In Death of Spy Satellite Program, Lofty Plans and Unrealistic Bids
By PHILIP TAUBMAN
New York Times
By May 2002, the government’s effort to build a technologically audacious new generation of spy satellites was foundering.
The contractor building the satellites, Boeing, was still giving Washington reassuring progress reports. But the program was threatening to outstrip its $5 billion budget, and pivotal parts of the design seemed increasingly unworkable. Peter B. Teets, the new head of the nation’s spy satellite agency, appointed a panel of experts to examine the secret project, telling them, according to one member, “Find out what’s going on, find the terrible truth I suspect is out there.”
The panel reported that the project, called Future Imagery Architecture, was far behind schedule and would most likely cost $2 billion to $3 billion more than planned, according to records from the satellite agency, the National Reconnaissance Office.
Even so, the experts recommended pressing on. Just months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and with the new satellites promising improved, more frequent images of foreign threats like terrorist training camps, nuclear weapons plants and enemy military maneuvers, they advised Mr. Teets to seek an infusion of $700 million.
It took two more years, several more review panels and billions more dollars before the government finally killed the project — perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects. The story behind that failure has remained largely hidden, like much of the workings of the nation’s intelligence establishment.
But an investigation by The New York Times found that the collapse of the project, at a loss of at least $4 billion, was all but inevitable — the result of a troubled partnership between a government seeking to maintain the supremacy of its intelligence technology, but on a constrained budget, and a contractor all too willing to make promises it ultimately could not keep.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
By May 2002, the government’s effort to build a technologically audacious new generation of spy satellites was foundering.
The contractor building the satellites, Boeing, was still giving Washington reassuring progress reports. But the program was threatening to outstrip its $5 billion budget, and pivotal parts of the design seemed increasingly unworkable. Peter B. Teets, the new head of the nation’s spy satellite agency, appointed a panel of experts to examine the secret project, telling them, according to one member, “Find out what’s going on, find the terrible truth I suspect is out there.”
The panel reported that the project, called Future Imagery Architecture, was far behind schedule and would most likely cost $2 billion to $3 billion more than planned, according to records from the satellite agency, the National Reconnaissance Office.
Even so, the experts recommended pressing on. Just months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and with the new satellites promising improved, more frequent images of foreign threats like terrorist training camps, nuclear weapons plants and enemy military maneuvers, they advised Mr. Teets to seek an infusion of $700 million.
It took two more years, several more review panels and billions more dollars before the government finally killed the project — perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects. The story behind that failure has remained largely hidden, like much of the workings of the nation’s intelligence establishment.
But an investigation by The New York Times found that the collapse of the project, at a loss of at least $4 billion, was all but inevitable — the result of a troubled partnership between a government seeking to maintain the supremacy of its intelligence technology, but on a constrained budget, and a contractor all too willing to make promises it ultimately could not keep.
(Continued here.)
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