Joe Heck’s national security role finds new urgency after Osama bin Laden’s death

Responsibility to make sure such satellites are working falls to Rep. Joe Heck and a handful of others in Congress.

When House Speaker John Boehner selected Heck as the only freshman to serve on the small and secretive Select Committee on Intelligence, Heck’s assignment was the subcommittee for Technical and Tactical Intelligence, which monitors the government’s satellite capacity.

His job seems straightforward: bone up on the network of military, intelligence and commercial satellites, figure out how to improve government-private sector cooperation, and figure out how to update the fleet but also cut costs.

“There are a lot of old satellites,” Heck told the Las Vegas Sun in late April, a few days after returning from a trip to California to tour several satellite production and launch facilities, and interview engineers about designs and demands of production. He called the trip his “400-level” course in his accelerated education on satellites. “Many were launched with a five-to-10-year life span, but we have satellites up there working that are over 20 years old,” he said. “They’re working, but on life support.”

But Heck’s job got a new level of urgency in the aftermath of bin Laden’s death.

The official words on the satellite industry in the days since the successful raid have mostly been ones of praise.

“The outer features of the compound were studied intensively and there were certain assessments made about where individuals were living and where bin Laden and his family were,” John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism chief, told reporters after the raid, referring to satellite images that intelligence operatives had collected. “We were able to monitor in a real-time basis the progress of the operation from its commencement, to its time on target, to the extraction of the remains, and to then the egress off of the target.”

The system of satellites employed by the U.S. is relatively small, but complex: The government relies on specialized equipment used for military and intelligence-gathering purposes, and commercial satellites, such as those that enable global positioning systems.

“It’s a combination: everything from commercial satellites, to intelligence satellites, to military satellites,” Heck said.

There are only about 100 official military satellites circling the globe. That may seem small, but it’s actually more than half of all the military satellites in operation worldwide. It’s also more satellites than the next-biggest operator, Russia, has in its entire national fleet: military, commercial, or otherwise. China has announced plans to out-orbit the U.S. in the next 10 years, but hasn’t yet hit close to its mark.

Although the satellites used for surveillance activities, such as mapping bin Laden’s compound, get the most attention, they’re not the largest, or even the most important. That distinction goes to communications, where Heck’s spent the most time, recently investigating.

More than 80 percent of government and military communications takes place across commercial satellite networks that also serve civilians and are managed by private corporations, a balance that leaves even the most top-secret operations susceptible to failures in cybersecurity.

The interconnectedness of the systems means that anything from the transmission of an email, to the flight plan of a drone, could pose potential for a security leak.

The long-standing dual nature of the satellite industry as public-private partnership also creates a complicated pattern of authority. As with most space and defense projects, government contractors are designing and building the satellites. And although military satellites are launched almost exclusively from Cape Canaveral in Florida or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, it’s usually contractors that are doing the launching.

“It’s more cost effective to use a commercial provider than a government provider to launch satellites,” Heck said.

On his visit to California last month, Heck said he met several contractors, including Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and SpaceX — a company that only does commercial launches — to explore possibilities for future cooperation.

Although Heck expects private contractors will save the government on satellite operation, some experts warn he should think again.

“Ninety percent of what’s going on in the military/space field is done by private contractors, because they are the ones who know how to do it,” said John Pike, an expert on defense and intelligence policy related to space and director of Globalsecurity.org. Because the government has no recourse to private contractors — save new ones who might potentially bid the price of a satellite down — costs are likely to stay where they are, he said.

“Everybody’s having too much fun spending all this money,” he said.

Satellites aren’t the government’s best reconnaissance tool — that distinction would go to drones, such as those operated out of Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base, which can capture 24/7, full-motion video in real time, instead of still pictures once every two hours — there’s also no real alternative to them as an intelligence-gathering tool.

“For most things, you don’t need full-motion video; for most things, you just want to know where the airfield is, how many jets do they have on it,” Pike said. “Our spy satellites are always the first American government resource on the scene, in any incident, accident, or attack, anywhere on the planet … and you never have to worry about airspace.”

Starting in a few weeks, it’s going to be Heck’s responsibility — behind closed doors — to figure out if there’s a leaner way to keep the satellite fleet in fighting shape up in the air.

“It’s so critical to our national security, we have to move forward,” Heck said. “But we’ve got to do it in a cost-effective manner.”