Kao, then a deputy director of the Intelligence Bureau, submitted a blueprint for the new agency. Kao was appointed as the chief of India's first foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing. The R&AW was given the responsibility for strategic external intelligence, human as well as technical, plus concurrent responsibility with the Directorate-General of Military Intelligence for tactical trans-border military intelligence up to a certain depth across the Line of control (LOC) and the international border. R&AW started as a wing of the main Intelligence Bureau with 250 employees and an annual budget of . In the early seventies, its annual budget had risen to while its personnel numbered several thousand. In 1971, Kao had persuaded the Government to set up the Aviation Research Centre (ARC). The ARC's job was aerial reconnaissance. It replaced the Indian Air Force's old reconnaissance aircraft, and by the mid-1970s, R&AW, through the ARC, had high quality aerial pictures of the installations along the Chinese and Pakistani borders. In 2007, the budget of R&AW is speculated to be as high as 150 million to as low as 100 million. Slowly other child agencies such as The Radio Research Center and Electronics & Tech. Services were added to R&AW in the 1970s and 1990s. In the 1970s, the Special Frontier Force moved to R&AW's control, working to train Bengali rebels. In 1977, R&AW's operations and staff were dramatically cut under the premiership of Morarji Desai, which hurt the organization's capabilities with the shutting of entire sections of R&AW, like its Information Division. These cuts were reduced following Gandhi's return. In 2004 Government of India added yet another signal intelligence agency called the National Technical Facilities Organisation (NTFO), which was later renamed as National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO). While the exact nature of the operations conducted by NTRO is classified, it is believed that it deals with research on imagery and communications using various platforms. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), under the Cabinet Secretariat, is responsible for coordinating and analysing intelligence activities between R&AW, the Intelligence Bureau and the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). In practice, however, the effectiveness of the JIC has been varied. With the establishment of the National Security Council in 1999, the role of the JIC has been merged with the NSC. R&AW's legal status is unusual, in that it is not an "Agency", but a "Wing" of the Cabinet Secretariat.