Getting Technology to the Warfighter
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NGA’S DEPUTY MILITARY EXECUTIVE PROVIDES INSIGHT INTO WHAT IT REALLY TAKES TO PUT THE RIGHT GEOSPATIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE HANDS OF OUR WARFIGHTERS AND ALLIES.
Last winter, I had the privilege to serve with our geospatial-intelligence analysts in Afghanistan while they worked side by side with our military partners fighting in the global war on terrorism. This deployment provided me with firsthand insights into our customers’ operations that make me very passionate about our agency’s support to this war and even more impressed with the capabilities of our analysts and the value they bring to the battlefield.
The global war on terrorism is wellnamed because this truly is an epic battle against terrorist networks that are not limited to a particular region. This war is deadly, it is asymmetric and it is rapidly changing. These types of combat operations stretch our military forces both in terms of physical demands on soldiers and their equipment, but also in terms of the vision and capabilities needed to fight against adversaries who operate at the confluence of terrorism, insurgency and perhaps weapons of mass destruction.
Geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) provided by NGA and our partners in the National System for Geospatial-Intelligence is absolutely critical on the battlefield. But, to be truly supportive of the warfighter and remain so, NGA needs to understand how GEOINT, a major combat multiplier, must adapt to the environment in which U.S. and coalition forces are operating, and how we should interact with them to deliver these enhanced capabilities.
For the purposes of this article, I will focus on three thoughts about our military partners and their operations and how these insights should guide NGA on interacting with military commanders and operators in forward-deployed locations.
CONTEXT KEEPS CHANGING
The first thought is that to bring new capabilities to our military partners, we must truly and completely understand the context in which they exist and the environment in which they operate. Our military is fully engaged and very much focused on the deadly fight that consumes their attention. The major combat elements of each of the services have been deployed into combat at an unrelenting pace for the past three years, and there is no end in sight. Our forces are either on their way to fight, in the fight, or returning from long and difficult deployments. And, this fight is new and different. It pits us against a very smart, disciplined enemy that is causing our military to rapidly adapt and then readapt.
We must keep at the front of our minds that the military is paying a dear price in this war in terms of loss of life and limb and that these sacrifices are always very much on the minds of our warfighters. Knowing that our military partners are very desirous of any capability that will help in this fight in the future, but very much focused on current operations, is an important piece element of situational awareness that we must keep in mind about our partners.
NEED TO SHARE CAPABILITIES
The second thought is that we must determine, working closely with our military customers, what capability they truly need and will make them more effective. The challenge with this is that neither party has a firm grasp of how to work in each other’s sphere of influence.
At NGA, we need to fully understand the operational environment and doctrinal principles by which our forces fight. As mentioned above, this war is very different from others in which we have fought, and is further complicated by the speed at which new techniques and innovative methods are introduced to the battlefield by both friendly and threat forces. Understanding the dynamics of this war is not easy, and is even harder as a national agency that is largely based in the continental United States.
Working to develop an understanding of our partners is necessary because, in general, they need help in being able to communicate effectively with us about their needs. In essence, warriors don’t know what they don’t know about GEOINT, and we are in the same situation about setting up a snap traffic control point in Ar Ramdi, Iraq or raiding a suspected terrorist compound in Khowst, Afghanistan. Only by working together can we get into each other’s space to understand how to bring greater capability to the fight.
STAND-ALONE SOLUTIONS INADEQUATE
My third thought is that pure and standalone technology solutions are difficult to integrate into a situation in which military forces are concentrating on other fights. We should strive to deliver a well-packaged capability that can be added to ongoing operations without major disruption. For instance, a hardware or software upgrade, new tool or new concept should be matched with the concept of operations by which it will work, a detailed training package, a maintenance plan, and all of the other elements that make using the new capability user friendly.
These three points lead us to conclude that NGA must become extremely well-organized and coherent, and compel us to present our ideas in a tight, focused manner that will make warfighters more effective and capable. Approaching a military customer with a less than fully coordinated, thought-out idea at this point is not helpful and may not be well received.
WORKING THROUGH NSTS IS KEY
Our view into the warfighters’ true needs should be through our forward-deployed personnel, NGA Support Teams (NSTs), and the regional and functional offices in the Production and Analysis Directorate who are linked directly to military forces. We need to leverage the knowledge that we gain as an agency from having people forward and a production and analysis element that works with the customer on a daily basis. They are shoulder to shoulder with those whom we are trying to understand and support. The knowledge that is gained from living and working in the same time zone and operating conditions as our partners, and walking in their combat boots, is a very unique, invigorating experience, and one that gives us insights into their needs.
The key to bringing a coherent and welltargeted plan for enhanced GEOINT capabilities to those who are very busy is to work through our NGA Support Teams that have a full-time, enduring, deep relationship with the combatant commands and units in the field. Our NSTs, as our agency’s element that is charged with managing all aspects of our interactions with the commands, must not only be consulted with on technology issues, they must concur that bringing a capability and proposing it to a customer is the right thing to do and fits into the command’s battle rhythm. The NSTs must be the clearinghouse for all technology ideas and enhancements that we propose.
STRYKER BRIGADE DEBRIEFING
A great example of interacting with a warfighter who brings the situational awareness that is crucial to NGA occurred recently when NGA had an opportunity to debrief Army Chief Warrant Officer Jason Feser, topographic chief in the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division. This unit was one of the first two brigades to make the transition into the lighter, more mobile Stryker combat vehicles. Our discussion with Chief Feser resulted from a long-standing relationship that was established through the Army NST at Fort Lewis, Wash., and the Future Warfare Systems Office of NGA’s InnoVision Directorate. It included approximately 100 NGA personnel from the InnoVision Directorate, U.S. Central Command reach-back team, Office of Central and Southwest Asia, NGA College, military executives and others.
Chief Feser brought to us a feel for the battlefield, the role of GEOINT, and the challenges in serving the operators and triggerpullers, who, he reminded us, are the real customers. Many of Chief Feser’s discussion points centered on challenges related to dissemination, data standards and data content.
IMPERATIVES FOR GEOINT
When we think about what warfighters need in terms of enhanced capabilities, the issue of bridging the “last tactical mile” is near the top of most discussions. Commanders and operators on the ground may not use these words, but when we listen closely to what they are describing, many times the challenges involve dissemination. Getting high-end, dense GEOINT into the hands of “disadvantaged users” who are well forward on the battlefield is the issue that many commanders feel is the next big step in GEOINT support to operations.
At higher levels of command, an improved capability for persistent surveillance, new sensor types and new exploitation techniques are often mentioned as desired capabilities. New sensor types (phenomenologies) will greatly expand the spectrum of radiant sources. Combining these new sources with new exploitation techniques will allow us to steal secrets in current and future combat environments. However, as we think about making our military forces more capable, we must keep in mind that technology is not a panacea and must always be developed in concert with our people and processes.
TAPPING INTO THE WORKFORCE
Much of the information that is critical to victory on the battlefield has been developed and is known by NGA experts. We need to match our business model to the collaborative tools and processes that exist and are being used by military commands. This will allow us to bring the entire NGA enterprise into the fight. Many commanders in our military are struck with the growing realization that our network must be better than the terrorist’s network and we must share all information accurately and quickly if we are to prevail in this fight.
In my estimation, the greatest capability we can provide to those who are fighting is the full range of NGA’s existing GEOINT expertise that resides in our analysts and workforce who are not forward-deployed. Because many commands are becoming more reliant on GEOINT and are increasingly innovative in how they employ our tradecraft in combination with the power of other intelligence disciplines, the proactive engagement and push of ideas, expertise and products from our home-station analysts is crucial. This can happen because the ability now exists to connect analysts at different NGA sites to personnel in the field with the customer.
It is crucial that at NGA we get this right. I believe that the key to developing and integrating GEOINT capabilities lies in our intense study of those whom we want to help, and in a very tightly organized plan to integrate these capabilities into their operations. NGA is performing magnificently on the battlefield with our warfighting partners. Our analysts and other members of our workforce are true heroes and recognized as such in the field. We must learn from their experiences. It is necessary that we continue to aggressively enable our military forces to win this fight because our foes are targeting our families and our freedoms. ♦
