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I can't believe noone has mentioned NRO and NGA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaiss

I can't believe noone has mentioned NRO and NGA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligence_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligen... Relatively less is known about them, since CIA and NSA get all the attention lately (to their detriment), but as far as we can tell (from Snowden docs), NRO has about equal budget to NSA, and NGA has about half (and CIA has 1.5 times NSA's): http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black-budget-summary-details-us-spy-networks-successes-failures-and-objectives/2013/08/29/7e57bb78-10ab-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black-... Considering the incredible things NSA has been able to do with its $10B/yr, a combined NRO+NGA budget of $15B/yr sure raises a lot of questions. Presumably, they do a lot of work similar to the OP's - but noone really know what the capabilities are.

zokier 12y ago
If they do/pay their own satellite launches that would explain some of the budget.
nikcub 12y ago
NRO has such a large budget because they design, build and launch a ton of satellites, high-altitude equipment and a number of ground and space-based comms networks. They provide that raw data to CIA, NSA & DIA who do analysis. NGIA do GEOINT - think of them as the government's own Google Earth but with a ton more detail and live or near-live tracking in areas of interest. They provide maps to troops on the ground, determine what the NRO satellites should be looking at and merge all they produce (optical, IR, etc. imaging) and merge it with their geospatial and cartography data. CIA, NSA, DIA along with NRO and NGIA are the big five. Think of the later two as tech departments for the intelligence community. CIA, DIA, NSA and State (and others) will analyze ISIS propaganda using data from all these orgs and convert data to intelligence.
- lovelearning 12y ago
  With all that capability, I can't help wondering why they underestimated IS so badly.
  - jorgis 12y ago
    All the satellites in the world, and we still can't read the human heart.

zokier 12y ago

If they do/pay their own satellite launches that would explain some of the budget.

nikcub 12y ago

NRO has such a large budget because they design, build and launch a ton of satellites, high-altitude equipment and a number of ground and space-based comms networks. They provide that raw data to CIA, NSA & DIA who do analysis. NGIA do GEOINT - think of them as the government's own Google Earth but with a ton more detail and live or near-live tracking in areas of interest. They provide maps to troops on the ground, determine what the NRO satellites should be looking at and merge all they produce (optical, IR, etc. imaging) and merge it with their geospatial and cartography data. CIA, NSA, DIA along with NRO and NGIA are the big five. Think of the later two as tech departments for the intelligence community. CIA, DIA, NSA and State (and others) will analyze ISIS propaganda using data from all these orgs and convert data to intelligence.

lovelearning 12y ago
With all that capability, I can't help wondering why they underestimated IS so badly.
- jorgis 12y ago
  All the satellites in the world, and we still can't read the human heart.