Halle-frickin'-lujah

The NRO is finally beginning to get put in its place:

Then the NRO's mongo-expensive Future Imagery Architecture spy satellite program turned into a $10 billion disaster.  And the orbiter known as NRO Launch 21 malfunctioned so badly, the U.S. military had to shoot it out of orbit.  Now, Space.com reports, "senior U.S. defense and intelligence leaders have stripped the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) of its authority to make key decisions on a planned imaging satellite procurement and are poised to do the same for others managed by the spy satellite agency."

In its infancy, the NRO was a great organization that did wonderful things for US intelligence.  That time is over and the organization has become a bloated bureaucratic intelligence funding black hole.  It's well past time to let the collection agencies manage their own satellite acquisitions and hopefully this will be the first step toward that end.