National Reconnaissance Office

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense and a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community which designs, builds, launches, and operates the intelligence satellites of the U.S. federal government. It provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the National Security Agency (NSA), imagery intelligence (IMINT) to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The NRO announced in 2023 that it plans within the following decade to quadruple the number of satellites it operates and increase the number of signals and images it delivers by a factor of ten.

NRO is considered, along with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), NSA, DIA, and NGA, to be one of the "big five" U.S. intelligence agencies. The NRO is headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, 2 miles (3.2 km) south of Washington Dulles International Airport. Historically, the NRO has maintained a close relationship with the CIA, and CIA officers and interns are often assigned to the NRO.

The director of the NRO reports to both the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense. The NRO's federal workforce is a hybrid organization consisting of some 3,000 personnel including NRO cadre, Air Force, Army, CIA, NGA, NSA, Navy and U.S. Space Force personnel. A 1996 bipartisan commission report described the NRO as having by far the largest budget of any intelligence agency, and "virtually no federal workforce", accomplishing most of its work through "tens of thousands" of defense contractor personnel. From its founding in 1961 the NRO's existence was classified and not revealed publicly until 1992.