Q&A: Vice Admiral Robert B. Murrett
GEOINT Integrator
Balancing Combat Support and Preparation for the Future
Vice Admiral Robert B. Murrett
Director, National Geospatial-
Intelligence Agency
Vice Admiral Robert B. Murrett was appointed director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) on July 7, 2006. Prior to his appointment, Murrett had been serving as the director of naval intelligence since April 1, 2005.
After receiving his commission in the Navy, Murrett was assigned as an afloat intelligence officer, including Mediterranean, North Atlantic and western Pacific deployments aboard USS Kitty Hawk, USS America and USS Independence.
Following assignment to the Defense Intelligence College in 1980, Murrett was detailed to the Chief of Naval Operations Intelligence Plot as a watch stander and briefing officer for Navy civilian and military leaders. From 1983 to 1985, he served as assistant intelligence officer for the commander of the Second Fleet. He participated in deployments to the North Atlantic, the European theater and the Caribbean aboard USS Mount Whitney and USS Nassau. Between 1986 and 1988, he was assigned as assistant naval attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway.
In 1989, Murrett reported to the commander in chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, where he was assigned as operational intelligence officer. From 1992 to 1995, he served as assistant chief of staff, intelligence, for the commander, Carrier Group Eight, and deployed to the European and Central Command theaters aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt. He was also assigned as J2 CJT F 120 aboard USS Wasp for operations in the Caribbean.
Between 1995 and 1997, the future NGA director was assistant chief of staff, intelligence, for the commander, Second Fleet, serving concurrently as N2 for NATO’s Striking Fleet Atlantic and as J2 for U.S. Atlantic Command’s CJTF 120. From June 1997 to September 1998, he was assigned to the Chief of Naval Operations Staff as executive assistant to the director of naval intelligence.
In 1998, Murrett became director of the Intelligence Directorate of the Office of Naval Intelligence, and assumed the duties of commander, Atlantic Intelligence Command (AIC) the following year. He was responsible for the transition of AIC to Joint Forces Intelligence Command in October 1999. From 2000 to 2002, he served as director for intelligence, U.S. Joint Forces Command, and from 2002 to 2005 as vice director for intelligence, J2, on the Joint Staff.
A graduate of the University of Buffalo, Murrett received master’s degrees in government and strategic intelligence from Georgetown University and the Defense Intelligence College, respectively.
Murrett was interviewed by MGT editor Harrison Donnelly.
Q: After a few months on the job, what are your initial impressions of NGA, both in terms of what the agency does and how it does them?
A: The first and most overriding impression I have is the quality of the people. I’d known all along that NGA had a superb workforce, but even by those standards I’ve been very impressed by the people throughout NGA, from the most junior to the most senior, in terms of the talent, skill and expertise we’ve got. I knew this already, but I’ve also been favorably impressed by the way we are so actively integrated throughout the Department of Defense, intelligence community, the combatant commands and services, and the people that we have embedded throughout the key counterparts we work closely with and that rely heavily on the GEOINT that we provide them. Also, the way that we are so heavily involved in the process of making sure that our products and services are utilized by people effectively is impressive.
Q: What do you see as your role as director of NGA?
A: It’s in leading the organization, providing guidance where needed, and evaluating the performance of NGA as an organization. It’s also in being as visible as I can possibly be inside NGA, and also to all our principal counterparts. That’s an area of particular emphasis, with people like Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander at the National Security Agency, Major General Michael D. Maples at the Defense Intelligence Agency and Dr. Donald M. Kerr at the National Reconnaissance Office. That’s just at my own level, but it also reflects the importance of NGA being closely integrated with other key combat support agencies and elements of the intelligence community. That’s a key responsibility that I carry, but mostly I focus on leading the organization and making sure that the people at NGA have the resources to execute the important mission they have for the nation.
Q: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing NGA?
A: You can look at that from different angles. One of the ways I have traditionally looked at it is as balancing today’s requirements with preparation for the future. That is a particular challenge today because we are a nation at war, and because of that there is a tendency by everybody, for the very best reasons, to maintain a very heavy focus on the here-and-now, particularly for those of us in the combat support agencies. At the same time we are doing that, we have to strike the proper balance with all the things we need to be prepared for the future, whether for future contingencies that the nation may call upon us to support, or even in the case of adapting and acquiring technology that we will need in the future to execute our mission properly.
Related to that, and worthy of note, is the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission [BRAC] decision to relocate most of our organization in the Washington, D.C., area to Fort Belvoir, Va., within the next five years. We’re going to have to complete the plan to do that within the next two years or so, so it’s actually sooner than that. At the same time we want to upgrade all of our facilities in St. Louis, Mo., which are an integral part of this organization. We also need to effectively plan—and it is a challenge—to transition all of our personnel to Fort Belvoir consistent with the direction we’ve had from the BRAC commission.
Q: What are some of your key goals for the agency over the next year and your long-term goals for your tenure at the agency?
A: In terms of short- and long-term goals, I would characterize them as a continuation of the things that [former NGA Director] Lieutenant General James R. Clapper Jr. did. It’s carrying on with the terrific job he did here over nearly five years. He made tremendous progress in certain areas, which I see us refining and taking to the next level, hopefully, building on his accomplishments to include the quality of the analysis we provide, in close conjunction with the other significant elements of the DoD and U.S. intelligence community that we will continue to work with very closely. We will be faced with some acquisition decisions that we will be making over the next couple of years, which will be significant. I’ll have to devote a fair amount of my own time to the acquisition part of our organization, because of things relating to emerging technologies, shifts in the technology developments as they relate to specific counterparts that we deal with in DoD and the intelligence community. In addition, the BRAC process will have an impact on our acquisition process.
Another goal I would mention is what I would refer to as frontend, back-end alignment, or the overall integration of the GEOINT process that we have, from the collection mechanisms—national, air-breather and otherwise—all the way to making sure that it is effectively absorbed by the people who rely on us for the products and services that we are able to do for the nation. That whole alignment from the front end to the back end is a big challenge, and something we will have to pay a lot of attention to.
Looking to the longer timeframe, we are pretty well poised in the out years to take advantage of some significant developments in technology that will be coming on line and can truly be harvested over the next three to five years. Our InnoVision Directorate and others in the organization are focused on ensuring that we leverage on behalf of the American taxpayer as effectively as we can the tremendous advances that have been made, particularly in information technology and server technology and communications that have come on line and are going to come on line in the next few years.
Q. How is NGA using geospatial technology to aid improvements in DoD business processes?
A: Getting back to what I said about paying attention to acquisition, I think the business approach that we have to many parts of our organization is vital. I could use commercial imagery as an example—the manner in which our contract development for processing geospatial intelligence across the board has been developed. I think the business models and personnel that we had working, the business approach that we have had to our acquisition strategy, are something that you can’t pay enough attention to. It’s something that’s a very important responsibility to us, to make sure the American taxpayer is getting the most they can from every nickel they’ve invested in this organization.
Q: What operational value do you see in the new generation of commercial satellites, and what are you doing to take advantage of it?
A: We’re already taking significant and increasing advantage of our commercial imagery investment, and we will continue to do that as the two primary American commercial imagery vendors provide new vehicles that will be coming on line in the course of the next year or so. As an example of that, I would use a product that I highlighted today during our morning briefing, which was based on commercial resources, which gave an excellent analysis of the current situation in Lebanon, which was unclassified for official use only. To show you what a new world we have moved into, it was probably as good a product as I would have expected to see in past years at much higher classification levels. But because of the fact that this was based on commercial imagery sources it was unclassified, much to the surprise of a lot of people.
That reflects the fact that we need to work very closely with industry to develop those kinds of capabilities, because the end result will be products that will be available to much wider audiences, and have particularly useful application for domestic and humanitarian situations, which are two examples where they can be provided to broad audiences because of the fact that they are unclassified. Also, it needs to be stated that the commercial imagery sector will increase competition. Competition is always good for the American taxpayer, and as we work with our primary vendors in industry, we look forward to taking the future in a way that will provide more efficiencies for the American public.
Q: What future technologies do you see as important to NGA in the coming years?
A: There are several, but at this level one of the ones that I would highlight is pure processing of large amounts of data. Part of that, and what we are looking to partner with industry closely on, I would characterize as ingesting, processing and providing vast quantities of data—much larger quantities than we have seen before. The technology required, both in terms of communications and information technology, to make that happen is considerable. The good news is that the technology is continuing to leap forward pretty smartly in those areas. That is a responsibility that we have here at NGA—to make sure that we leverage those developments in technology as effectively as we can. We will partner closely with industry in the future to make sure that we can look to those kinds of technologies as effectively as possible—particularly in terms of servers and data processing. Another key example of that will be full motion video, which tends to be very data-intensive. But the technology on that has made some significant developments, and we look forward to more in the future.
Q: What do you see as NGA’s most important accomplishments of late in providing direct support to warfighters? Are there any functions in this area where further improvements are needed?
A: Probably the signal accomplishment in terms of support for the warfighter are the NGA Support Teams [NSTs] that we have fully embedded with our operational forces around the world, primarily in the Central Command area of responsibility but in a lot of other locations as well. I think that the NSTs are probably the best example of the effectiveness of this organization, because these are NGA professionals who are fully embedded in several commands and within the services and other locations. They are part of the process and are responsible not just for providing GEOINT services, but also for being part of the process for ensuring that they are being used effectively, and are part of the all-source picture that is utilized by our operational forces.
In terms of looking to the future, we need to stay agile and on our toes to make sure that, in response to the emerging global environment—which continues to be more exciting every day—we have our people flexible, agile and in a position to respond, on several occasions on short notice, to operational requirements that are going to evolve over the next couple of years.
Q: What challenges do you see in your responsibility as manager of the National System for Geospatial Intelligence?
A: We are designated as the proponent—the national mission manager— for GEOINT. As I have stressed since I got here, the primary responsibility that we have in that area is to demonstrate the value added from that role that we have on behalf of the intelligence community. The primary responsibility is to act as the most forceful advocate for GEOINT, and at the same time to do so in a way that partners closely with our counterparts at NSA, CIA, DIA, NRO and others. It’s a two-part responsibility: to act in many different guises as the arbiter for GEOINT products and services, and to do so in a way that partners closely with our counterparts in the intelligence community and DoD.
Q: What could Congress do to provide further support for NGA and related geospatial programs?
A: All of us in the intelligence community and DoD have trades that we are making in terms of programmatic decisions that are of note. I wouldn’t want to say that NGA’s challenges, vis-à-vis our interaction with Congress, are markedly different from than they are for my counterparts, such as General Alexander and General Maples and others. The important thing is to have an approach of complete transparency as you deal with the Hill, which I have endeavored to do in the discussions I have had with principals in both the Senate and House side over the past couple of months. That’s something we will continue to do—to try to make sure that we provide as much information as possible for informed decisions that cut across both the classified and unclassified programs that we are responsible for.
Q: How is NGA working with Joint Forces Command to enhance geospatial intelligence among national and tactical users?
A: The best example I can give is that we have set up an activity down at Joint Forces Command [JFCOM] because of their responsibilities for transformation within the military services and DoD. The Joint Geospatial-Intelligence Activity [JGA], which is resident at the headquarters in Tidewater, Va., is something that will leverage the unique military insights that are resident only at JFCOM, and cause us to be more relevant across all the services and combatant commands and throughout the intelligence community. As a former J2 of Joint Forces Command, I look forward to taking that to the next level, and working very closely with General Lance L. Smith and others and make that relationship even stronger than it is today.
Q: What other NGA programs or activities would you like to highlight for our readers?
A: In addition to what we have already discussed, integration of airborne sensors as they relate to GEOINT is a challenge that we’ll be spending a lot of time on in the future, for one thing because of the proliferation of UAVs, and the whole airborne picture, and the complexity of harnessing that in a way that makes the most sense for our forces and the nation. A second area to mention has to do with adapting as much technology as we can, which we have to pay attention to and are structured in a way to take as much advantage as possible in linkage with industry.
Another area is the partnership with our counterparts in the defense and intelligence communities. This organization has played heavily in that in the past, and I see that of particular importance in the future because of the standup of the Director of National Intelligence and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. We have new organizational constructs as the result of legislation and recommendations from the WMD Commission that provide what I would describe as organizational opportunities and ways that we can more effectively work with one another on behalf of the requirements of the nation. As I referred to earlier, we are also in a time of technical opportunity because of things that are coming on line, and would hope to leverage that as much as we can. So those are some areas in addition to the overarching focus on the workforce—the people that are really what NGA is comprised of.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?
A: We are a diverse and united organization. We’re approaching our 10th anniversary at the beginning of October. We look forward to the 10th anniversary of what is now NGA as a key stake in the ground for us to move on to the future to bigger and better things, building on the legacy of my predecessors in this assignment, and the great people of this organization. We plan to mark the 10th anniversary with “bright lights and fireworks,” as ought to be done for something like this. That will serve as a good point of departure for a lot of the things we’ll be doing in the future for the very diverse but very united organization that is NGA. ♦
