Commercial imagery satellites are likely to face some real issues over the short run. Looks to me that the DoD is shifting from private supplies to those very confidential?
In the short term, O'Connell said in his email that, "I am delighted to confirm that in the last few days, we have received confirmation from the NGA that the EnhancedView program is fully funded through the remainder of our 2012 contract year." Given how deeply dependent both imagery companies are on the flow of dollars from the intelligence community, this is, as O'Connell says, "excellent news" for both companies. The satellites both companies have built are not cheap to build and put in orbit, costing in the neighborhood of $500 million each. The capital markets were reluctant to finance such enormous capital-intensive projects without long-term indications of solid cash flow. The EnhancedView contracts appeared to offer that. But with the winding down of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Director of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper, clearly made the decision that commercial imagery could take the budgetary back seat to the superb high-resolution imagery provided by the National Reconnaissance Office.
When Clapper announced "double digit" intelligence community budget cuts at the October Geoint Conference it became clear within an hour that most of the money was coming out of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency's hide. And most of that money was coming out of the commercial imagery purchases. I understand that NGA opposed the cuts to the end and was overruled by Clapper, who, ironically, had been among the earliest and strongest champions of commercial imagery when he led NGA.
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