Missouri Microcosm
Written by Harrison Donnelly
NGA ST. LOUIS PLAYS A VITAL ROLE IN ALL
ASPECTS OF AGENCY OPERATIONS, FROM GEOSPATIAL
ANALYSIS TO CONTINUITY OF OPERATIONS.
As the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) carries out the massive consolidation and relocation of its Washington, D.C.-area facilities to a new campus in Springfield/Fort Belvoir, Va., one of the operational linchpins of the transition will actually be located more than 800 miles to the west, in St. Louis, Mo.
The Gateway City and its environs are and will continue to be the home of NGA St. Louis, which comprises about a third of the agency’s work force and many of its analytical and production functions. The western organization will play a vital role in ensuring a smooth transition to Fort Belvoir, which is scheduled to end in 2011.
The second-largest NGA location and only site with total mission capability, NGA St. Louis employs several thousand personnel, a majority of whom are geospatial, imagery, cartographic, aeronautical, geodetic, orbit, regional and other analysts.
“The easiest way to describe NGA St. Louis is that we’re basically a microcosm of the entire agency,” said NGA West Senior Executive Bertram R. “Bert” Beaulieu, a veteran of nearly three decades with the agency and its predecessors. “We have a piece and a part of all the regional and functional activities that the agency conducts, so we’re a fully capable mission activity.”
The facilities in St. Louis and Arnold, Mo., are also home for activities that stretch around the globe in support of warfighters. More than half of NGA employees temporarily deploying into theater are based there, and personnel from there provide support to NGA personnel at more than 20 other western locations, including USTRANSCOM, STRATCOM, NORTHCOM, test ranges and large military installations.
In addition, NGA St. Louis is a major focal point for the agency’s commercial partners, such as satellite imagery providers GeoEye and Digital Globe. Officials manage more than $1 billion a year in contracts for geospatial production commercial imagery, data licensing and other needs.
Beaulieu outlined the role of NGA West in the agency’s relocation program and after.
“On the mission side, while we already have a piece and part of the mission, we’re revising all of our business continuity plans to ensure continuity during the move and consolidation at the new campus,” Beaulieu explained. “So some of our smaller offices will be growing in size to supplement their capability with additional capacity.”
But while the Fort Belvoir relocation reflects a desire by agency leaders to achieve greater efficiency through centralization and consolidation, Beaulieu made clear that NGA St. Louis will maintain a separate entity with a major role in operations.
“Part of our history is that we’ve already done considerable consolidation in the past. The agency used to have quite a few field offices in various locations around the country, and we consolidated several of those offices here and the rest in the Washington area. So there was some previous consolidation,” he said.
“Today, continuity is the major driver, and we’re hearing from other agencies in the East for that reason,” Beaulieu added. “But I also think logically and economically; with a third of the agency out here, it would be an expensive endeavor to move everything to the East. I don’t think you would get the efficiency savings to cover those kinds of costs.”
MISSION AREAS
NGA St. Louis is organized by its different mission areas, such as analysis and production. Under that organization, there are both regional and functional offices, with the regional offices being aligned with the major military commands. For example, an Asia-Pacific office supports PACOM, while a Eurasia-Africa office supports EUCOM and AFRICOM. In addition, functional activities such as counterterrorism and counter-proliferation, global navigation and targeting each have elements on site.
One important issue concerns the division of labor and need to avoid duplication of effort with other offices. On a day-to-day basis, that is achieved by concentrating on different countries or issues.
“It works that way across the functional areas as well,” said Beaulieu. “For example, for counterterrorism support we have a global activity. “We have each of the regional activities, but focus on different countries within them.”
On the Americas side, for NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM, Beaulieu’s operation has both Latin America and homeland security branches. “We work Mexico on the Latin America side and border security on the homeland security side, so we can link up the cross-border infrastructure issues between Mexico with border security support.”
Another major office is Source Operations, which does a lot of the agency’s geospatial foundation work, covering topics such as elevation, controlled image base and basic extraction of information. Although electronic data is clearly central to the agency’s modern mission, NGA St. Louis still maintains its roots in an earlier generation of geospatial dissemination, printing tens of millions of maps and publications every year. Printing activities were outsourced in 2001 under an arrangement in which the agency owns the equipment while the contractor operates it.
“We try to reduce map printing to save costs, but as long as our customers and partners need hard copies, we’ll continue to support it,” Beaulieu vowed.
Another form of customer service comes in the form of the office’s many temporary deployment personnel, who include both imagery and geospatial analysts as well as employees specializing in data management and data stewards.
“We’re starting to send quite a few data people, who help those in the field access and manipulate data and turn it into products and services,” he said. “Our folks out in the field are doing a lot of the kinds of things you expect from in-house reports. They’re putting together situational awareness graphics that lay out various facilities and operations. They do 3-D visualization to support mission rehearsal.”
In addition, a number of cartographic analysts are working with counterparts in other countries. For example, NGA St. Louis people are working with these countries to help them develop their mapping and charting capabilities.
“I’ve been absolutely amazed and impressed with the work force out here, and their dedication and capabilities,” Beaulieu concluded. “It’s an exciting place to work, and we’re doing some amazing work.” ♦
Critical Functions
Critical National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) functions based in the St. Louis, Mo., area include:
• NGA Global Geospatial Information Gateway—distributes geospatial products and digital data electronically worldwide.
• NGA Printing Operations—produces 24 million maps and charts annually.
• Aeronautical Safety Division—provides aeronautical information and products critical to flight safety.
• Office of Targeting and Navigation— responsible for the acquisition, analysis, reduction and geophysical data to ensure high precision and accuracy of Department of Defense weapon and navigation systems.
• DoD Gravity Library Database—supports inertial navigation and guidance systems and earth gravity models.
• Aeronautical Digital Data Environment— contains an aeronautical database of indepth information on airfields worldwide, and manmade obstructions that could pose a hazard to flight. The ADDE also provides information used for automated applications such as flight planning systems, flight simulators and flight management computer systems.
• Global Positioning System Operations Center—provides Air Force GPS operations with 24/7 data processing and input that supports GPS accuracy.
• Digital International Boundary Database— currently being populated and will be accessible through Web technology.
