Q&A: Lloyd Rowland
Written by Harrison Donnelly
Sharing the Burdens and Benefits of Intelligence Production
Lloyd Rowland
Deputy Director
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
During his 24 years in the Air Force, Rowland commanded a squadron in Operation Desert Storm and had various postings around the world. Most of his career involved reconnaissance force employment and imagery management. His awards include the Distinguished Flying Cross for combat operations, Presidential Meritorious Rank, Legion of Merit, Defense Superior Service Medal and the Air Medal. Rowland has degrees from Memphis State University and the University of Southern California.
Rowland was interviewed by MGT Editor Harrison Donnelly.
Q: You commented recently on the “ever-present need to balance time-dominant and non-time-dominant mission requirements.” How do you ensure that long-term needs and goals are paid attention to even as crises and other events put urgent demands on time and resources?
A: That’s an issue that comes up frequently, and part of our everyday challenge is to be able to balance intelligence needs not only in the near term, but also in the long term. It’s easy to get locked into the tactical operation of the day, but all leaders in the intelligence community must focus on the near-, mid- and long-term responsibilities and challenges. Our NGA management team continually tracks and reports out through our governance structure about how we’re applying our resources. We have a structure given to us by the director of national intelligence that allows us to do this pretty easily. It gives us the strategic imperatives, and we take our daily operations and resources and make sure they’re balanced against what is happening around the world.
One of the things that have improved as a result of cooperation between agencies and other organizations in the intelligence community is that we now share the burden of intelligence production. NGA and the National System for Geospatial Intelligence have a unified operations program, where we reach out to our partners across the community within the United States—the services and commands and the other agencies. We also coordinate and cooperate with our international partners in helping to solve our most important intelligence challenges. We have to balance resources every day. That’s part of our responsibility at the leadership level to reduce community duplication and to share the burden of solving the problems of today and tomorrow.
Q: What are the most effective ways to get GEOINT into the hands of those who don’t know they need it or don’t have the capabilities to get it?
A: I appreciate your asking this question, because it’s really at the heart of our strategy at NGA. We have two basic approaches. One is to actively reach out to our partners to ensure that we are able to furnish GEOINT to those who need it in a timely manner. Everyone, including our analysts, our leadership and support teams, is responsible for continuously doing outreach engagement and collaboration with our partners across the community. We currently have about one-fourth of our work force deployed into the footprints of our customers and partners at 150 locations around the world. I think this forward-deployed strategy is the most effective way of getting information into the hands of those who need it.
I will tell you that fused intelligence is extremely important. I believe that GEOINT is the foundational intelligence discipline. So when we’re sitting with other intelligence partners within the footprint of those we serve and talking face to face about the intelligence problems they have, we can work with them directly in ways that best fit their needs.
Then we need to take the information that is produced in the field and bring it back here, where we tag and put it into our data centers, and then universally make it accessible to other people who might need the same information. We’re doing that a couple of ways. GEOINT On-Line is one way. We’re using Google Earth as a basis for that, where we can display retrievable information online. Our customers can point and click on a piece of the world and information will be displayed for them to choose from and call up.
Q: Why is NGA conducting a hiring campaign, and what are you looking for?
A: We are into a very aggressive hiring campaign for 2009. We conducted a campaign last fall in the Washington, D.C., area, where we received more than 8,500 resumes. We thought it was going to be a local recruiting event, but it ended up being more of a national event. We gave 699 people offers of employment, pending their ability to receive a security clearance and the availability of positions. We’re going to do a similar event soon in St. Louis and two more in Denver and New York later this year. Our goal this year is to hire about 1,200 people.
There are a couple of reasons we are doing this. One is that we understand that even with the low rate of attrition at NGA, we still need to replace those who we know are retirement eligible or who might move on to other agencies. We’re also looking at hiring people with the new skills that we will need in the future. The skills that we have today will be very important in the future too, but we’ll have new requirements as technology improves. We’ll need more scientists, such as image scientists, for example, as the new sensor phenomenologies mature.
Q: What do you see as the most effective ways of expanding industry and academic engagement?
A: The way that we primarily approach industry is through our Industry Interaction Program, which serves as a gateway for industry to come into NGA. It is a pathway to facilitate industry interaction with the different organizations within the NGA, where companies can present their ideas about how we can better develop tools and techniques for analysts, and better sensors for the sources we need to accomplish the GEOINT mission. Industry presents white papers to us—ideas that we then present to the experts within the agency to assess. Then we bring the industry partner back in for further discussion as required. NGA also supports and participates in the ODNI annual industry symposium, the next one of which will be held in May. We’ll be full participants in that event.
In addition, our component acquisition executive and senior procurement executive here at NGA jointly sponsor twice-a-year industry forums to provide insight for what we see as our upcoming requirements. We spend a day in dialogue with our industry partners to talk about what’s coming up in the future. The bottom line is that we’re always looking for new ways and opportunities to partner with industry to solve the problems not only of today, but also those we’ll face in the future.
Q: What are your current research and development priorities?
A: First of all, I’d like to say when we’re doing the annual budget and programming for the out-years, we always protect and maintain our R&D budget at a certain level. We conduct a multidisciplinary program of basic research and development in GEOINT topics through grants and fellowships to 130 universities. The research provides fundamental support to address our most pressing operational challenges. Things I’d like to mention in the academic research grants portfolio include the NGA University Research Initiative, Historically Black College and University and Minority Institution Educational Research Initiative, and Visiting Scientist Program.
One of the most effective ways that we see to expand academic engagement is through the use of centers of excellence at places such as the University of Missouri, where we have a very effective program. Their research center specializes in developing advanced synthetic aperture radar, which is very important to our mission analysis. It’s also used for developing the cutting-edge automated analysis techniques for unpiloted aerial vehicles, and for the tools we need to analyze GEOINT information quickly and precisely, and then to get the information to the people who need it.
Q: As sources of data multiply, how are you working to ensure that NGA remains able to use data from all sources and provide multi-INT fusion?
A: Every piece of our data can provide a clue to solving some intelligence problem. In this complex world, at a time when more and more data is becoming available, it is imperative that we successfully integrate that data, understand what data we have, where it is, and how it can be used to the best advantage. GEOINT data has to be searchable, not just stored information.
Specific areas that we’re focusing on now are the capture, integration and management of all GEOINT sources. In concert with our mission partners around the world, we are integrating airborne and commercial imagery and other sources into our GEOINT data centers, and creating a multi-INT environment that advances collaboration across the community. NGA is moving aggressively to develop and promulgate standards. NGA as a functional manager has responsibility to help the community develop the standards so that everyone can use this information. We’re making great progress in this area, but have more work to do.
Q: You have mentioned hyper spectral, multispectral and polarimetric imagery as future technologies that could help to unlock the toughest intelligence problems. Can you tell us a little about each of these technologies, and how they theoretically could be used in the future?
A: The future of the GEOINT mission is going to be heavily dependent on the future sensor capabilities you just mentioned. Polarimetric imagery is the measurement of the degree of polarization of light. What that means in practical terms is that artificial surfaces polarize and reflect light. The human eye might look at something and not realize that it is a man-made object and pass right by it. But polarimetric imagery allows us the opportunity to detect and identify some of these “unseen” attributes. Spectral imagery provides information on the material composition of those objects. Every material emits light and energy across an electromagnetic spectrum differently. These differences can then be used to assess the material and properties, and thus provide more information about the object or surface.
Finally, the multispectral imagery is extremely important. It brings together several wide spectral bands that can be measured. Even subtle differences, including different materials that appear identical to the eye, are not necessarily identical—in fact are probably not identical. These images can be compared to measured tables that we have and signatures that we know about to make much more definite material identifications. What this means in practical terms is that if you’re looking at an object on the ground, say a fertilizer plant, we might want to know what kinds of chemicals are being used in that plant to make whatever product they’re making. These types of future sensors will allow us to have some insight into what those chemicals, production techniques are, and ultimately what their outputs are intended for.
Q: What are the prospects for developing effective predictive analysis in GEOINT?
A: The ultimate goal of analysis is to predict future outcomes based upon a previous set of circumstances. The real key with some of the toughest intelligence problems is to predict what will the enemy do next. This is a tough challenge, and why information sharing across the intelligence community is so important. One intelligence discipline alone will not lead easily to predictive analysis. It’s only when you have several intelligence disciplines—HUMINT, SIGINT, GEOINT and so on—fused together that we will have a better opportunity to do accurate predictive analysis. A detailed understanding of the terrain [GEOINT], the adversary’s capabilities and strategies, and their ability to sustain movement or conduct operations is very important to us.
We continue to refine our techniques as we try to understand and define options and tactics that are available to the adversary. These techniques apply to aggressors attempting to threaten or topple established governments, and to disrupt or spread instability through terrorism. Again, I think the key to predictive analysis is when you fuse multiple sources and intelligence disciplines together to say this is what they’ve done in the past, this is how they’re postured today, and we believe this is how they will use whatever they have against us tomorrow.
Q: What are some of the operational improvements you expect to gain once the agency is installed in its new headquarters?
A: What’s really important about the new campus is not the building, but it’s about moving the mission to our facility in Springfield. The new facility will be a place where intelligence analysts from across the community can come together to accomplish the intelligence mission. We’re on course and glide-slope to start moving our analysts in January 2011. We’ll be fully operational there by September of that year.
Right now we’re located in seven or eight locations around the Washington, D.C., area. Admiral Murrett and I and other leaders in the agency spend a lot of our time every day moving from location to location. That will slow down certainly; but first and foremost, we’re going to be able to bring together all of our analysts from around the Washington area to one central location, where they’ll be able to work and collaborate together more easily. That’s a huge benefit—collaboration on high-profile intelligence issues will be much easier.
The NGA Integrated Operations Center, which is now dispersed among our operating locations, will be put together centrally and located within the same operational footprint. They will be surrounded by the regional and functional intelligence experts, and will be able to work together as a more cohesive team. Thirdly, the new Campus East allows us to consolidate our East Coast libraries and information repositories, thus providing analysts with faster and broader access to our entire collection of research holdings.
Additionally, the large conference center that we’ll have there will provide an opportunity for the entire community to come together at NGA to collaborate on intelligence problem sets and issues of mutual concern. So as you can see the new campus will provide us with many mission improvement opportunities.
Q: How would you assess the current state of the NextView program and other agency uses of commercial imagery?
A: With the recent launch of the two next-generation commercial satellites, NGA is better able to provide mission partners with the important information they need to accomplish their important roles. The combination of higher quality imagery and increased volume of GEOINT products enables us to look at commercial imagery as a primary source for many of our mission requirements. These sensors are also specifically intended to help us with our mapping requirements and to meet non-time-dominant intelligence requirements. I would say the U.S. commercial imagery program has progressed well over the past few years, and we’re optimistic that it’s going to continue to move in a positive direction for the future.
We’re also looking at using commercial sources from other countries, which are becoming more available and accessible to us. We continue to assess the quality of these sources to meet our diverse customer needs. In the future, new collection systems, foreign and domestic, will be important to us and mission accomplishment. NGA anticipates increased use of these sources to augment our national assets, particularly in the next five to seven years. At the end of the day, the commercial industry is helping us and our allied partners fight the global war on terror every day.
Q: Are you working on any major new contract competitions, or are there other opportunities for companies to do business with NGA that you are looking at for the future?
A: This agency relies on industry to help us accomplish our mission. Two-thirds of our program every year is executed through industry contracts. Right now, the contracts that we have in place are the ones that we anticipate to have in place for the next few years, particularly as we remain stable in the move to the new campus. We work alongside our industry partners every day. But I would also say that we are looking every day for new opportunities, because our tools, our analysis capability, and our ability to store and retrieve data needs to improve. So we’re open through the Industry Interaction Program to new ideas.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?
A: I’d like to highlight that we have a great mission here at NGA, and we have wonderful people who accomplish the GEOINT mission every day. Over the last three years, the agencies in the intelligence community have been operating more cohesively, sharing information more freely, and tackling some of our serious intelligence questions together, more now than ever before. The leadership across the community is committed to working together as a results-oriented intelligence force.
And last, I would just like to say what an honor it is to be part of the team at NGA. I am very proud of the great women and men who are serving the nation here, and I’m very fortunate to be on the same team with them. ♦
