You wrote, "As a supposedly enlightened civilization it seems backwards for a secret arm of our government to be better funded than one specifically designed to expand our knowledge of our universe."

That is because we do not live in an enlightened society. No one is more paranoid than government.

Agreed. My tone was stuck between sarcastic and willfully naive.

Well these telescopes weren't built in a vacuum. (Ha - but no pun intended.) The Air Force, CIA, and NRO (and who knows what other departments) have been building and using telescopes with astronomers' help for a long time. Adaptive optics is one example of a technology developed for spy satellites using astronomers working in industry that is now being used by astronomers working at universities and government research labs.

I'm not sure why this affects the Webb telescope debate. It was sold as being able to use off-the-shelf hardware, but as soon as the funding started off they went inventing new technologies for it, which has led to the 3 year launch delay and 2X cost overruns.

I thought the Webb telescope was pushed as a replacement for the Hubble... considering there are two replacements now it seems a little irresponsible to keep building something like the Webb in the current financial climate. Considering the DOD built these two they were probably way more expensive than the Webb, but, at least, they're done... I do wonder what thr NRO is using in their stead.... these must be last generation telescopes.

one problem is that these are merely the optical assemblies, there are no sensors installed (the sensor suite for a earth orbiting KH-11 is not suitable for astronomical work and vice versa. the sensor suite from Hubble would burn out if pointed at such a bright object.). so NASA still has a problem in that they would still have to spend money to design and build and install a sensor suite for these units. the KH-11 was designed and built by the same people who built the Hubble and they have a number of features in common. I'm sure the current generation of earth orbiting surveillance satellites are using deformable mirrors which were not originally designed for spy satellites. they were invented for SDI work to prevent the free electron laser beams from distorting from superheated air. the problem was the FEL would not scale up properly. the optical work however had other applications. it was common knowledge in the academic world that the KH-11 had similar optical capabilities as the Hubbell, and the Hubbell was merely a civillian offshoot.