Christopher Scolese, director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), recently accepted his 2022 Wash100 Award, the highest honor in the government contracting (GovCon) community, during a visit by Executive Mosaic CEO Jim Garrettson to the department’s headquarters in Chantilly, Virginia.
Executive Mosaic has recognized Christopher Scolese with his third consecutive Wash100 Award for leading NRO as the agency continues to deliver intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data to the intelligence community, Department of Defense (DoD) and other space-based content recipients.
Christopher Scolese was appointed as the 19th director for the National Reconnaissance Office in August 2019. Since assuming the position, he’s provided direction and guidance on critical challenges pertaining to the NRO, and executes other authorities specifically delegated by the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence.
Most recently, Christopher Scolese announced the importance of NRO looking to provide more commercial services, including the awarding of three contracts to private-sector companies for commercial imagery.
Scolese specifically mentioned that looking to the private sector for satellite imagery capabilities can be far less expensive than what NRO has been doing for its own assets. The other advantage is being able to direct resources toward intelligence gathering which is important to the warfighter, but not as valuable in the commercial market.
"It allows us to focus on those things that are critically important that have either no commercial value at all, but have incredible intelligence value, that we need to go off and do," Scolese explained. "And oftentimes, those are extremely complex systems that would be very expensive to develop and therefore … the lack of commercial interest in them."
In addition, Scolese highlighted that launch capabilities are critical for NRO as the agency continues to work with several international partners, including the Eastern and Western Ranges and New Zealand to launch smaller assets into space and will soon work with the U.K. on air-launching assets as well.
"Having the capability to launch pretty much from almost anywhere in the world gives us great flexibility," Scolese detailed. “It adds to our resilience because we're not relying on just one or two launch bases…It gives us greater flexibility because we now have the opportunity to sort of pick launch bases.”
Executive Mosaic is thrilled to recognize the NRO and Christopher Scolese as a 2022 Wash100 Award winner. As a three-time recipient of the most significant award of consequence to GovCon, Scolese has been recognized for his grand contributions to the GovCon community that are expected to continue into the coming year.
