NRO director supports hurricane relief, warfighter

  • Published
  • By 1st Lt. Tim Dougherty
  • Air Force Print News
WASHINGTON --  As a newly minted physicist, one of the first sets of experiments Dr. Donald M. Kerr worked on involved the use of small rockets. Today, many years later, Dr. Kerr is no longer simply experimenting with rocket science; instead, he is leading it as the new director of the National Reconnaissance Office.

“It's a great privilege to be at the NRO,” Dr. Kerr said Sept. 1. “I've grown up, and so have the rockets.”

Dr. Kerr, who most recently served as the director of the laboratory division of the FBI, said he is proud to be able to provide critical assistance to the Federal Emergency Management Agency by providing direct support to relief operations in the Gulf Coast region devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

“At the end of the day, there’s nothing like some of our capabilities for providing people with a view as things are rather than as they were,” Dr. Kerr said. “It’s important for the rescuers to understand how things are at the present time, so I’m quite proud to be able to make that kind of contribution. We didn’t expect to be making these contributions domestically, but it’s clearly something that we can do and are doing.”

The NRO is also supporting troops and intelligence operatives in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.

“We’re delivering an unprecedented amount of information direct to the warfighter in the theater, and I think that’s worked out extremely well,” said Dr. Kerr, who assumed his new job in July.

Besides providing intelligence products to warriors in the field, he said one of his priorities is to attract and retain good people for the NRO, a task made slightly easier because of the very nature of the NRO.

“One of the great benefits of the NRO is that it does attract people because of its mission and the kind of work they get to do,” Dr. Kerr said. “We have great engineers and scientists from both the Air Force and the civilian side, but all of us who are scientists and engineers have the problem of obsolescence, which starts the day you leave school.”

To combat obsolescence and retain good people, he said the NRO is always looking for ways to keep its scientists informed on new scientific advancements and career development.

“To refresh our scientists’ knowledge, we look at everything from educational opportunities to career management in terms of jobs they should be doing at different points in their career,” Dr. Kerr said. “It’s this knowledge that lets the government be a smart buyer. We have to keep the knowledge refreshed, and we need government people equipped with both depth and breadth in subject matter areas.”

Besides recruiting and retention, other challenges for Dr. Kerr and the NRO are things people probably do not think about unless they are involved in the building of various space systems.

“We’re still challenged by the fundamental enablers of our business, such as solar cells, batteries or even bearings,” he said. “The miracles that our people are able to perform every day depend on systems that function as near perfectly as we can make them.”