The Worldwide GEOINT Revolution
THE NATIONAL GEOSPATIAL-INTELLIGENCE AGENCY BELIEVES THAT THE GLOBALIZED, PRIVATIZED AND ENERGIZED GEOINT WORLD OFFERS A WIDE RANGE OF FAVORABLE CHOICES TO SUPPORT ITS CUSTOMERS’ COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS REQUIREMENTS.
During the past two decades, geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) has literally gone from nonexistence to prominence around the globe. Or, more precisely, top quality GEOINT is prepared around the world by military and civilian organizations with much the same objective as NGA—that is, to produce the best possible insight on natural and man-made activities on the Earth.
The GEOINT world of 2006 is larger, more dynamic and more complex than anything we have seen before. Space-based imagery collection began with Corona in the 1960s, and the first Landsat was launched in 1972. But the rapid advances in digital computing, geographic information system (GIS) software and imagery collection, coupled with the advent of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and other technologies, have revolutionized imagery analysis, mapping and charting. The advances are remarkable, and many nations around the world are able to use the capabilities with greater and greater skill.
In the last 20 years, a host of countries and private-sector entities have broken into what was once a near-U.S. monopoly in imagery collection and analysis, yielding nothing less than a revolution in the GEOINT world. This globalization of access to imagery and geospatial data brings home a new, profound reality for NGA—“We are not alone” as world-class collectors, providers and analysts of GEOINT.
To touch upon a few of the world’s increasingly GEOINT-savvy nations:
France launched its first commercial SPOT satellite in February 1986. This was a precursor to its Helios intelligence-gathering system. By the end of this decade, France will operate a third generation of satellites—the dual-use, intelligence-commercial Pleiades constellation. In addition, France is the leader of the “technical group,” which is part of the Multinational Geospatial Co-production Project (MGCP) that will map Africa and other areas in more detail than ever before.
South Korea will soon have its own high-quality commercial imagery satellite called KOMPSAT-2, Seoul’s first one-meter resolution system.
This year, Germany will put into orbit two different kinds of high-quality radar imaging satellites, a breakthrough for a European government. Moreover, Europe as a whole is pursuing a new program called Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES). Analyzing the data from GMES would be a major step in the globalization of GEOINT.
Israel and India both continue significant efforts to develop and operate an array of sophisticated imagery satellites for both military and commercial purposes.
Meanwhile, commercial firms or research organizations from around the world have followed U.S. firms as for-profit (usually) providers of imagery and value-added services. These international firms have acted alone or in partnership with their national governments. For example, TopSat, a new British-developed experimental microsatellite, will support a variety of government, military and civilian efforts. Likewise, Canada is preparing to launch a second commercial radar imaging satellite, Radarsat-2. Indeed, gaining access to the output of these commercial systems is as easy as using the Internet, and many nations attend GEOINT symposia held in the United States and elsewhere, mainly to build relationships in the international GEOINT community and market their capabilities.
The Google Earth phenomenon, while still short on providing timely access to current imagery on a global basis, has nonetheless enabled increased accessibility to imagery for consumers and piqued appetites for more.
Nearly two dozen countries were represented at last autumn’s GEOINT 2005 Symposium in San Antonio. Organized by the private sector, the conference is a forum for companies and researchers in the remote-sensing business. Such robust representation was a clear reflection of the growing breadth of interest and capability in remote sensing and GEOINT.
The growth in global GEOINT capabilities is hardly restricted to imagery. Big steps forward in mapping and geospatial analysis are manifest in the success of the NGA-led Vector Map1 program, a collaboration of 19 countries that co-produced maps over a 12-year period. The MGCP initiative aims to go further—it harnesses the capabilities of nearly 30 countries to produce a new generation of increasingly sophisticated geospatial data sets.
Thanks to the end of the Cold War, new allies such as those in Eastern Europe have joined the open geospatial world and now help to meet NGA’s goals.
The power of GIS software has enabled international GEOINT collaboration because the production tools are commercially available. According to the RAND Corp., the first computerized GIS was developed in the 1960s. It evolved into an R&D tool in the 1970s. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s it still had only niche applications because GIS usage required significant technical expertise and special computers. By the late 1990s, however, GIS took off, driven by commercial off-theshelf software on standard personal computers. Because the vast majority of business and government data have a geospatial component, GIS is an enabling technology that is advancing GEOINT on a global basis.
A FORCE MULTIPLIER FOR NGA
The globalized, privatized and energized GEOINT world offers NGA a wide range of choices—and attractive ones at that—to go after the collection and analysis it needs to complement its in-house capabilities for fulfilling its intelligence consumers’ expectations. As such, NGA plans to enhance its current international initiatives—such as its traditional collaborations with key Australian, Canadian and British allies— as well as consider wholly new directions that can help fill collection gaps, enhance NGA analysis and increase our flexibility to focus more resources on the hardest of targets. For instance, pursuing new avenues for working with our liaison partners, such as expanding exchanges or sharing analytic techniques, not only raises the prospect of reaping more deliverables for NGA but also of imbedding the agency more deeply into the globalized GEOINT realm. Indeed, U.S. policymakers’ and warfighters’ needs for GEOINT are only growing, confronting NGA with constant challenges and requests for products to understand what is happening on our planet.
That is why partnering with foreign experts in this field makes sense. And that is why those of us who work at NGA must understand and take advantage of ideas and solutions outside our own agency. ♦
