Gif 9 3 final

Official Publication of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation

April 2011 Volume 9, Issue 3

www.GIF-kmi.com

NRO Profile O Cloud Computing O Data Management

PRSRT STDU.S. POSTAGE

PAIDMerrifield, VAPERMIT # 620

InformationProvider

Dr. PeteRustan

DirectorMission Support DirectorateNRO

Geospatial intelliGence Forum april 2011 Volume 9 • issue 3

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Features coVer / Q&a

17

Departments

2

3

14

27

Editor’s Perspective

USGIF

Industry Raster

Calendar, Directory

inDustry interView

Rick AmbrosePresident

Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Solutions-Security

28

Dr. Pete RustanDirector, Mission Support Directorate

National Reconnaissance Office

NRO ProfileThe National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a joint Department of Defense-intelligence community organization responsible for developing, launching and operating America’s signals, imagery and communications intelligence satellites.

Cloud ServiceOne recent major sign of the growing importance of the geospatial cloud concept was last summer’s introduction of an online system for using geographic information everywhere.By Karen M. Kroll

22

Big Data Changes the StorylineTo meet its goals—providing online, on-demand access to GEOINT knowledge, and creating new value by broadening and deepening analytic expertise—the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency must adopt a “big data” approach. By David Crandall25

Message from the Director

NRO Organization Chart

Starting a Business Relationship with NRO

Vigilance From Above

NRO History and Heritage

NRO 50th Anniversary Launches

7

8

8

10

11

12

A proposal to create a new nationwide 4G wireless broadband network is stirring concern among GPS technology providers and users, who fear that the resulting electromagnetic interference will cause havoc for the increasingly vital satellite-based location service.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently granted a waiver to a company called LightSquared enabling it to move forward on a plan to use a unique combination of satellite and terrestrial technology to revolutionize wireless communica-tions.

In response, the GPS industry has launched the Coalition to Save Our GPS, which told a House subcommittee recently that the FCC could cause “consequences of disruption” to GPS that will be “far reaching, likely to affect large portions of the population and the federal government.”

In addition, the departments of defense and transportation, which together oversee GPS policy, are expressing official concern over the proposal. In a late March letter to the FCC, Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn and Deputy Secretary of Transportation John Porcari called for closer study of the plan and more input by other federal agencies into its potential impact on vital defense, transportation and economic operations.

“The new LightSquared business plan and the new FCC rules significantly expand the terrestrial transmission environment, increasing the potential for interference to GPS receivers. An exchange of all pertinent technical and operational information is also crucial to ensure the effectiveness of interference mitigation solutions,” the officials wrote.

At the earlier House hearing, Trimble Vice President and General Counsel Jim Kirkland testified that the FCC decision to grant a conditional waiver allowing the dramatic expansion of terrestrial use of the satellite spectrum immediately neighboring that of GPS created a serious risk of severe interference to millions of GPS receivers.

LightSquared has pledged to work with others in addressing concerns about the possibility of inadver-tent harmful interference to certain GPS devices.

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USGIF from the Desk of the President

In just about a month, we will again be in the midst of GEOINT Community Week. This week-long series of events comprises a diverse set of geospatial intelligence-related activities, which grew out of our original, more abbreviated, Tech Days event.

GEOINT Community Week is a fitting name because we take a broad view of just what this community entails. At USGIF, when we refer to the GEOINT Community, we truly mean it in the largest sense: defense, intelligence, homeland security, (as well as the rest of the government), corporate, academic, nonprofit, and other organizations and individuals who are engaged in geospatial intelligence in one way or another.

The essence of this week fits in quite well with the fundamental underpinning of USGIF’s mission: Build the community. Accelerate innovation. Advance the tradecraft.

Each of the events throughout the week touches on these three short but powerful statements. Growing out of the GEOINT 2009 Symposium theme, these three ideas form the proverbial legs of the USGIF stool. The components of GEOINT Community Week illustrate these three ideas: Army Geospatial and Imagery Conference (build the community), Tech Days (accelerate innovation), and our workshop on Analytic Transformation (advance the tradecraft).

In fact, USGIF seeks to advance the tradecraft through a variety of events and programs throughout the year. Last year we developed a GEOINT 101 course. With a full day of history, theory and practice in the tradecraft of geospatial intelligence, the course

provides a unique, in-depth introduction to the field. This course, which we offer a few times each year, is a valuable resource in promoting the tradecraft and highlighting new advancements in the field.

Of course, the tradecraft morphs over time as people, processes and technology change the way practitioners anticipate and respond to mission requirements. Within the USGIF Workshop Series, we often tackle tradecraft issues. During this year’s GEOINT Community Week we are hosting a work-shop on analytical transformation, in another effort to help move the tradecraft forward.

As many of you who read this magazine know, USGIF annually awards scholarships to promising students as well as recognizes outstanding contribu-tors to the field with our awards program. Since our founding in 2004, USGIF has awarded $386,000 to students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in geospatial intelligence and related fields. For our award winners, we provide them with recogni-tion at our annual GEOINT Symposia and promote their accomplishments. Their dedication and contri-bution to the tradecraft is critical to the continued success of the GEOINT Community.

Tradecraft is routinely impacted by new technolo-gies, and this is in part why accelerating innovation is one of the three important pieces of the foundation’s work. Innovation, via breakthrough solutions or novel ways of applying methodologies, remains essential for driving the GEOINT Community forward.

The USGIF Technical Committee is one of our most active committees, and focuses its efforts on innovative endeavors and supporting emerging tech-nologies. It oversees an Interoperability Outreach Subcommittee, which supports demos and discussions, and also the Emerging Technologies Subcommittee that focuses on up-and-coming devel-opments. Both of these subcommittees and the Technical Committee provide the platform for USGIF to act as a catalyst to accelerate innovation.

Recently, some of our member companies identified a desire to form a USGIF Small Business Working Group. Though the mission of this group isn’t entirely about innovation, many of the outcomes and benefits of the participation will be realized in weaving connections among companies as they team in

innovative ways to offer new products and services. We are hopeful that this effort will truly blossom over time.

Building the GEOINT Community is at the heart of USGIF’s mission. The foundation was created to provide education about geospatial intelligence, to foster discussion, and to create a community of interest around the discipline. During our seven-year journey, we think we have made significant strides in building and strengthening the community. Along the way, we have continually sought out partnerships.

We have begun a great partnership with the Interagency Council for Applied Homeland Security Technology. This forum recognizes the importance of geospatial intelligences and looks forward to working more closely with USGIF to address homeland secu-rity issues. In a similar vein, I recently made a presentation to the Civil Applications Committee, an interagency committee that coordinates and oversees the federal civil use of classified GEOINT collection.

Other ways USGIF is helping to build the community include sponsoring events. USGIF has been working with the National Association of Broadcasters on a small scale, and this year we are partnered with NAB for the Military and Government Summit at their NAB Show. I will be moderating a panel on government challenges with utilizing video, and I hope to stimulate the broadcast industry to offer unique solutions.

“Build the community. Accelerate innovation. Advance the tradecraft.” It is a simple statement, but we know how difficult it is in practice. USGIF wasn’t formed to tackle an easy objective but rather take on a far-reaching aspiration.

We are thankful for our members and volunteers and everyone who supports USGIF, our programs and events.

Sincerely,

Keith J. MasbackPresident

Keith J. Masback, President, USGIF

The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) is the only organization dedicated to promoting the geospatial intelligence tradecraft and building a stronger community of interest across industry, academia, government, professional organizations and individual stakeholders.

To become a member or learn more about USGIF, please email [email protected] or call us at 1-888-MY-USGIF.

www.GIF-kmi.com GIF 9 . 3 | 3

USGIF from the Desk of the PresidentUSGIFUPDATE

NRO Deputy Director Zitz Addresses

GEOINTeraction Tuesday

More than 60 members of the GEOINT Community gathered on March 8 for GEOINTeraction Tuesday with Rob Zitz, deputy director for mission support at the National Reconnaissance Office.

Zitz’s talk drew the largest audience yet for a GEOINTeraction Tuesday. He began by describing his position of deputy director of mission support, and his associated role as the senior official responsible for bridging NRO and NGA. He then gave a high-energy overview of the important role the NRO is playing in technology prototyping and direct support to field operators, and discussed the NRO focus on improving operational relevance by integrating previously stovepiped systems.

Zitz gave many examples of ongoing activi-ties that have shortened timelines and improved intelligence and operational utility via automa-tion and changes to procedures. He also described the strong partnership between the NRO and NGA directors, and the NRO’s intent to support the NGA director’s new vision with cutting-edge technologies.

Another imperative of the NRO is to achieve more multi-INT systems integration. Zitz concluded with this point and asked industry to help the IC move forward by looking not just at ways to improve GEOINT, but also how to tie it together with other sources real-time. He urged the audience to pursue multi-INT solutions. Attendees had the opportunity to ask questions of the speaker, with the discussions covering how close the NRO is to achieving its goals, open source intelligence and joint collaboration cells.

YPG Examines Role of AppsOn March 3, more than 30 young professionals

from the GEOINT Community attended the USGIF Young Professionals Group’s (YPG) first event of the year, “What’s in an App?”

The event, which took place in McLean, Va., was created as an open forum for GEOINT young profes-sionals to discuss challenges and solutions for deliv-ering the power of GEOINT to the end-user. A panel of four was moderated by USGIF Young Professional Board Member Alex Martinez, staff engineer at Lockheed Martin. The panelists were Robert Shelton and David Brown of Microsoft Federal Systems Integrators; Ahmad Ishaq, senior tech-nical director and Web 2.0 SME at ManTech;

and Keith Barber, NGA’s implementation lead for online on-demand services.

The discussion ranged from the definition of an app, who or what are the end-users within the intelligence community, the promises and chal-lenges of apps, and suggested delivery models with better capabilities of developing apps. Panelists also touched on current and future trends within the app world.

The session concluded with a Q-and-A session from the audience. Attendees were eager not only to ask questions of panelists, but also to share their experiences with apps. Afterward, panelists and attendees had an opportunity to network with each other.

USGIF Awards Program Opens Nomination Period

The USGIF Outreach Committee and Awards Subcommittee will begin on April 18 accepting nominations and submissions for USGIF’s 2011 awards program.

The USGIF awards program annually recognizes the exceptional work of the geospatial intelligence tradecraft’s brightest minds. Three award categories are open for all community members to apply: The Intelligence Achievement Awards recognize outstanding accomplish-ments in the tradecraft by an individual or team from each the mili-tary, government and industry; the Academic Achievement Award commends the achieve-ments of a top graduate of a nationally recognized geospatial intelligence academic program; and the Academic Research Award commends an organiza-tion that demonstrates the top geospatial intelligence program or project.

The 2010 recipients were Ms. Donna Bridges, Penn State University (Academic Achievement Award);

Dr. Dennis J. Bellafiore, Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography; John A. Dutton e-Education Institute, Penn State University (Academic Research Award); the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection Enterprise GIS team (Intelligence Achievement Award-Government); U.S. Central Command’s Human Terrain Analysis Branch (Intelligence Achievement Award-Military); and Mr.

Steve Panzer and Mr. David Hemphill of ObjectFX (Intelligence Achievement Award-Industry).

Recipients of the USGIF Geospatial Intelligence Achievement Awards are acknowledged on stage during a general session of the annual GEOINT Symposium.

www.GIF-kmi.com4 | GIF 9 . 3

Compiled by USGIF staff

USGIF from the Desk of the PresidentUSGIFUPDATE www.usgif.org

Registration is Open for GEOINT Community WeekGEOINT Community Week returns to Northern

Virginia May 9-13, and registration for all of the events during the week is now available online at http://usgif.org/events/geointcommweek.

For the first time, USGIF has provided a single regis-tration website where attendees can register for one, some or all of the events during GEOINT Community Week. Some events require USGIF membership in order for industry to attend and some events require a registration fee—both of which are verified on the registration website.

GEOINT Community Week begins with the USGIF Invitational golf tournament on Monday, May 9, at the South Riding and Pleasant Valley golf clubs in Chantilly, Va. This golf tournament helps raise money for USGIF educational ventures such as the annual scholarship program. Foursomes and single tee times are still available, but filling quickly.

The 2011 Army Geospatial and Imagery Conference (AGIC) begins on Tuesday, May 10 and runs through Friday, May 13. Taking place in Chantilly at the TASC Heritage Conference Center, AGIC annually attracts more than 400 Army personnel and civilian government employees for the week’s discussions on geospatial intelligence.

On Thursday, May 12, USGIF Technology Day returns to the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Va., with unclassified exhibits and demonstrations as well as emerging technology presentations. NGA’s Vision Team will provide an address in the morning, and some of the online/on-demand GEOINT teams will present their technologies throughout the morning technology session. This event is free and open to the entire community, but register in advance to avoid lines at the check-in desk. More than 1,000 attendees participated last year and stayed for the afternoon networking reception.

Concluding GCW is the USGIF Workshop: Analytical Transformation in the GEOINT Community on Friday, May 13, at the Hyatt Regency in Reston. This USGIF-member-only event allows the GEOINT Community to spend a full day exploring analytical transformation and what it means for the future of our community.

Also taking place during this week, outside of the official GEOINT Community Week activities, is the GEOINT Community Career Fair on Tuesday, May 10, and GEOINTeraction Tuesday, also on May 10.

More information on all of these events, including how to register, can be found at USGIF’s website, www.usgif.org.

Keynotes Announced for GEOINT 2011 SymposiumUSGIF recently announced the first group of keynote speakers who have confirmed their participation in the eighth annual GEOINT Symposium:

• General Keith B. Alexander, U.S. Army, commander, U.S. Cyber Command and director, National Security Agency

• Mr. Bruce Carlson, director, National Reconnaissance Office

• The Honorable James R. Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence

• General Douglas Fraser, U.S. Air Force, commander, U.S. Southern Command

• General C. Robert “Bob” Kehler, U.S. Air Force, commander, U.S. Strategic Command

• Ms. Letitia A. Long, director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

• U.S. Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, chairman, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

• U.S. Representative C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, ranking member, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

• Admiral James A. “Sandy” Winnefeld Jr., U.S. Navy, commander, NorthAmerican Aerospace Defense Command, and commander, U.S. Northern Command.

The GEOINT 2011 Symposium, the nation’s largest intelligence event of the year, will take place October 16-19 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio. Last year more than 4,000 total attendees attended GEOINT 2010 to hear speakers discuss multi-INT topics and see the latest tech-nologies from over 220 exhibitors and sponsors in more than 100,000 square feet of exhibit hall.

Video from the GEOINT 2010 Symposium can be found at www.geointv.com, and more information about GEOINT 2011 is available at www.geoint2011.com.

Mr. Bruce Carlson

Gen. C. Robert “Bob”

Kehler

Ms. Letitia A. Long

U.S. Representative C.A. Dutch

Ruppersberger


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03.116.11_GeoIntell_Ad_FP.indd 1 3/15/11 3:43 PM

September 2011 concludes the National Reconnaissance Office’s

(NRO) 50th anniversary commemoration, recognizing one of

America’s most critical collectors of intelligence. The first spy

planes and satellites opened a unique window on the dangers

of the Cold War. The pioneers responsible for these remarkable

engineering feats worked against seemingly impossible odds

as the world hung in the balance. Their hard work and creativity

helped secure America’s freedom for over half a century and were

instrumental in paving the way to the far reaches of space.

Although most of their activities will not become public in our lifetime, the standard of

excellence they established 50 years ago lives on in our new processing algorithms,

acquisition practices, data fusion methods, applications and capabilities. You can see

the innovative spirit of the 1950s and 1960s—which produced revolutionary spy planes

capable of flying at the edge of space and satellites that gave us a new perspective on

an ever-shrinking world—in our schematics, factories and launches. Each new generation

raised the reconnaissance bar as we faced ever-changing threats.

In this special section of the Geospatial Intelligence Forum, you will get a glimpse of how

the NRO’s work over the course of five decades provided the U.S. Intelligence Community

and government leaders with daily information to help them make decisions regarding

immediate and potential threats to the nation’s security. I am confident the NRO will

continue to provide innovative overhead intelligence systems for national security that

enable vigilance from above for decades to come.

Bruce CarlsonDirector,

National Reconnaissance Office

Message from the Director


Bruce CarlsonDirector

Robert BrodowskiAdvanced Systems &

Technology Directorate

Ben GimenoBusiness Plans &

Operations Directorate

Andrew CoxCommunications

Systems Directorate

Jan JanssenGround Enterprise

Directorate

Darlene MinickImagery Intelligence Systems Acquisition

Directorate

Brian MaloneManagement Services & Operations Directorate

Brig. Gen. Cary ChunMission Operations

Directorate

Dr. Pete RustanMission Support

Directorate

Dr. Troy MeinkSignals Intelligence Systems Acquisition

Directorate

Rear Adm. Liz YoungSystems Engineering

Directorate

Betty SappPrincipal Deputy

Director

Maj. Gen. Susan K. Mashiko

Deputy Director

Col. Alan DavisOffice of Space Launch

Frank CalvelliSpecial Communications Office

Starting a Business Relationship with NROThe Acquisition Research Center (ARC):

• Your portal for business opportunities for acquisitions across the intelligence community

• Register online to provide corporate capabilities

• The ARC provides search capabilities to identify companies doing business with the NRO

• Lists the names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses for each company registered

• Allows you to market your corporate capabilities directly for potential subcontracting opportunities

• Identifies Acquisition Center of Excellence (ACE) facilities with classified reading rooms (Virginia, California, Colorado and Texas)

• Lists ACE points of contact and phone numbers by function

• Biannually, the ACE hosts an Industry Overview detailing how to do business with the NRO and answering questions in Chantilly, Va.

• Personnel clearances and facility clearances from other agencies will be taken into consideration

• Unsolicited proposals and white papers may be submitted electronically through the ARC

• One-on-one sessions to brief corporate capabilities can be arranged

• Our experience shows that starting as a subcontractor is often the most successful way to break into doing business with the NRO.

For additional information on the Intelligence Community Acquisition Research Center, visit our website: https://arc.westfields.net, or write to National Reconnaissance Office, 14675 Lee Rd., Chantilly, Va. 20151

NRO Organization Chart

8 | GIF 9 . 3 www.GIF-kmi.com

lockheedmartin.com

© 2011 Lockheed Martin Corporation

In a world where events can unfold at dizzying speeds, decisions must be made quickly and decisively. Decision makers rely on the nation’s intelligence organizations to securely gather, distill, distribute and share information that can come virtually from any place, any source, and in any form. At Lockheed Martin, we provide systems and solutions that make sense of it all. From analyzing geospatial-intelligence and UAV video feeds to defending networks against the most sophisticated cyber attacks. All backed by a team of highly skilled, experienced professionals who understand the intelligence mission and the technologies that drive it. Making sure government agencies have the critical decision advantage over our nation’s adversaries is all a question of how. And it is the how that Lockheed Martin delivers.

THIS IS HOW Lockheed Martin inteLLiGence SoLutionS

decision

giving

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314-60353_ISGS_Security_GIF.indd 1 3/11/11 2:23 PM

Our Locations

The NRO headquarters is located in Chantilly, Va. The NRO maintains ground stations at Buckley Air Force Base, Colo., Fort Belvoir, Va., and White Sands Missile Range, N.M., to support worldwide defense operations and multi-agency collection, analysis and intelligence reporting. The NRO has a presence at the Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap, Australia, and the Royal Air Force Base Menwith Hill, United Kingdom, to coordinate with allies on national security issues. NRO has operating locations in Vandenberg AFB, Calif., Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., and Schreiver AFB, Colo.

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a joint Department of Defense-intelligence community organization responsible for developing, launching and operating America’s signals, imagery and communications intelligence satellites. Using NRO data, the National Security Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and NRO mission partners produce intelligence products for the president, Congress, national policymakers, warfighters and civil users.

Our Customers

Daily, NRO systems provide critical, lifesaving national security data to policymakers and warfighters worldwide to:

• Monitor the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction• Track international terrorists, drug traffickers and criminal

organizations• Develop highly accurate

military targeting data and bomb damage assessments

• Support international peacekeeping and humanitarian relief operations

• Assess the impact of natural disasters.

The NRO continues to develop innovative overhead intelligence systems for national security. It supports national and tactical customers with economical, enhanced collection and processing capabilities. Based on core operating principles that include integrity, accountability, mission excellence, and teamwork built on respect and diversity, the NRO is defining the phrase “assured access to space.”

Military Support

The NRO collaborates with other defense and intelligence community organizations to provide global communications, indications and warnings, and near real-time imagery and signals intelligence support to warfighter operations around the world. The NRO’s mission partners are increasingly fusing data derived from NRO systems to enhance the value of intelligence for U.S. and allied forces in harm’s way.

Civil Support

Civilian customers use NRO overhead systems to predict climate change, assess crop production, map habitats of endangered species, track oil spills, study wetlands, and assess devastation from hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters. The development of high-definition television, wide-bandwidth communications, high-resolution pixel arrays and high-speed data switching flourished from emerging NRO technologies.

Maintaining Global Vigilance In Peace and War

Vigilance from Above


NRO History and Heritage

The NRO’s workforce consists of personnel from the Department of Defense, intelligence community and private industry. The Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency comprise the majority of the military and government civilian population. The NRO’s advanced reconnaissance systems require a highly talented cadre of scientists, aerospace engineers, communications specialists, computer scientists and acquisition managers. By collaborating and understanding customer needs and requirements, the NRO workforce is meeting complex intelligence collection challenges and is poised to fulfill future challenges to maintain vigilance from above.

Individuals who are interested in belonging to the team that designs, launches and operates the nation’s most unique and innovative overhead reconnaissance systems may apply for NRO assignments through their organization or agency, or visit www.intelligence.gov. For U.S. Air Force military personnel, send a resume to [email protected] or visit www.intelligence.gov. The NRO partners with high schools and universities through internships, co-ops and scholarship programs. For additional information, contact your school/university adviser or call 1-800-306-6990, ext 2102.

In the 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved reconnaissance systems that included high-altitude balloons, airplanes and satellites to gain strategic intelligence on the Soviet Union, China and other potential threats to the United States. On August 31, 1960, Secretary of the Air Force Dudley C. Sharp established the Office of Missile and Satellite Systems to direct the Air Force satellite reconnaissance program.

GRAB and POPPY

On August 24, 1959, President Eisenhower authorized the Naval Research Laboratory to develop the GRAB (Galactic Radiation and Background) experimental satellite to collect Soviet air-defense radar emissions. Ten months later, GRAB-1, America’s first signals intelligence satellite, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. GRAB operated from 1960-1962; its successor, POPPY, operated from 1962-1977.

CORONA

On August 18, 1960, the United States launched the first CORONA imagery intelligence satellite that successfully returned a photo from space. A cooperative venture between the CIA and Air Force, CORONA photographed “denied territories” and returned the exposed film to Earth in capsules, which Air Force planes recovered in mid-air over the Pacific Ocean. The CORONA program flew 145 missions and produced over 800,000 images. When the program ended in 1972, it boasted a significant list of firsts in space history:

• First man-made object retrieved from space• First photograph taken from space• First recovery of an intelligence payload from orbit• First mid-air recovery of an object from space• First mapping of the earth from space• First use of multiple re-entry vehicles.

On September 6, 1961, the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense officially signed the first NRO charter, which established management arrangements for the National Reconnaissance Program. These arrangements consolidated many of America’s national space and aerial reconnaissance projects under a covert, highly compartmented National Reconnaissance Office.

KH-7 and KH-9

Developed in the 1960s, the KH-7 and KH-9 film-return satellites provided imagery of Soviet and Chinese nuclear installations, missile sites and other activities in “denied territories.” Between July 1963 and June 1967, the NRO operated 38 KH-7 missions, with durations ranging from one to eight days. Only 30 missions obtained usable imagery, totaling about 43,000 linear feet, with resolutions that improved from four to two feet. Between March 1973 and October 1980, 12 KH-9 Mapping Camera System (MCS) missions, with durations ranging from 42 to 119 days, collected 48,000 linear feet of film, with resolutions typically between 30 and 20 feet. The U.S. Geological Survey and Defense Mapping Agency used this KH-9 MCS imagery for mapping and digital terrain elevation data.

Advanced Reconnaissance: KH-11

On December 19, 1976, the NRO launched the KH-11 near real-time electro-optical satellite, which transmitted its images to Earth via a relay satellite. As demand for satellite reconnaissance grew, the NRO developed increasingly sophisticated technology to collect signals and imagery intelligence from space. These systems contributed to the verification of arms control treaties, global transparency and the end of the Cold War.

Founding the NRO

Our Workforce

Notable Reconnaissance Systems

In Peace and War


50thAnniversary Launches

NRO adopts most aggressive launch schedule in more than two decades.

Six launches are scheduled during the NRO 50th Anniversary year in 2010-2011. Five have blasted off successfully, with one more expected (NROL-34) in spring 2011. These launches will maintain America’s edge in space and ensure NRO meets its mission of innovative overhead intelligence systems for national security that provide vigilance from above.

NROL 41 NROL 27

NROL 32 NROL 49

NROL 66

United Launch

Alliance Atlas V

Rocket at Space

Launch Complex-3.

Credit: Photo courtesy of ULA.

Encapsulated NROL-32

payload in the high

bay of the NRO

Spacecraft Processing

and Integration Facility

(SPIF), Cape Canaveral.

Spacecraft enter the

SPIF from the factory for

final preparation before

launch.

Credit: Photo courtesy of NRO.

Preparing the NROL-49

payload for shipment

to the Astrotech

Processing Facility

(APF), Vandenberg

AFB, Calif. Payloads

enter processing

facilities, such as the

APF, from the factories

for final preparation

before being mated to

the booster.

Credit: Photo courtesy of NRO.

Attaching the NROL-27

payload to the top of the

United Launch Alliance

Delta IV Medium Lift

Rocket.

Credit: Photo courtesy of ULA.

NROL-66 payload

transported to Space

Launch Complex-8,

Vandenberg AFB,

January 20, 2011.

Credit: Photo courtesy of U.S. Air Force.


Air Force Research Lab Seeks Collaborative Navigation SystemIn partnership with the University of Minnesota, Northrop Grumman has been

selected to develop a collaborative navigation system under the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Collaborative Robust Integrated Sensor Positioning program.

Collaborative navigation will allow aircraft to leverage information from their onboard sensors in addition to shared data from other aircraft to achieve highly accurate navigation performance in all flight conditions, even in areas where global positioning system information is unavailable. During the initial award period, Northrop Grumman and the University of Minnesota will develop algorithms that will enable the collaborative navigation system to operate across multiple aircraft platforms. By sharing relative positioning information, video, geo-registered imagery and other navigation data using the net-centric commu-nication capabilities on the platforms, the collaborative navigation system will improve overall navigational accuracy.

The AFRL program seeks to develop navigation technologies to improve situ-ational awareness of the warfighter in all operating conditions. Future phases of the program will include the development of a real-time prototype collaborative navigation system and a flight test demonstration.

Gina Piellusch; [email protected]

LiDAR Tool Visualizes 3-D Point Clouds

CG2, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Quantum3D and provider of graphics-based virtual training systems and sensor data visu-alization tools, has announced the availability of LiDAR Fusion GEOINT, a powerful tool for visualizing 3-D point clouds from laser range data, stereo data and imagery. LiDAR Fusion GEOINT delivers new enhancements for scene analysis and sensor data exploitation. LiDAR Fusion GEOINT defines a new level of visual realism for LiDAR data by combining the 3-D volumetric detail of point cloud data with the color and shading from satellite imagery of the area. In addition to importing multiple overlapping LAS and GeoTIFF files, LiDAR Fusion can load PLY files used for robotics applica-tions. In addition to LiDAR data, LiDAR Fusion GEOINT supports visualization of 3-D stereo data to incorporate 360-degree street level imagery. Each pixel in the high resolution panorama includes associated 3-D stereo data that can be fused with LiDAR data to create unique, navigable 3-D environments. A stereo mapping data collection effort in Washington, D.C., was recently completed; LiDAR Fusion GEOINT can visualize this new data set with full 3-D interaction. This single perspective street-level snapshot can be merged with snapshots from other camera angles in LiDAR Fusion to complete any gaps in the interactive 3-D scene. Additional features for version 2.0 of LiDAR Fusion GEOINT include fast load times with greater capacity, advanced tools, Google Earth correlation and built-in tutorials.

Jane Fainer;[email protected]

Launch Services Set for WorldView-3 SatelliteDigitalGlobe has contracted with Lockheed

Martin Commercial Launch Services for the launch of WorldView-3. Once launched, WorldView-3 will be the third WorldView-class satellite in DigitalGlobe’s constellation. The satellite is scheduled for launch in 2014. It will feature the same innovative tech-nologies that have helped DigitalGlobe amass the largest high definition satellite image library in the world, and speed up the daily process of collecting, analyzing and delivering imagery and information to customers. WorldView-3 will be launched on

a Lockheed Martin Commercial Launch Services-provided Atlas V rocket into a sun-synchronous orbit from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., and will be operational approximately 90 days after launch. With WorldView-3 in orbit, the DigitalGlobe constel-lation will be capable of collecting more than 1 billion square kilometers per year. WorldView-3 will be the third DigitalGlobe satellite to feature Control Moment Gyros, which make DigitalGlobe’s satellites more agile so that they can collect imagery of larger areas faster and with greater flexibility. It will also be

the second satellite to feature eight-band multi-spec-tral technology, which allows DigitalGlobe to collect more data from images; automatically extract more information from them; and deliver deeper insight to customers. Both technologies are currently available exclusively within the DigitalGlobe constellation. DigitalGlobe continues to expect that its total capital spending program associated with EnhancedView, including the launch of WorldView-3 and expanded ground infrastructure, will be approximately $650 million between 2010 and 2014.

Technology Improves International GEOINT Information Sharing

Goodrich Corp. has delivered technology to the U.K. Ministry of Defence to improve the sharing of geospatial intelligence between U.K. and coali-tion forces. Under “Project Attacker,” Goodrich’s Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Systems business is providing federated ISR data management systems to U.K. deployed forces. These systems provide British forces with a much-improved capability to share ISR data across the theater of operations. The aim of Attacker is to allow U.K. forces to share the vast amount of information collected by their ISR sensor systems. According to company officials, the Goodrich Intelligence Reference Library and MERLIN Imagery Exploitation Systems enable rapid near real-time review and exploitation of ISR data to provide timely and actionable intelligence direct to commanders on the ground where and when it is required. Goodrich ISR systems are designed to be fully compliant with NATO standards and are based on open systems architec-tures to allow ease of integration with a wide variety of existing and ISR and command and control systems.

Amber Chambers; [email protected]


Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

Enhanced Publishing Software Creates Interactive Maps

TerraGo Technologies, a provider of geospatial collaboration software solutions, has released TerraGo Publisher for ArcGIS version 5.6 for both desktop and server environments. TerraGo Publisher extends leading geospa-tial applications such as Esri ArcGIS to create highly portable, interactive TerraGo GeoPDF maps and imagery.

TerraGo Publisher for ArcGIS version 5.6 offers significant enhancements and user benefits, including compatibility with Esri ArcGIS 10, advanced layer control, easy options for ISO and OGC specifications, and internationalization. TerraGo GeoPDF maps and imagery created from TerraGo Publisher are geore-ferenced versions of standard PDF files, serving as highly portable containers of mapping information, imagery and data from geospatial applications. Mobile users in the field who do not use GIS software and operate in disconnected environments use GeoPDF to exploit valuable geospatial intelligence.

John Deaver; [email protected]

“Dragon” Configurations Offer Integrated Intelligence Platforms

Lockheed Martin has introduced several innovative aircraft and ground station configurations that can be tailored to specific customer intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements. Branded the “Dragon” series, these platforms can be customized to support individual military, homeland defense, disaster relief and humanitarian assistance mission needs. In today’s complex environment, rarely can a single aircraft meet all customer needs. To help address this, the Dragon configura-tions extend the corporation’s comprehensive ISR expertise into a broad catalog of single and multi-purpose integrated air and ground intelligence platforms. Lockheed Martin offers a flexible, customer-focused approach with solutions designed to integrate into existing customer ground and air architectures. Modern software and hardware designs provide cost-effective life cycle management. All configurations incorporate a modular “plug and play” architecture for the cost-effective, rapid introduction of new capabilities. Most options have wide and narrow band communica-tion suites as well as dedicated ground processing systems with multi-level security options.

Suzanne Smith; [email protected]

Technology Supports Lossless Imagery Compression

ERDAS has announced release of a new version of the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK, which allows software developers to enable rapid and efficient file handling in the applications they create by including robust support for selected wavelet compression formats and proto-cols. The ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK provides support for the visually-lossless ECW imagery format and the ECWP protocol. ERDAS’ Enhanced Compression Wavelet (ECW) technology compresses bulky imagery files into manageable sizes, enabling faster processing and transfer of imagery, and reducing the hardware investment required for the geospatial workflow. Using minimal memory, ECW can compress massive files to smaller sizes faster than other formats, while still preserving the quality of the images. ECW files can then be reopened quickly, in many cases faster than uncompressed imagery. Additionally, multi-resolution level of detail is built into the file, eliminating the need to generate or distribute pyramids or over-views. Enhanced Compression Wavelet Protocol allows streaming of ECW images, enabling rapid delivery of large quantities of imagery over the Internet to thousands of users with standard server hard-ware of just eight cores or less. The SDK also provides support for the numerically-lossless JPEG2000, an ISO-certified compressed image format commonly used for geospatial imagery.

Julie Mears; [email protected]

Toolkit Brings Geospatial Document Search

to Open Source EngineJust six months after acquiring MetaCarta, Qbase has today

announced the second generation of its MetaCarta GeoSearch Toolkit for Solr. The GeoSearch Toolkit, which brought true geospatial document search to Solr, the popular open source enterprise search engine, now adds polygonal search as well as confidence and relevancy scoring to its offerings. The GeoSearch Toolkit for Solr allows users to index and search their documents by keyword inside of a defined geographic area. Unlike other geospatial extensions to Solr, this approach allows documents to have multiple locations and takes the in-text character position of georeferences into account when computing relevancy scores. With the addition of new features, users can now build sophisti-cated search solutions that go outside of circle or square bound-aries and include polygonal areas. Additionally, new confidence and relevancy scores enable users to place more trust in returned results. MetaCarta GeoSearch Toolkit for Solr allows users to: integrate with MetaCarta’s GeoTagger service to tag geographic references within documents, search tagged geographic refer-ences in conjunction with full text queries, filter results by bounding box, polygon, confidence or other geographic meta-data, and rank results based on enhanced geographic relevance and confidence scoring.

Camille Sweger; [email protected]


www.tasc.com

WE’RE TASC

THE ARCHITECTS OF COLLABORATION, INNOVATION, EXCELLENCE, AND MISSION SUCCESS

Some of the U.S. government’s most important agencies rely on the brainpower of TASC

employees to solve some of their most complex challenges. Founded in 1966, TASC is one of

the most recognized independent providers of advanced systems engineering, integration

and mission support to the defense, intelligence, and federal markets. TASC—the right

people, the right knowledge helping you make the right decisions.

Dr. Pete Rustan is director, the Mission Support Directorate, of the National Reconnaissance Office. Previously, he served as the NRO director, Ground Enterprise Directorate, and director, Advanced Systems and Technology, for over five years.

Rustan served a 26-year career in the Air Force, where he managed several spacecraft programs that used advanced technologies and implemented a shorter time-to-market philosophy. He was the mission manager for the Clementine spacecraft, which mapped the surface of the moon and obtained more than 1.8 million images using 11 spectral bands. The construction and testing of the Clementine mission took over 22 months from concept to launch and cost only $80 million. The Clementine mission demonstrated for the first time that a fairly sophisticated spacecraft with cameras could be built on a shortened schedule. Of scientific note, Clementine’s radar returns suggested the presence of ice at the moon’s south pole.

Rustan has published more than 40 scientific papers in the open literature in spacecraft design, digital signal processing, control system design, biomedical engineering, lightning physics and streamlined program management. He is a dedicated advocate for intelligence community integration, rapid prototyping and selecting the best value proposition to address intelligence needs.

Dr. Rustan is an AIAA fellow and has received many national and international awards, including the Aviation Week and Space Technology Hall of Fame Laureate, the Disney Discovery Award for Technological Innovation, the National Space Club Astronautics Engineer Award, the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, and was featured by Space News in their Top 100 in Space 1989-2004.

Rustan received B.S.E.E and M.S.E.E. degrees from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1969 and 1970 respectively. He received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Florida in 1979.

Rustan was interviewed by GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly.

Q: What is your mission as director, Mission Support Directorate [MSD]?

A: The Mission Support Directorate’s mission is to engage our users proactively, understand their urgent intelligence needs, and provide rapid, innovative solutions.

NRO systems collect about 75 gigabits of data per second, around the clock. MSD ensures our diverse users receive that information in near real-time so they are further equipped to make high-fidelity decisions. Our large and diverse customers dispersed across the globe include the intelligence community, the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and Department of State. In the old days, the NRO was viewed as an overhead data collector, but in today’s world, we cannot afford to remain constrained as “a collector.”

We have to be able to put the geospatial and signal-collected data fragments together, and evolve from data to product—and from product to information. Our users can then use our information and fuse it with all their other sources of information almost instantaneously to make timely intelligence decisions.

Even though the NRO is an integral part of the IC, we are typically not considered to be an intelligence organization because we are not sought to analyze the data we collect. That responsibility rests in the hands of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency

Dr. Pete RustanDirector

Mission Support DirectorateNRO


Information ProviderTaking Advantage of the Latest Advances in Commercial IT

Q&AQ&A

functional managers. All the geospatial images NRO collects are transmitted wholesale to NGA, as is our signals collection to the NSA.

At the same time, we are taking this wealth of unfiltered information and making it available to our user community around the world without exploitation, in near real-time. This information does not have any annotation, nor does it compare anything to previous events. If time is a constraint, then the user has the information to make more timely decisions until higher-fidelity analysis becomes available. By taking advantage of commercial technology and the Internet, the NRO has become an information provider.

Q: Can you give readers an overview of the organization you head and the capabilities it offers?

A: MSD is organized into two major groups. The first group consists of the business managers who are co-located with the customers, either at the Pentagon, DHS or other locations around the world. They attend intelligence meetings and determine not only the strategic, operational and tactical requirements, but also the evolving needs our customers are challenged with every day. We translate those needs into capabilities and quickly deliver them to our customers. This group of professionals helps the NRO tailor our products and services to meet our users’ needs.

For instance, during the recent humanitarian efforts in Japan, our group of experts has been working with NGA to ensure our satellites are properly tasked so that images are processed properly and timely enough for our Japanese partners to understand the state of the Fukushima nuclear reactors, and the destruction caused by the tsunami. In the Libya situation, we are working with our European partners to provide bomb damage assessment of the various air and missile attacks on the Libyan missile defenses as we begin to enforce the no-fly-zone mission.

The second MSD group consists of the builders providing the quick reaction capabilities needed to produce products, services and tools to meet our ever-changing user community. Everything we do in this second group is created and delivered in 18 months or less, and it is common to deliver quick-turn solutions in a matter of days.

Our goal with this group is to build upon products or tools that improve our existing capabilities. These new capabilities expand the access, improve the content and reduce the timeline of our products, and are either internally generated by our government and contractor teams within MSD or directly injected into NRO by the users. In either case, we apply the “art of the possible” by adopting the latest commercial technologies.

Q: What types of mission support do you provide for opera-tions in Southwest Asia?

A: The NRO has many people deployed in Southwest Asia to assist the users to properly fuse our data with the entire community. We assist NGA and NSA to instrument and process aircraft payloads for geospatial and signal intelligence. A significant portion of our products in Southwest Asia consists of fusing our images and signals with other information such

as open source and/or human information. If anyone has developed a unique value-added algorithm to integrate multiple data sources, we deploy that individual to Southwest Asia to train the troops on this capability.

Many of our products and services are built by fusing multi-intelligence products for specific applications. Intelligence should not be about a single capability; it’s about putting together quite of bit of new data and comparing them with existing information including the respective metadata. Our primary job in Southwest Asia is to help our partners connect the dots.

Q: Your office biography emphasizes your support for intel-ligence community integration, rapid prototyping and best value propositions. How are you addressing each of these priorities?

A: Let’s address each one of these attributes separately and then combine them.IC Integration. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created to support IC integration. Before the attacks of September 11, 2001, the various intelligence organizations worked separately and it was difficult to connect the dots. Today, we are all trying to emulate the human brain. If you think about it, your senses work together to give you situational awareness of everything going on around you. Instantaneously, without discounting any of your senses, you formulate decisions from the integration of our many diverse sensors.For example, think about the last time you drove. How do you capture the situational awareness around you? Your brain is continuously integrating all the information from the cars and pedestrians near you to help you make correct decisions. Your brain is not only analyzing what is going on at that time, but also estimating what is likely to happen based on other drivers or pedestrians’ behavior. Geospatial information is the foundation layer because it provides a human reference; everything else must be overlaid on that image to achieve IC integration. This message is 100 percent aligned with NGA Director Letitia A. Long, as presented at the GEOINT Symposium in November 2010.Rapid Prototyping. We are living in an exponential time, when everything has to be done as close to real time as possible. Rapid prototyping of our new capabilities is essential to ensure we are responsive in meeting our customer’s needs.Best Value-Proposition. Money is tight and it’s going to become even tighter. Therefore, we must exhaust every possible effort to perform an analysis of alternatives to ensure we are always delivering the highest return on the taxpayer investment. That is, the best performance at the lowest possible cost. We provide the lowest possible cost alternative by fusing the various products and services expeditiously.

If you read the book The Black Swan, you will be reminded that everyone is doing linear prediction. When you visit a park, you typically expect to see a white swan, but occasionally a black swan will surprise you. Everyone is naturally doing linear prediction, but history does not crawl, it jumps when you least expect it. We could not have predicted the devastating Japanese earthquake or the individuals’ quest for freedom across the various countries in North Africa. History does not follow linear


2011 USGIF GEOINT COMMUNITY WEEK

Army Geospatial & Imagery Conference

TASC Heritage Conference Center, Chantilly, VA – May 10-13

USGIF Invitational

Pleasant Valley Golf Club, Chantilly, VA – May 9

USGIF Technology Day

Hyatt Regency Reston, Reston, VA – May 12

USGIF Workshop Series: Analytical Transformation

Hyatt Regency Reston, Reston, VA – May 13

Held annually in the Washington, D.C. area, GEOINT Community Week brings together stakeholders within the geospatial intelligence tradecraft for a week of networking, classified briefings, exhibits and learning workshops.

The week begins at the USGIF Invitational golf tournament, with proceeds going to the USGIF Scholarship Program. AGIC begins on Tuesday, delivering four days of classified sessions and presentations. Also taking place on this day is the GEOINT Community Week Career Fair and GEOINTeraction Tuesday, with special guest speaker Dr. Joseph F. Fontanella, Director of the U.S. Army Geospatial Center (AGC), and U.S. Army Geospatial Information Officer. On Thursday, attend presentations on emerging technologies and walk through an exhibit hall filled with USGIF members’ current innovations. Bringing the day to a close is the GEOINT Community Week reception. Concluding the week is another installment of the USGIF Workshop Series.

Visit www.usgif.org to register or for more information.

N E W ! N o w a t t e n d e e s c a n r e g i s t e r f o r t h e USGIF Invitational, AGIC, U S G I F Te c h n o l o g y D a y a n d U S G I F W o r k s h o p Series al l in one place!

REGISTERNOW!

www.usgif.org

prediction. We must work with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to address any type of challenge. By looking deeply into problems, we would be able to address nonlinear challenges more effectively. If we assume everything is going to be predictable, we are going to be surprised.

Q: You have spoken in the past about the importance of get-ting information directly to warfighters. What is your vision for how information collected in space can be of use to those conducting operations in theater?

A: We gave the responsibility to our partners to deliver timely information. NGA has a big job integrating our overhead images with commercial satellite and airborne images. They have to exploit an overwhelming amount of data to illustrate specific intelligence information from those images. Then, they must distribute the information to the users in a way that is ready for actionable intelligence. NGA separates time-critical images from the rest of the information on their hands to meet specific timetables for those critical images.

We also provide geolocations of signals of interest to NSA and help them to correlate those geolocations with available metadata consistent with the vision of the NSA director, General Keith Alexander. We at the NRO are an extension of the NGA and NSA workforce. MSD ensures a user can overlay what we see and what we hear within a few seconds from the various events. We have communication networks to make sure this near real-time information is discoverable and accessible for the users. This might be the critical information the user needs to make the right decision.

Q: How do you see national systems making a significant con-tribution as an integrated element of the Distributed Common Ground System [DCGS]?

A: Initially, the information from the satellites was not fully integrated with DCGS. The various services established their own DCGS to share the information within their services. The DCGS Integrated Backbone [DIB] was created as the guard layer to connect information from the various services. While the services exposed some satellite information in their specific DCGS, there was no repository for overhead data in DCGS. The NRO created the DCGS-IC to expose all the satellite information to the various services, but we have continued to excavate beyond those limited boundaries by making sure information can be accessible at the various classification levels. By using established standards, everyone with the proper classification access can download the needed information.

At the NRO, we manage some of the DCGS programs, but network systems are changing continuously, and many of the traditional hardware functions can now be done with software. Therefore, we are working closely with the services to rebuild our combined DCGS programs to make them relevant to today’s ways of doing business.

Additionally, the NRO has a strong partnership with Lieutenant General Richard P. Zahner’s U.S. Army Directorate of Intelligence and his vision to deliver relevant ISR to the edge [RITE]. We are developing the applications, information content, and the security services to place information in handheld

devices, in the hands of soldiers. The RITE infrastructure also enables every warfighter to be a critical node on the network. Each soldier is able to receive and collect critical information, and act on it as quickly as needed. We started the program a couple of years ago and demonstrated the potential capabilities in Empire Challenge 2010. This year we are planning to demonstrate the end-to-end capabilities in Afghanistan.

Q: What are some of the most promising technologies you see on the horizon for improving mission support?

A: Taking advantage of the latest advances in commercial IT is probably the best thing we can do. The commercial IT started about 1990 and continues to grow exponentially. They are investing tens of billions in R&D annually to develop new capabilities and we must make sure they are also available to the DoD and IC. The generation fighting our wars today grew up in the IT revolution and does not want to review a bunch of viewgraphs before they go on patrol at 0530. Instead, they want to have the most relevant information at their fingertips. For example, Google can provide translation services to our handheld devices. If you are in the field interrogating a potential terrorist and you cannot speak his language and you have 3G connectivity, you can translate your questions to his language, listen to his answer and translate it to English. You only have to wait about 7 seconds to translate specific sentences.

Intelligence is about prediction and modern handheld devices today, such as iPhone and Android, can help us to do our intelligence mission in ways we never thought possible. Handheld devices have a magnetometer to indicate which way you are pointing; a position, navigation and timing device to give you GPS services; a camera; and other applications to collect information continuously and to provide exceptional situational awareness. The most promising technologies continue to be leveraging the revolution in information technology into our IC and DoD products and services.

Q: What changes, if any, would you like to see from industry in how it supports your organization?

A: We primarily work with the aerospace industry because they build our satellites and before the onset of the information technology revolution, they also delivered our ground systems. They develop great products but take a long time to build our platforms. Their culture is not structured like our commercial IT companies, but they have IT systems as an integral part of their business. Since they did not start as an IT business, their products and services are not usually tuned to answer our questions, but they know our existing space and ground infrastructure very well because they built them.

We reorganized horizontally three years ago to make the best use of the commercial IT capabilities. In our present establishment, the space directorates perform the acquisition of our satellites; the ground directorates integrate the command and control, mission management and processing of our satellites; and the operations directorate is responsible for operating all of our satellites, while we are primarily concerned with ensuring our users receive the best possible information. Therefore, one would assume that the aerospace corporations


would build our satellites, while the commercial IT would integrate the ground services and help us provide the latest IT for our users, but we are not there yet.

Our aerospace companies are very savvy about the end-to-end space and ground development and operations of our satellites and we cannot work ground systems without them. But we need the aerospace corporations to vigorously team with the best commercial IT to deliver and produce the best services for the users.

Q: You have had a varied and interesting life and career. How has your background and experience shaped your approach to your current position?

A: I work for the flag of the United States and all that it represents. I am proud to support the men and women in the DoD and IC, and simply do not confine myself to the NRO roles and missions. I am an intelligence officer, and the patriotism I am surrounded with is my biggest driver. As a youngster, I suffered under a very repressive regime and I am very supportive of the cry for freedom I hear coming from the North African countries today. I am a Cuban immigrant who escaped to the Guantanamo Naval Base to come to America when I was 19 years old. I have followed in many other immigrants’ footsteps from around the world and achieved the American Dream.

Patriotism drives me beyond my expectations because I have a huge debt to pay to our country. I grew up with no freedom and no money in my pocket. I came to America with nothing. I had a good mind and a firm desire to work hard. I worked my way through college and did not have anything handed to me. After 25 years of service as a U.S. Air Force officer, I retired and spent seven years working for commercial industries. But after 9/11, I felt the call to serve once again. Our country was threatened and I was not ‘on the inside’ helping to connect the dots. I contacted the NGA, NRO, NSA and CIA leadership at that time and expressed my desire to return to the IC. I wanted to help to connect the dots. That is why I am here today.

I am convinced we can overcome any issue by working together across the DoD and IC. My patriotism keeps me going every day and I have accomplished a great deal in my life, but I am never satisfied. I just returned from the Pacific where they are facing difficult challenges. My boss, Director Carlson, has asked me to focus my energy on the Pacific Command, and I will work with the DoD and IC to solve some of their pressing issues. I want to make sure that the leadership at NGA, NSA and CIA see me as part of their workforce to accomplish their respective missions. During the seven years I worked for the private sector, I was an adviser to the NGA and NSA directors, and I am very familiar with their missions. I love what they do and feel very welcome when I visit them to work our common problems.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?

A: The situation in the world keeps changing. Back in the Cold War, as General Michael Hayden used to say, the targets were easy to find but hard to kill. But today we have potential targets in many places around the world. These targets are hard to find but easy to destroy. We still have the fixed targets of the Cold

War like missile silos and radar sites, but now we also have to be concerned about continuously moving targets creating unstable situations around the world.

As we analyze intelligence problems, we must focus on the opportunities being created by our existing infrastructure plus commercial IT. Every new challenge creates great opportunities for innovation, and I want to be a part of the leading edge, innovating beyond the users’ imaginations to resolve their problems.

Technology, especially communications, has really changed the world over the last 20 years. People now communicate with their smartphones. Which is why the only way a government can continue to have people under oppression is by stopping all communication. If people know there is a better world out there, they want to be part of that world. When I escaped from Cuba, I knew there was a 50-50 chance that I would be killed or captured. But it did not stop me. I would rather be dead than live under oppression—and we are seeing the same sentiments from the many people in North Africa. We have to be aware of these challenges and opportunities, which is why we strive to generate the best possible intelligence information. In the words of President Kennedy, “… the United States has both the will and the weapons to join free men in standing up to their responsibilities.” O

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With its vision of reduced costs and wider access, cloud computing is taking firm root in the world of geospatial intelligence and technology.

One recent major sign of the growing importance of the geospatial cloud concept was the introduction last summer by GIS powerhouse Esri of arcgis.com, an online system for using geographic information. The website is a portal that enables customers to augment and complement their existing IT and GIS portfolios with the economy provided by the cloud, but without forfeiting powerful geospatial functionality and geo-processing requirements.

That capability is just one of the ways in which cloud computing can

make applications easier to use, as the application provider hosts and manages the software, which the user then accesses through a Web browser. Costs typically are spread over the period during which the application or data is used, rather than incurred upfront through acquisition.

“Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet,” observed Philip O’Doherty, chief executive officer with eSpatial, a provider of GIS over the Web.

The services hosted can include infrastructure as well as applications, or what’s commonly known as “software as a service.” A cloud approach allows a user to access data and processing power just when it’s needed.

However, using a Web-based application is not completely synonymous with leveraging the cloud, said Victoria Kouyoumjian, IT strategies architect with Esri. Several core principles are fundamental to the cloud. These include elasticity, or the ability to

Geospatial cloud computinG Gains altitude as major providers offer online access to applications and data.

Philip O’Doherty

By Karen m. Kroll

Gif correspondent

[email protected]


scale up or down based on demand and traffic, and multi-tenancy, or the provision of shared infrastructure in order leverage economies of scale.

Users can deploy a cloud approach in different ways, depending on the challenges they’re trying to meet, noted Scott Hicar, senior vice president for global technology services and chief information officer with DigitalGlobe. For instance, the cloud provider can just host the information, relieving the user of the job of storing and managing what often can be large, unwieldy data sets.

The company can handle data processing as well. Given that geospatial images tend to be large, cloud computing can be used to cost-effectively bring processing power to the images. The Open Geospatial Consortium’s Web Mapping Tile Service (WMTS) is one example of this. This service can create a subset of an image in order to accelerate the speed with which the image is served to the user, Hicar said. “Using a combination of WMTS and tile caching in the cloud enables us to deliver images at sub-second speeds to our customers.”

In addition, the cloud can be used as a distribution mechanism, often drastically reducing the lag that historically has occurred between when an image is created and when the customer can use it, Hicar noted. So, rather than a customer having to wait days or weeks to obtain an image, it can be had in four to six hours.

That can be critical during natural disasters, such as last year’s earthquake in Haiti. “The rapid delivery of information allows aid agencies to triage the scene before arriving on-site, and make early decisions on where and how to structure the aid response,” Hicar said. Speedy delivery of information also aids defense initiatives and security planning.

three BuildinG BlocKs

The three building blocks of cloud computing are data, the ability to obtain the software capabilities required, and the ability to build and integrate applications, O’Doherty noted. He added that cloud computing introduces a new challenge for application integration, as the application to be integrated now resides outside an organization’s data center and needs to be integrated across the Internet. “It is necessary to address concerns about how to securely allow access from the Internet to applications and data inside the corporate firewall, as well as encrypting the data exchange across the Internet.”

While the term cloud computing has been gaining attention over the past year or two, the idea has been around for at least a decade. For instance, salesforce.com, a provider of cloud-based customer relationship management applications, has been operating for more than a decade.

To be sure, the transition from desktop- or server-based software is more an evolution than a revolution. Probably 80 percent to 90 percent of users still host and manage their own software, using internal IT staff, said Ryan Hughes, chief executive officer with Skygone, a provider of geospatial cloud computing. At the same time, companies that several years ago wouldn’t consider the option now are asking about it, he added.

The adoption of cloud computing in the geospatial world has been one of focused efforts, said Kouyoumjian. So far, some of the most visible examples have been within emergency response situations. For instance, during the January flooding around Brisbane, Australia, Esri/Australia provided a localized version of its common operational picture application, which then was moved to the cloud. This geospatial information was used to pinpoint and communicate flood depths, predict and communicate peak flooding depths, and identify evacuation centers. Using Amazon Web Services as the cloud provider enabled Esri to quickly disseminate this information to responders and others who needed it.

The transition from desktop- to cloud-based applications involves some pushing and pulling in the market, O’Doherty added. In other words, some potential users see the value of cloud computing, but won’t change until more applications are readily available. Some application providers, of course, will wait until demand increases before developing the applications their clients will use.

access to tools

One application that is up and running is arcgis.com from Esri, which was introduced in August 2010.

As a component of the company’s industry-leading ArcGIS software, the website allows access to tools and templates that enable users to share their work. Users can browse maps and applications published and shared by others, or build their own maps using information others have shared. In addition, they can leverage ArcGIS Online Web and mobile applications.

At the same time, the ArcGIS system is integrated, allowing users to work via their server, desktop, the web or a mobile device. “The cloud deliverables become another option for customers to add to their existing portfolio of solutions,” Kouyoumjian said.

The transition to cloud-based GIS applications promises users several benefits. As a starting point, they’re freed from having to host onsite the infrastructure needed to run GIS applications. Instead, users can take advantage of the virtually unlimited processing, memory and storage capacity offered by cloud computing, Hughes said.

That can be key with geospatial applications. Given that it’s not unusual to have to manage massive amounts of data, the economies of scale provided by the cloud can become significant, Kouyoumjian said.

Similarly, users don’t have to configure and implement the application in order to use it. In addition, with most cloud service agreements, users pay just for the power or capacity that they use.

Because geospatial cloud users generally are able to cut the expenses associated with storing and managing the data, many will have more funds available for the actual solutions that they need, Hicar noted. The quality of the geospatial imagery and data is the same whether it’s accessed through the cloud approach or via a hosted solution, he added.

In addition, cloud computing facilitates the development of specific applications that are “built quickly and deployed rapidly,” O’Doherty said. This is valuable in emergency response situations. Web-based applications and data sets can be instantly provided to thousands of personnel and server resources in the cloud rapidly scaled to support them.

Applications that reside in the cloud also can be accessed by users from around the globe, O’Doherty pointed out. “The advantage is

Scott Hicar


where you’re looking to enable multiple user groups that are spread across disparate geographies and who need access to the data rapidly.”

security issues

While cloud-based applications offer a number of benefits, they also have raised some concerns, most prominently security related. Users want to know that their data is safe, private and can be reliably accessed. Some users contend that hosted solutions are the option most likely to meet these goals.

Security is a concern in any environment, Hughes pointed out. “Cloud computing changes the model a bit, but not the complete paradigm.”

In addition, users can (and should) make sure that their agreements with their service providers spell out their ownership rights in their data.

One way to address security concerns is to move to a private cloud. In this scenario, the user sets up its own firewall, but leverages cloud technologies, Kouyoumjian said. While this means giving up some of the efficiencies and economies of scale inherent in the cloud, it may allow the user to better control the security measures and protect the data.

One note of caution, however, is that organizations that decide to become their own cloud-based data center need to ensure they have the infrastructure and elasticity needed to support the traffic and workload, which often fluctuates and can be unpredictable, Kouyoumjian added.

Some claim that security actually is tighter in the cloud, because the data centers are designed to resist attack. “It’s the whole notion of security being baked in, rather than bolted on,” Kouyoumjian noted. “A typical onsite data center is not designed for resilience to attacks and failures, may not have the latest security patches, upgrades or updates, and the notion of disaster recovery and business continuity can often be an afterthought.”

At this point, the issue of security hasn’t been completely decided in favor of either the cloud or hosted applications, Kouyoumjian added. Much of it comes down to the service agreement with the provider. If an organization needs 99.999 percent uptime and the provider can’t guarantee that level of reliability, a cloud approach may not be the answer.

For most organizations, cost is another area that can be of concern. In many cases, the initial cost of ownership should be cheaper with a cloud approach, as the user avoids most of the upfront development and implementation costs that accompany purchased or licensed systems, O’Doherty said. In addition, developing software poses more risk to the organization than simply renting the use of an application that someone else has developed and made available.

Moreover, cloud-based computing agreements tend to be fairly straightforward. “You don’t need to call and negotiate a contract

or licensing terms. It’s a credit card transaction,” said Mike Tully, president of SpatialCloud.

Over a lifetime, however, the costs between both options may be fairly equal, once ongoing subscription fees are totaled, O’Doherty added. Moreover, users that work with large amounts of data—common in the geospatial world—and are handling it on a 24/7 basis quickly can run up the fees, Kouyoumjian noted. Some providers, such as Amazon Web Services, offer online calculators that allow potential users to get an idea of the total costs.

Another concern when working with cloud-based applications is the ability to gain reasonably speedy online access, O’Doherty said. Again, given what are typically large geospatial data sets, the quality and reliability of the online access can become critical.

Finally, another issue with cloud computing concerns the development of standards to govern, for instance, the way in which data is exchanged. “This is one of the big issues to solve,” said Dino Ravnic, chief executive officer with GISCloud, a provider of geographic information systems powered by cloud computing.

In fact, the standards that are needed in the geospatial arena also are needed in the overarching cloud environment, Kouyoumjian said, noting that the National Institute of Standards Technology has taken up the challenge of building governance around the standards. “There’s still a lot to be done, but people are already moving forward and being successful.”

Given the possible benefits and shortcomings of employing a cloud-based approach, an organization will need to analyze the potential costs and returns in order to decide whether to move in the direction. For many organizations, the move is accomplished in stages, Tully said. First, it may offload the heavy data sets. After that, it will migrate users from locally stored to cloud-based data streams. Next is intelligently identifying software and services that should migrate to the cloud.

service aGreements

One key to an effective cloud computing environment is a comprehensive service level agreement (SLA) between the user and the provider. Kouyoumjian identified several provisions that the SLA should cover. For instance, it should discuss whether other organizations share the same hardware, and whether any third-party applications or components are used in the service.

The SLA also should cover the steps the vendor takes to protect the user’s digital identities and credentials, and to ensure data integrity and encryption. The user also will want to evaluate the provider’s physical security, checking, for instance, the types of background checks done on the individuals who will have access to the data center.

Ultimately, the agreement needs to pinpoint the service guarantees offered by the vendor, as that is what the client will rely on, Kouyoumjian said.

Down the road, cloud-based GEOINT applications likely will become a mainstream option that coexists with traditional software applications, O’Doherty said. “It’s great, but we won’t throw out the old way. It’s not going to be either/or. We’ll see a hybrid.” O

Contact Editor Harrison Donnelly at [email protected]. For more information related to this subject, search our archives at

www.GIF-kmi.com.

Dino Ravnic

Mike Tully


The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is placing new emphasis on enhancing the user experience, by improving access to the data it collects and by creating applications useful to a wider audience.

NGA’s vision has been simply and elegantly boiled down to two goals: provide online, on-demand access to our GEOINT knowledge; and create new value by broadening and deepening our analytic expertise.

To meet these goals—and in so doing, support the end-user—NGA must adopt a “big data” approach. Developed by many of the Internet companies that are such a large part of our lives, and used with success across the intelligence community and in pockets of NGA, this model features the flexibility and scalability necessary to handle massive amounts of data.

We enjoy entertaining the benefits that such change may bring to the mission—in this case, an enhanced user experience. But transformation does not happen overnight; we must begin by addressing the lingering, non-technology issues that can hinder a move to “big data.” Is this secure? Can the budget be justified? What organizational change and alignment is needed to make this work?

This scenario is not that dissimilar from the storyline of a typical romantic comedy (romcom): The male and female leads—let’s say Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon—meet, and it seems as if the future will unfold like a storybook. And yet, we all know that somewhere along the way, these characters will encounter conflict.

Much like a romcom, we must confront certain internal challenges before the story can progress to the so-called “happily ever after.”

Successful companies in the new Internet economy have a common distinguishing characteristic—access to massive amounts of data coupled with applications that offer the user a new experience. The new Internet economy refers to the economy where companies produce real value, as opposed to the famous Internet bubble at the end of the last century. Internet businesses such as Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn and Groupon produce significant value—and hence, revenues and profits—changing the way we live and work.

One common technical thread running through each of these success stories is the way the companies handle data and improve the user experience. They adopted a “big data” approach. Google created “big data,”

and it is the engine of Google’s success. To handle the huge volume of data on the Internet, Google developed the Google File System (GFS), a storage and computing model that had virtually limitless scalability, as well as MapReduce, a new processing model. As the creator of MapReduce and GFS, Google has enjoyed a substantial technical advantage since its founding, racing ahead of the competition to become one of the largest, most profitable and most admired companies in the new Internet economy.

Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn and Groupon use an open source version of the GFS, Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). Facebook acknowledged that by 2007, it had nearly collapsed under the weight of its own popularity. After experimenting with Hadoop technology, the results were so impressive that Facebook executives moved most of the company’s data storage and computation to the HDFS and MapReduce programming model.

After the introduction of a few features over the last few years, Facebook has shifted almost entirely to the new technology. With this technology, companies can store and retrieve massive amounts of data. This new computing model also enables complex

Big Data

We looK forWard to the day When users access Geoint data With all the poWer and convenience We experience on the commercial internet.

By david crandall

the StorylineChanges


processing and the formation of data relationships in ways not possible before.

BiG data’s difference

Handles all kinds of data: HDFS is exceptional at handling semi-structured data—that is, anything represented in, at minimum, “label/value pairs.” This includes HTML and XML, the languages of the Internet. HDFS is not as persnickety as its relational database and data-warehousing cousins. Relational databases, by their nature, require data to be consistently formatted so they fit into the predetermined table structure. Consider this: A predefined data schema implies you know the questions that will be asked of that database in the future. In the case of the rapidly changing geopolitical atmosphere, we are not able to anticipate all of the questions that will be asked of the data tomorrow, let alone in the coming years. Each time you need to add a new data format to a relational database or change the way we access the schema, it must be re-factored and optimized for the new data. HDFS becomes more useful as you add larger and more diverse datasets, and existing data does not need to be reformatted or restructured.

Offers more flexible relationships: As the volume and types of data grow, HDFS allows the enterprise to stay flexible and address new challenges as they arise. The technology does not rely on data types to create relationships between data. Instead, it allows the user to represent the data in ways that more closely mimic the way humans think of data—any piece of data can be related to another data item regardless of its type. Quickly creating new relationships between data allows the enterprise to adapt to changing missions and emphasis over time. To ensure smooth integration between legacy data and HDFS, Apache, the open source consortium, has tools so users can access data in either the traditional relational or data warehousing methods. HBase makes HDFS hosted data appear as if it were stored on a traditional relational database, and Hive is a data warehousing program built on Hadoop.

“Big data” is the bedrock of business models and capabilities we could have only dreamed of before. To capture the ambitious vision articulated by Director Letitia A. Long and other NGA leaders, the agency may soon take advantage of this technology. The technology is industry proven, reasonably

cost-efficient, and yields impressive results early in the adoption curve. Experience in the IC over many years is that it is not the adoption of the technology that is the challenge, but rather the cultural issues surrounding the technology, including interagency sharing and consolidation of data. In any adoption scenario, “big data” drives a solution that accumulates more diverse data and larger volumes of data.

The excitement around technology and accompanying possibilities for change is analogous to the meeting of our romcom leads. There’s a spark and excitement, or at least infatuation, when Matthew first encounters Reese. Then, conflict arises: The characters must cope with personal inhibitions that threaten to derail them from moving forward together. For NGA, this conflict comes when security, budget justification, and organizational change and alignment enter the story.

challenGes and proGress

These challenges are not new, and NGA can use the major progress in pockets across the IC and within NGA for its current efforts. Many of the following challenges are unique to the IC and have not received much attention in the private sector.

Security: When moving technology from the commercial world to the mission environment, security is always a major concern; in fact, this is a noted weakness of the open source Hadoop implementation. The current version of Hadoop only recently added basic file-level security features found in most operating systems. Fortunately, NGA can take advantage of work done in other agencies to establish their “big data” solutions, moving more quickly than if it started from scratch. There is a Hadoop implementation in the IC that leapfrogs commercial implementations by implementing x.509v3 data element level security for each piece of data stored in the cloud.

Budget Justification: As agencies transform themselves, proving the value of the adoption of new technology can be a constant source of pressure. Cost models demonstrate significant cost savings; for a non-virtualized 1,000-server data center, the benefit-to-cost ratios range from 5.7 to 15.4, with a potential as high as 25 for larger data centers. Over a 13-year life cycle, the total cost of implementing and sustaining a cloud environment may be as much as two-

thirds lower than the cost of maintaining a traditional, non-virtualized IT data center.

Organizational Change and Alignment: NGA is setting the stage for “big data.” Already, analysts are realizing greater value from data through the use of Web services, GEOINT Online, Intellipedia and increased ability to locate and use data through a partnership between the eGEOINT Management Office and elements of the Analysis and Production Directorate. Analyst qualification is well underway, creating a structure for career paths that will emphasize these new ways of working. Source continues to expand the range and variety of data available. Governance and other business model changes are happening at multiple levels of NGA as the organization implements improved and enhanced business processes.

The sooner NGA addresses the challenges to the adoption of a “big data” approach, the sooner the agency will realize the benefits and possibilities of the vision. Then, just as the leads of our romcom tackle their issues, everyone will live “happily ever after.” For NGA, this means an evolution that transforms the user experience, improving access to data and enhancing its usefulness. The future is bright for NGA. We look forward to the day when users access GEOINT data with all the power and convenience we experience on the commercial Internet. O

David Crandall is a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton in the NGA/NRO account specializing in system development, technology insertion and systems engineering.

Contact Editor Harrison Donnelly at [email protected].

For more information related to this subject, search our archives at www.GIF-kmi.com.

David Crandall


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GIF CALENDAR & DIRECTORY

aDVertisers inDex

BAE Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C4www.baesystems.com/gxp

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ITT Visual Information Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . C3www.ittvis.com/envi

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calenDarMay 1-5, 2011ASPRS Annual ConferenceMilwaukee, Wis.www.asprs.org

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Volume 9, Issue 4 • May/June 2011NEXT ISSUE

Insertion Order Deadline: April 15, 2011 • Ad Materials Deadline: April 22, 2011

Cover and In-Depth Interview with:

Dr. Joseph F. FontanellaDirector, Army Geospatial CenterArmy Geospatial Information Officer

Special Report:• 2011 USGIF Membership DirectoryFeatures:• Remote Sensing Update• Video Standards• Analytic Software

• SAR Advances• EnhancedView Technology


inDustry interView Geospatial intelliGence Forum

Rick AmbrosePresident

Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Solutions-Security

Rick Ambrose is president of the IS&GS-Security division of Lockheed Martin. IS&GS-Security designs and integrates global systems that help customers gather, analyze and securely distribute critical intelligence data. The organization also provides highly-skilled, cleared professionals that deliver a wide range of support to government agencies, from mission and analytical specialists to IT and operational staff.

Q: With increasing budget pressures across the government, affordability is becoming a major focus for the intelligence community. How are you responding?

A: We certainly recognize that in today’s environment, customers are looking for more mission capability from every dollar. Value is paramount. We’re helping a number of our intelligence community customers consolidate their IT infrastructures to save money, improve information sharing and deliver better mission applications to frontline troops and analysts.

In one instance, we were able to consolidate five separate IT systems into one common infrastructure. The new system costs 75 percent less to procure, streamlined the hardware footprint by 70 percent, and reduced the power and cooling requirements by 40 percent. At the same time, the consolidation provides users access to more data and more applications—and does it all securely. So we’re not only reducing cost and complexity, we’re helping to put the power of integrated intelligence into the hands of the warfighter.

Q: What technologies are driving that kind of consolidation?

A: The IC has mapped out a smart plan for moving to an infrastructure service provider (ISP) and application service provider (ASP) model of IT management. On the ISP side, they’re consolidating data centers, building common network, storage and server architectures, implementing

virtualization and cloud computing, and creating universal standards to make IT more integrated and cost-effective. On the ASP side, they’re creating high-powered mission services that give analysts and warfighters the tools they need to keep our nation secure. The beauty of it is, with an open infrastructure and available mission data it’s much easier and more affordable to write the game-changing mission applications that users need.

From our perspective as an industry partner, we want to help deliver value on both sides of the ISP/ASP equation. We have a long, proud history supporting the intelligence community, and in that time we’ve developed an in-depth understanding of our customers’ missions. We also know the legacy systems inside and out; in many cases, we helped build them. And we’re constantly combing the commercial world for the best and most innovative technologies that we can bring to bear for intelligence missions. That combination of mission understanding, legacy expertise and honest broker integration is a unique value we offer to help move the ISP/ASP vision forward.

Q: What trends do you see shaping the application side of the technology landscape?

A: It’s all about putting the power of the intelligence enterprise in the hands of frontline users. And that has two important

implications. First, we have to find ways to conduct more information integration at the edge. Your smartphone has all kinds of apps on it that pull data from all over the Web so you can integrate it instantly to suit your needs. Think of scanning a product bar code in a store to see where else it’s selling—and at what price. That’s a major innovation, and warfighters need that same kind of capability, but built to their mission needs. We’re investing in a number of projects to build mobile applications to do just that.

Second, you need a secure mobile communications infrastructure to safely deliver all of that data to the edge. We’re working now on a number of secure comms technologies that can send triple-encrypted data over 3G cellular, Wi-Fi or deployed battlefield networks. Data that’s trapped in a wired network isn’t going to reach the users who need it most. We’re developing innovative technologies to create secure mobile networks that meet the stringent needs of the intelligence community.

Q: What does the next frontier of analysis look like? What new innovations can we expect?

A: One area that we think holds tremendous promise is mission management. Customers are gathering data from more sources and more avenues than ever before—national, tactical, commercial and open source. The mission management infrastructure, which orchestrates the tasking, collection and distribution of all of that data, is evolving to a more integrated and cohesive state.

We believe we can help accelerate that evolution, and drive towards a collaborative enterprise that moves fluidly and adapts rapidly to the needs of users. It’s also an important step towards predictive analytics, where we’re getting one step ahead of the next threat. The end goal is to help make the intelligence enterprise even more relevant and responsive to the warfighter, and we look forward to helping our customers achieve this transformation. O


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ITT, the Engineered Blocks, and “Engineered for life” are registered trademarks of ITT Manufacturing Enterprises, Inc., and are used under license. ©2011, ITT Visual Information Solutions

ENVI is the premier solution to analyze geospatial imagery. The newest version, ENVI 4.8, delivers advanced ENVI image analysis tools directly to the ArcGIS® desktop and ArcGIS Server environments in a familiar toolbox, so you can quickly and easily update your GIS with information from geospatial imagery. ENVI software covers the imagery workflow, from data ingest to analysis to output. And, with a diverse and comprehensive set of scientifically proven tools, ENVI is the only solution you need to add image analysis to your GIS. Learn more at www.ittvis.com/ENVI.

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PUBLICATION Geospatial Intelligence Forum

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