-risk industrial base that hasn’t had much attention recently. It’s a critical piece of that as well.
Q: Do you ever see NRO moving to having a permanent staff, rather than on assignment from other agencies?
A: Right now, we manage about a dozen personnel systems, because we have people coming from a host of different agencies. In my view, the options are either to continue to work that multiagency support, or we have our own personnel system. We’ve been offered 100 or 200 people, but that just adds another personnel system that we have to manage. In fact, it would be an even more difficult personnel system, because if you dropped 100-200 people in, then they would all drop out at the same time. Then you would have to refill, and it would be difficult to replenish the experience base. So it’s an all or nothing deal—either we continue to do it the same way, or we get a whole new system. The chances of getting a new system are pretty slim, so we’ll probably just stick with the system that we have. We’ve been fairly successful in working with our partners in getting people who are involved in critical programs to stay a little longer, so I’m not overwhelmingly discouraged with the system we have today. I think we can make it work, and we do a good job of partnering with our major suppliers of people. If Congress or the executive branch feels that we should convert to one system, we can do that. But I see that as a bridge too far.
Q: What is NRO doing to strengthen its partnership with military organizations?
A: This organization provides services to others. We live or die based on our ability to add value to the data that comes down from space, and we pride ourselves on doing that. To make sure that whatever we produce is what people need, we need to have an active relationship with them so that we understand in a continual dialogue what they need. Thirty years ago, that wasn’t such a big deal, because we were in the monitoring and counting business. We were in the business of figuring out what the Soviet Union was doing, counting what they had and where it was based. That was a static and direct role, and it didn’t change for a couple of decades. However, today’s intelligence community and intelligence users are looking for a series of different products, depending on where they are, what phase of the operation they’re in, how long they’re going to be there, who the enemy is and so on.
We have to be responsive, and we’re working hard at that with the outreach program I mentioned. Our mission support director, Dr. Pete Rustan, is very actively engaged in outreach to our customers all over the world, and has a team of experts who represent the organization very well. In addition, we’re on a large number of working groups, panels, studies and conferences, and are in regular contact with agencies such as Air Force Space Command. We have bilateral relationships that allow us to focus directly on their needs and how we partner with them on specific issues.
Q: What metrics or other evidence can you cite to show improvements in NRO’s performance and oversight of major programs?
A: We have two primary types of performance measurements— acquisition and operational. In terms of acquisition measures, we’re interested in whether our programs are meeting the cost, schedule and performance promises we’ve made. I’m pleased to say that more than 90 percent of NRO programs are currently “in the green.” That’s a great change from the past, when we had some pretty big failures. We have a very aggressive management team, and we try to incentivize our contractors to perform to the metrics that we believe are important in terms of cost, schedule and performance. Despite the fact that we currently have a heavy procurement load, we’re doing very well.
Operationally, what we’re interested in is system availability— are the systems available for tasking, and do the systems in space communicate with the systems on the ground that process and disseminate information to allow our mission partners to solve intelligence problems? As you can imagine in an aging constellation, sometimes a unit comes around the world and isn’t working right. Space is a pretty hostile environment, and the systems are getting older. It’s like going down a rough, bumpy road. Sometimes the satellites rise but aren’t “awake” like they should be, but we do some pretty miraculous things to get them working again, and we can do that in short order. Our metrics for processing and communications are over 99.5 percent availability. The outages we have are very limited and happen for short periods of time. We have scheduled losses—satellites that have essentially run out of gas, and after that there’s really nothing we can do. But wherever there is a chance of life, or one feeble breath, we work hard to keep the systems available for the warfighter and intelligence communities. We’ve been very successful. We have satellites up there that are old enough to vote, and some of them are old enough to drink! Most of them were designed for a three-to- five-year life cycle. We’ve got satellites that were designed two decades ago to monitor Soviet strategic communications, and now they’re collecting information on bad guys in the AOR. That’s a remarkable tribute to the people who maintain them, and modify the ground system to interpret the satellite’s information in new ways, or focus it on a different part of the world.
Q: What changes if any would you like to see in the agency’s acquisition process, and how do you view oversight?
A: I don’t think we need changes in our acquisition process. But I’d like to make a comment about oversight. Because of my past experiences at the senior levels of the Air Force, I believe that oversight is a critical function. No responsible agency in the federal government can overlook the responsiveness that we owe to those who have been placed in an oversight position. Our form of government is based on a series of checks and balances, and that’s what oversight is. My experience with oversight is that those who perform exceptionally well don’t need much oversight.
When I was a teenager, I needed a lot of oversight. But then I grew up a bit, and didn’t need as much oversight. What I have worked on hard here is not worrying about the oversight, but about performance. If we perform in terms of system availability, cost, schedule and performance, then the oversight burden is minimized. We’re going to demonstrate credible performance and live up to our promises, and then oversight will be a piece of cake.
Q: Your background in uniform includes serving as commander of Air Force Materiel Command. How has this affected your approach to your current position?
A: While I’m really a pilot, I did have a chance to command a couple of large organizations. I think I was hired because the secretary of Defense and director of National Intelligence felt that they needed a fresh look at the NRO, and I’m glad to do that. We’ve tweaked in a minor way some of the organizational structure, and some of the assignments within the organization. It was basically sound, and as I said earlier, the people here are remarkably talented. What they needed was a little positive reinforcement and direction, and hopefully, I can provide that in my time here. They are ready and willing to perform, and they know how to perform. So my job is, as one leader once said, “There they go, and I must follow after them, for I am their leader.” That’s the kind of people we have here—they’re self-starters.
We do have some things we need to focus on, such as acquisition excellence, which we just can’t take for granted. We have to continue to train and certify our people, and make sure they understand the current rules and regulations under which they operate so we don’t have foul-ups in critical areas where we’re spending taxpayer money. Our Acquisition Center of Excellence is a model for the rest of the intelligence community and Department of Defense. We continue to train our people in all areas, whether contracting, acquisition, law or inspections. It’s adding the element of discipline to what we do, and we’re getting better at it every day. ♦
