National Reconnaissance Office

Director of the National Reconaissance Office Bruce Carlson

Bruce Carlson serves as the director of the National Reconnaissance Office , a position he has held since June 2009.

NRO, launched in 1961, is the agency responsible for designing, building, launching and maintaining U.S. intelligence satellites and is one of the 16 member agencies of the intelligence community.

Before he was appointed NRO director, Carlson served as a defense-industry consultant and as a member of the board of directors for EADS North America .

Carlson retired from the Air Force in January 2009 after serving as commander of the service’s Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. While there, he had responsibility for 74,000 people and $59 billion annually. He was promoted from lieutenant general to general, earning his fourth star in 2005.

Carlson has been awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal with oak leaf cluster and the Air Force Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters, among others.

He holds degrees from the University of Minnesota, Webster University and is a graduate of the Naval War College.

National Reconnaissance Office Director Discusses Aggressive ...

Bruce Carlson, the director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), was a most entertaining speaker on stage at the GEOINT conference, especially for someone who is one of the nation’s leading technology spymasters. Displaying a wry sense of humor, Carlson entertained the audience with an adroit understanding of the mission at hand. The history of the NRO is that it is an agency that was only declassified in 1992 and was moved to a location in Chantilly, Virginia. And if you’ve ever driven by their facility, it still screams, “go away!” Charged with launching the nation’s spy satellites, the NRO is now on the most aggressive launch campaign in 20 years according to Carlson. But he also cautioned that it’s a different business than it was back then. There are fewer people and less infrastructure to support the NRO’s mission. But Carlson was on a mission to produce a new generation of launch vehicles.  His priorities were very succinct: execute launches on time and budget; improve the business of launch; improve research and technology investment; and invest in the NRO workforce. Carlson says that he has increased the size of the science and technology portion of his budget within his budget even though his budget has shrunk. He sees as one of his main goals as guaranteeing a process of mission assurance. He wants to increase the number of missions by simplifying some of the processes although there are certain lower limits that they cannot go under. Carlson’s goal over the next six months is to demonstrate competency to carry out this aggressive mission in launching a new generation of satellites an modernizing the geriatric constellation now in existence. "We are concerned about our susceptibility to attack," said Carlson who essentially operates the fourth largest communications company in the US.

See the video of his entire remarks.

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