NRO Awards Operational Radar Commercial Augmentation Contracts

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) today announced the award of three Radar Commercial Augmentation (RCA) contracts, continuing to operationalize and expand the Intelligence Community and Department of War’s use of U.S. commercial radar capabilities. These contracts will directly partner the NRO with industry to support intelligence analysis, global discovery and monitoring, disaster response, humanitarian assistance, and other requirements through day, night, and all-weather Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging.

Companies receiving awards include Capella Space Corp, ICEYE US, Inc, and Umbra Lab, Inc.

These awards follow the NRO’s three-phased Commercial Radar Capabilities (CRC) effort, which began in January 2022. The CRC effort assessed the capabilities of multiple commercial SAR providers through a structured process of modeling, simulation, and on-orbit demonstrations. The successful performance of the awardees in these initial studies led to their eligibility for RCA contracts.

The RCA contracts represent a significant step in the NRO’s strategy to build a more resilient and responsive overhead architecture. By integrating commercial SAR capabilities with national systems, the NRO increases its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capacity and flexibility, ensuring timely and persistent global coverage. This approach allows the NRO to leverage the rapid innovation occurring in the commercial space sector to augment its cuttingedge space-based intelligence systems.

Managed by the NRO’s Commercial Systems Program Office, the RCA effort provides allweather, day and night imaging to support a wide range of national security and humanitarian missions. This strategy is informed by lessons learned from the NRO’s successful ElectroOptical Commercial Layer and other commercial remote sensing programs, further promoting the rapid integration of the most innovative commercial data services.

About NRO
Ever since its inception at the dawn of the space age more than 60 years ago, the NRO has brought the farthest reaches of the planet into our grasp — to see it, hear it, and sense it. Today, the NRO is building on that legacy of innovation, harnessing the limitless potential of space to make our nation even safer and stronger. For more information, visit NRO.gov.