In what appears to mark a major shift in Chinese military and arms control strategy, the head of the PRC’s air force has said in an official interview that military operations in space are an “historical inevitability.” General Xu Qiliang said that, “As far as the revolution in military affairs is concerned, the competition between military forces is moving towards outer space… this is a historical inevitability and a development that cannot be turned back.”

In his first public appearance, the director of the National Reconnaissance Office pledged to deliver the nation’s spy satellites on time and on budget after almost a decade of botched programs such as the Future Imagery Architecture.

The Pentagon created a team one month ago and sent it to Iraq and Afghanistan to figure out how to achieve the Holy Grail of intelligence sharing, one network architecture that shares intelligence from every satellite, UAV and plane and gets it to everyone on the ground and in the air who needs it.

The Senate wants to build an unproven but technologically attractive reconnaissance spy satellite said to be relatively cheap. The House wants to build a technologically proven but more expensive spy satellite. So far, at least, they can’t agree on which one strikes the best balance between risk, cost and capability. And they may not be able to agree given how divergent their solutions are.

The nation that made it to the Moon in 12 years now struggles to build a satellite in that time and is at risk of losing its preeminence in space. So said one of the top four space intelligence lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, chairman of the House Select technical and tactical intelligence subcommittee.

With the Senate likely to vote next week on the defense authorization bill, concern is growing that one or more senators may filibuster the bill to make clear their displeasure or unease with hate crimes legislation that was attached to the bill.

Expect fireworks from a pair of meetings yesterday and Wednesday about the future of what was one of Americas most closely guarded secret weapons, the National Reconnaissance Office. A tiger team is meeting to discuss what could be an enormous expansion of the NRO’s power, from its current focus on building and operating highly classified imaging and radar satellites to building and operating all US military and intelligence space and ISR assets

Persistent hardware and software problems that have dogged the Space Based Infrared System for almost two years have not yet been solved, Air Force Space Command Gen. Robert Kehler told reporters at the Air Force Association’s annual conference. The Senate Appropriations Committee agrees with Kehler, noting that that SBIRS is more than eight years behind schedule and will cost “at least” $7.5 billion more than its original cost estimate.

Covering highly classified spy satellite systems always entails a great deal of cryptic language, sometimes incomprehensible hints from well-meaning sources and small bits of real information about these hugely important and expensive systems. Today we have a perfect example of a spy satellite story. At the end of today’s Senate Appropriations defense markup I rushed up to Sen. Kit Bond, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a subcommittee chairman on the appropriations panel.

Less than a month after President Obama signed the Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act into law, the National Reconnaissance Office acted with almost blinding speed and issued a memo detailing its adamant stand against the possible appearance of any corporate conflicts of interest. NRO officials and a former senior intelligence official offered staunch defenses of the agency’s actions.

The acquisition reform legislation passed by Congress is forcing major defense companies to sell subsidiaries so they don’t fall afoul of new restrictions forbidding manufacturers from owning companies that advise the government about acquisitions. The most glaring example appears to be the pending sale by Northrop Grumman of TASC, a company with some 5,000 employees who provide the military and, especially, the intelligence community with technical advice on acquisitions and operations.

It’s official. Jamie McIntyre, who used to cover the military for CNN, has joined the Military.com team with his own site, Line of Departure. I knew Jamie from my days covering NATO at Defense News and we shared a few flights with then-Defense Secretary William Cohen. He’s a rock solid reporter who will bring a deep source book and a unique perspective on how the military is faring and how relations between the media and the military shape both enterprises. Move out!

5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Northrop Grumman employees will be holding their breath around Sept. 15 when the enormous billows of flame and smoke begin to spew forth from a rocket lifting a new generation of space sensors into orbit. That launch will carry two demonstration satellites of a $1.4 billion program known as the Space Tracking and Surveillance System that has been plagued by quality control and other technical problems.

The QDR is pretty much finished and the major decisions made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates on April 6 are likely to comprise most of the review’s major decisions. “It appears to be essentially over:” that’s the judgment of a Pentagon official with detailed knowledge of the review. “There appears to be no appetite for anything bolder than the 6 April decisions,” this source said.

The Obama administration’s guidance for the 2011 science budget makes clear that basic research spending will stay flat in most areas or decline, including at the Pentagon. Money will first go to research that can “drive economic recovery, job creation, and economic growth,” says the guidance issued in an Aug. 4 memo by White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag.

Not only did the House Appropriations defense subcommittee call the administration’s bluff on funding for the F-136 engine for the Joint Strike Fighter; it told the Defense Secretary to stuff money into the regular budget in the future. The HAC-D also froze all spending on the NPOESS weather satellite system until ATL certifies the program is complying with Pentagon acquisition rules.

The builder of the nation’s highly classified spy satellites, the NRO, should be getting a makeover soon, and one of the top House intelligence lawmakers says it’s about time. “We need a new charter, a new look at the NRO,” Rep. Mac Thornberry, ranking member House Intelligence’s technical and tactical intelligence, told me yesterday. A panel of senior intelligence gurus led by former Missile Defense Agency Trey Obering has put together recommendations about the new charter as well as other on other issues relating to the NRO. Thornberry called the panel’s work and the prospect of change at the NRO “an opportunity we shouldn’t miss.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee may try to break up the nation’s storied spy satellite agency — the NRO — once a paragon of American technological brilliance and now considered by many a troubled bureaucracy that has had trouble getting the big things right. In parallel, the Director of National Intelligence was briefed June 23 by a panel of distinguished experts about the best path ahead for the National Reconnaissance Office. The panel “considered options to break up NRO or reassign functions but recommended continuation of a single, unified program,” a former senior intelligence official said.

The US intelligence community needs more analytic capabilities to figure out what countries such as North Korea are doing and why they are doing it, the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee said in its markup of the 2010 defense authorization bill. “During recent briefings, it was brought to my attention that we have insufficient analytical capabilities and resources to keep pace with these developing systems,” said the panel’s top Republican, Rep. Mike Turner.

Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, a Californian who votes with his party about 95 percent of the time, won the nod from GOP elders to lead the party in one of its most important committees, the House Armed Services Committee. McKeon beat out the thoughtful and creative Mac Thornberry, who also sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland, a scientist and top GOP member on the HASC air and land subcommittee.