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The House's top intelligence leader criticized administration plans for large reductions in intelligence funding, saying such cuts would cripple America's ability to stay competitive on a global field.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said he doesn't want the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance community "to do more with less." Instead, he said, Congress must find efficiencies while keeping intelligence budgets stable or allowing for a small increase.
"I will not allow a cut in mission capability," said Rogers, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "We have to save money. We have to get efficient. But I'm not going to nick the bone."
Rogers gave the opening keynote address of the conference.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said earlier this month that the White House's deficit-reduction plan "calls for cuts in the double-digit range — with a B — over 10 years." To make those kind of reductions, he said, the U.S. intelligence community will try to kill redundant information systems and shift to cloud computing. Clapper also told the audience at the Geospatial Intelligence conference in San Antonio that the coming round of budget cuts would be a critical challenge for political leaders and the intelligence community.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is the House panel responsible for funding and overseeing U.S. intelligence capabilities.
Rogers said the committee looked line by line at every intelligence program in the fiscal 2012 budget and found that certain efficiencies could save money, such as in information technology.
As the panel, and Congress as a whole, grapples with belt-tightening, Rogers said, the nation's ISR community must focus on what it needs to do versus what it needs to buy — considering the purpose of each tool instead of its capabilities.
"I am not saying do more with less," he said. "I'm saying we ... need to do business differently to remain competitive."
More attention needs to be paid to the "back end" of intel — filtering through all the data collected by ISR assets on the front lines, Rogers said. The 2012 defense authorization bill reflects a need to ensure there isn't more ISR technology than there is manpower to manage it, he said.
"Everyone rushed to get their soda-straw capabilities to the front lines, and we may have lagged in the back end to analyze the sheer volume of information coming in," he said.
