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Intel Professional Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Fogarty Commanding General Army Intelligence & Security Command
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September 2012 Volume 10, Issue 6
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Geospatial Intelligence Forum
September 2012 Volume 10 • Issue 6
Features
Cover / Q&A Closing the Interoperability Gap The Army Geospatial Center is building enterprisebased, standardized technologies to give soldiers the capabilities they need to fill the current interoperability gaps between mission and battle command systems. By Cheryl Gerber
5
Imagery Divide As the resolution gap between satellite and aerial imaging narrows, accuracy and processing time become critical factors in deciding which technology to use. By Karen E. Thuermer
8
High-Performance GEOINT The vision for GEOINT high-performance computing includes supporting the warfighter through a distributed set of physical and virtualized compute, storage, network and data infrastructure resources. By Keith L. Barber
21
17 Major General Stephen G. Fogarty Commanding General Army Intelligence & Security Command
Departments 2 Editor’s Perspective 3 Program Note 4 People 13 Intel Update 14 Industry Raster
GEOINT for Mission Planning Mission planning is a multifaceted discipline, and the incorporation of geospatial data into mission planning systems represents a variety of opportunities and challenges. By Peter Buxbaum
23
26 Homeland Vector 27 Resource Center
Industry Interview
28 Colonel Jim Stockmoe (Ret.) Director for Defense Strategic Growth BAE Systems Inc. Colonel Jack McCracken (Ret.) Director, Irregular Warfare Analysis BAE Systems Inc.
Geospatial Intelligence Forum Volume 10, Issue 6 • September 2012
The Magazine of the National Intelligence Community Editorial Managing Editor Harrison Donnelly harrisond@kmimediagroup.com Online Editorial Manager Laura Davis laurad@kmimediagroup.com Copy Editor Laural Hobbes lauralh@kmimediagroup.com Correspondents Peter A. Buxbaum • Cheryl Gerber Karen E. Thuermer • William Murray
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EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE One of the most important trends in the U.S. intelligence community in recent years has been the expanded scope and increased presence of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). With an outspoken new director, that prominence is likely to increase. Once largely headquarters focused and with limited field operations, DIA has evolved over the past decade into a widely deployed organization operating specialized support teams all over the globe. As Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said recently at the retirement of the DIA director, Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, “Military intelligence Harrison Donnelly is now far more integrated, far more effective and more vital than ever to Editor our ability to defend this country,” adding that Burgess “has helped bring about that fusion of military and intelligence capabilities that has been at the heart and soul of our intelligence effort.” If past experience is a guide, Burgess’ replacement, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, will not be mincing any words as he strives to continue that progress. In 2010, Flynn and two other defense analysts released a report, entitled “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan,” that contained blunt criticism of intel operations in that theater. “Because the United States has focused the overwhelming majority of collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups,” the report said, “our intelligence apparatus still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade.” Although the report contained plenty of hard-hitting observations, and was somewhat unusually released through a Washington think tank, it drew a lot of respect and few complaints, apparently because it was so obviously on the money in its analysis that no one wanted to take it on. Indeed, Flynn reportedly got his most recent job, as assistant director of national intelligence for partner engagement, as a result.
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PROGRAM NOTES
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Building a House of Imagery Innovation The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is looking for teams of researchers to explore the unknown in the areas of visual and geospatial data analysis. Participants in the project will work in a short-fuse, crucible-style environment to invent new approaches to the identification of people, places, things and activities from still or moving defense and open-source imagery. DARPA’s Innovation House Study, conducted with George Mason University, will provide a focused residential research
environment for as many as eight teams, selected from those who submitted plans to design, execute and demonstrate a radical, novel research approach to innovation in the area of extracting meaningful content from large volumes of varied visual and geospatial media. Selected teams will receive up to $50,000 in funding. The Innovation House concept revolves around a collaborative, rather than competitive, environment. The study will run for eight weeks over two four-week sessions from September to November.
Ridesharing in Space With the scheduled September launch of NROL-36 from Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex-3E, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) will have completed the last of four launches in 2012—and the first NRO rideshare mission. The NRO Office of Space Launch worked closely with the primary mission team to take advantage of the extra performance capability, volume and structural capacity on the Atlas V launch vehicle to implement the first NRO rideshare mission. The auxiliary payload was not only the first of its kind for NRO, but also for any Atlas V mission. As such, it will pave the way for many more rideshare opportunities on evolved expendable launch vehicle class missions. “We have long recognized that there are benefits and efficiencies to be gained through rideshare in space launch,” said NRO Director Betty Sapp. “These benefits include opportunities to conduct scientific research and demonstrate and apply emerging technologies through the use of small satellites.” United Launch Alliance (ULA), launch provider for NROL36, redesigned the Atlas V Centaur upper stage pressure system to provide more volume and structural capacity on the aftbulkhead of the upper stage. NRO and ULA partnered to develop an aft bulkhead carrier, which will be used on this mission to affix the operationally unique technologies satellite (OUTSat). The OUTSat consists of 11 CubeSats integrated into Poly-Picosat Orbital Deployers (P-PODS) that are in turn integrated into the Naval Postgraduate School CubeSat Launcher (NPSCuL). NRO funded the NPS to develop NPSCuL, which is an auxiliary payload platform that can attach multiple P-PODS to a single adaptor and allows up to 24 single-unit CubeSats to be launched. The CubeSats on OUTSat were developed and tested by a number of laboratories and universities working closely with their government sponsor and/or customer/user. The CubeSats are set to deploy after primary spacecraft activities take place to demonstrate cutting edge technologies, conduct unique scientific experiments and prove high tech operational concepts. www.GIF-kmi.com
Revamped Site Expands IC Web Presence
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has revamped its website, www.dni.gov, with the goal of enhancing the intelligence community’s web presence, increasing transparency and providing accurate, up-to-date information to the public. Through a complete overhaul of its front-end design, the new site provides a look and feel that better enables the ODNI to deliver well-organized information in a timely manner to the public. With content reorganized to better reflect ODNI’s mission to lead intelligence integration and its role as the leader of the IC, the revamped site includes a number of new features including links to all IC members, intelligence-related news
stories, video, photographs, podcasts and subscription content from throughout the IC. The website also reflects the ODNI’s increased emphasis on web 2.0 tools such as Facebook (https://www.facebook. com/dni.gov), which allow greater reach and transparency as well as broader opportunities to highlight the efforts of federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, private sector and international partners. The new dni.gov was built using an open source content management system. The back-end changes provide a scalable and flexible architecture to empower innovative, efficient distribution of key information while reducing the costs of future investments.
GIF 10.6 | 3
PROGRAM NOTES
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Intel Office Eschews Data Mining
NGA Seeks Enhancements in Location of Video Data The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has issued plans to award a contract to enhance and provide additional functionalities—and operationalize an existing system developed by SRI International— that will provide semi-automated, analystin-the-loop tools and enable technologies for geo-location of metadata-free handheld videos and images of both natural and urban terrain. These required enhancements include the following: • Extend the algorithm that currently matches the target image with the reference data so that it will work with a mosaic of target imagery created by content matching within the target video • Develop video-based geo-location capabilities and automation • Develop semantic query and layout-based semantic matching • Develop 3-D adaptive rendering for matching photos/videos taken from elevated views • Develop and perform system distributed processing and resource optimization.
The components of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) do not engage in “data mining” activities that compile information from databases on large groups of people, according to a new report from the office. However, the report contains information on several information programs that use technology that could potentially be used to support data mining. Responding to the 9/11 Commission’s report, Congress in 2007 passed a law requiring federal agencies to report on whether they have used any data mining techniques, which some analysts have warned could infringe on privacy and civil liberties. The law targets pattern-based database searches that “are not subject-based and do not use personal identifiers of a specific individual.” The tools and techniques used by ODNI components, by contrast, “start with a known or suspected terrorist, or other subject of foreign intelligence interest, and use various methods to uncover links or relationships between the known subject and potential associates or other persons with whom that subject has a ‘link’ (a contact or relationship),” the report said, adding, “Thus, such analytic tools and techniques do not fall within the statutory definition of data mining.” In the interests of transparency, the report includes information on five programs,
including two that have been discontinued and three under the aegis of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA). They are: • Catalyst: managed by the intelligence community chief information officer, which sought to improve multi-INT information sharing through entity disambiguation, correlation and co-referencing capabilities. The program was discontinued last year. • DataSphere: a National Counterterrorism Center pilot to enhance data fusion and entity resolution, which was also discontinued in 2011. • Knowledge Discover and Dissemination: an IARPA program aimed at enabling analysts to use large, complex data sets to produce actionable intelligence quickly. • Automated Low-level Analysis and Description of Diverse Intelligence Video: an IARPA program to enable analysts to query large video data sets to find those that show a specific type of event. • Security and Privacy Assurance: an IARPA effort devoted to secure distributed private information retrieval protocols for database queries.
PEOPLE Arati Prabhakar has been appointed to the Senior Executive Service and assigned as director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Prabhakar previously served as partner, U.S. Venture Partners. BAE Systems Inc. has appointed Tom Arseneault as executive vice president, product sectors, and chief technology officer. Larry Prior, who currently serves as executive vice president, service
4 | GIF 10.6
Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
sectors, has also been named chief operating officer.
General Cary C. Chun (Ret.) as senior vice president of space and intelligence. Chun previously served as the Air Force’s deputy commander, Operations and Interagency Integration, Joint Functional Component Command for Space, U.S. Strategic Command, and the director for mission operations for the National Reconnaissance Office.
Cary C. Chun
ASRC Federal Holding Company has named Air Force Brigadier
QinetiQ North America has announced the appointment of Peter Flory as vice president,
international, in its Technology Solutions Group. Schafer Corp., a provider of scientific, engineering, and technical services and products applied to defeating national security threats, has selected Michael D. Griffin as chairman and chief executive officer. Griffin is the former administrator of NASA, serving in that position from 2005 to 2009, and also served as president and chief operating officer of In-Q-Tel, the intelligence community venture capital firm.
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Army Geospatial Center builds enterprise-based, standardized technologies to give soldiers the capabilities they need. By Cheryl Gerber GIF Correspondent
The Army Geospatial Center (AGC) is building enterprisebased, standardized technologies that will give soldiers the capabilities they need to fill the current interoperability gaps between mission and battle command systems. Three AGC programs under development—the GroundWarfighter Geospatial Data Model (GGDM), BuckEye and the AGE GeoGlobe—aim to close interoperability gaps and provide soldiers with easier, faster transfer of geospatial data than they currently have. The programs all support the Army Geospatial Enterprise (AGE), which the Army defines as the people, organizations and technology involved in acquiring and managing geospatial data that affects all its missions.
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GIF 10.6 | 5
The current technology gaps can be frustrating for soldiers to grapple with, particularly in the middle of battlefield engagements. “This is due, in part, to stovepiped databases forcing soldiers who are working in tactical operations centers to perform many work-arounds or data translations to present the best common operating picture to the commander,” said Dr. Joseph Fontanella, AGC director and Army geospatial information officer. “With an enterprise deployed across the force, we can help eliminate these interoperability deficiencies, which will ultimately reduce redundancy, improve the probability of mission success and save lives,” he said. On the road to an Armywide enterprise, the AGC is working to synchronize its developments with the common operating environment (COE), an approved set of computing technologies and standards that allow secure and interoperable applications to be developed and deployed across computing environments. The COE is the basis for the high fidelity common operating picture and the AGE. “The Army’s COE is the primary mechanism for implementing the AGE across Army acquisition systems to deliver a standard and sharable geospatial foundation (SSGF) at all echelons, thereby improving efficiency and ensuring geospatial interoperability between Army systems,” said Dan Visone, chief, AGC Geospatial Acquisition Support Directorate. The Army and AGC are building the AGE into an integrated system that exchanges information horizontally and vertically and synchronizes geospatial feature data between echelons. The AGE will facilitate the collection, processing and exploitation of geospatial information in a timely manner while assuring effective cost stewardship. “The bottom line is that, as the Army defines the geospatial standards and framework of the AGE, industry must provide capabilities and relationships that work within that framework. We cannot afford to continually field stovepiped technology that is not interoperable within mission command,” said Visone. “Our vision is to use open standards and consistent representation of geospatial content so that geospatial data is collected once and then shared seamlessly within the enterprise,” he said. When the AGE goals are achieved, the result will enhance soliders’ situational awareness and improve commanders’
6 | GIF 10.6
military decision-making process, which will ultimately improve the probability of mission success. Companies such as Esri are developing their GIS software to be compatible with the AGE.
Five Gaps To achieve the payoffs of the AGE, the center identified five gaps the AGE needs to address. “For one, map data and standards must ensure data compatibility and interoperability between the SSGF and the joint, interagency, intergovernmental and multinational environment, including installations and environment, modeling and simulations as well as rendering and symbology,” said Visone. Secondly, Visone said, the AGE must provide common applications and toolkits by including common tools for analysis, exploitation and visualization, all with the ability to share and transform products between and among computing environments. “A third AGE gap involves access to data, and thus requires an architecture that enables data distribution, authoritative geospatial data sources and packaging of data to meet user needs,” he continued. The fourth AGE gap addresses ease of distribution to users by providing initial geospatial data loads, updates to SSGF products and a user ability to consume feature and raster updates, including over tactical networks, Visone indicated. The fifth AGE gap involves governance. The AGE must provide geospatial governance for the COE integrated with common execution plans and materiel solutions that are in turn integrated with force structure per the AGE concept of operations, he said. The AGE GeoGlobe is a worldwide, 3-D-based visualization tool that allows users to access service-generated and national geospatial imagery, data and products through a locally installed 3-D client for Internet Explorer. It enables rapid updates of imagery and data and includes such terrain analysis tools as line of sight, viewsheds, threat domes and contouring. The technology is based on Skyline Software’s Skyline Globe suite of products. “The AGE GeoGlobe provides unprecedented situational awareness to the user in a low-bandwidth environment. It’s the only tool that integrates different types of reporting as well as staff-derived and foundational information in a 3-D environment,” said Carlos Rodriguez-Bernier, Command Joint Task Force (CJTF) 1, geospatial intelligence officer and an Army chief warrant officer. GeoGlobe inputs and displays information from the Combined Information Data Network Exchange, Command Post of the Future, Tactical Ground Reporting and human intelligence.
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GeoGlobe has become the common operational visualization capability for the CJTF and Combined Joint Intelligence Directorate. It is used for border area operations, route reconnaissance, afteraction reviews, rescue mission support, strategic and tactical planning and high-level situational awareness and planning. The visualization tool also can ingest national information assets such as blue force tracker, allowing the CJ2 to view mission-specific data on the 3-D terrain. GeoGlobe is also available on a laptop. Utilizing TerraGate software from Skyline Software, AGC is installing AGE GeoGlobe servers at the Army Geospatial Planning Cells (GPCs). The servers are loaded with a base globe capability, to include both low- and medium-resolution imagery, maps and elevation data for the globe. The Army GPCs then can add their areas of operation unique data to the servers, which are on the SIPRnet. They can connect with other servers on the network and integrate their unique data into a larger global visualization. Part of the roadmap for the transition to the COE includes a common data model, the GGDM. Thus, all AGC-produced geospatial datasets, including for the Distributed Common Ground System-Army and other Army and Marine Corps systems that utilize geospatial feature data, are beginning to translate to the data model provided by the GGDM. The Army’s GPCs are translating their Theater Geospatial Database 3.2 data to GGDM 2.1 using correlation translation databases based on COTS software. The AGC is working with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Geospatial Working Group to mandate the GGDM National System as a geospatial intelligence standard. “The GGDM is a core component of the architecture that provides the standard data model for geospatial feature data required by the armed forces. This standards-based approach will help eliminate stovepipes, reduce costs, simplify acquisition and accelerate the transition of technology as part of a standard and shareable geospatial foundation,” said Kevin Backe, chief, AGC Data Modeling Branch. Future versions of the GGDM may include additional ground forces enterprise content, such as high resolution urban information, aeronautical information, modeling and simulation, tactical information and updates based on common geospatial data requirements across the Army, Marines, special operations and other ground forces components.
BuckEye Program First deployed operationally in Iraq in 2004, the BuckEye program has been deployed in Afghanistan since 2006. BuckEye is
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now deployed on fixed wing and unmanned systems operating in Afghanistan and is used by coalition commanders and host nation forces. The BuckEye mission is to collect, process and distribute high resolution and high accuracy color imagery and elevation data. Today, BuckEye’s requirements and tasking are controlled at the International Security Assistance Force level. The light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data collected by BuckEye continues to support improved battlefield visualization, line-of-sight analysis and imagery ortho-rectifcation. A majority of the imagery and LiDAR data today is processed in-theater to provide rapid tactical response. “BuckEye began with a helicopter-mounted digital color camera that produced high resolution imagery for ISR and change detection missions, but has evolved to provide mission-critical high-resolution foundation data to support Army operations,” said Michael Hardaway, chief, AGC Tactical Source Branch. The program has amassed an operationally significant amount of geospatial data in its lifetime. “BuckEye systems have been supporting U.S. Central Command for eight years. All of the operationally relevant sections of Iraq—that is, all population centers and transportation corridors, for a total of 18 percent of the landmass—were collected, and nearly 25 percent of Afghanistan has been collected,” said Michael Harper, chief, AGC Tactical Source and Enterprise Directorate and Army senior geospatial engineer technician. To add to the existing capability, the BuckEye program has been investing in next-generation technologies that will offer an order-of-magnitude increase in the collection rates at the same resolution and accuracy. The development of interoperable data and systems involves many global strategic partners. “In order to develop relevant and reliable geospatial tools for the warfighter, the AGC must continue to build effective partnerships and efficient business processes, in conjunction with NGA, to pass value-added, servicegenerated, geospatial information and imagery back to national data stores,” said Fontanella. O
For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.
GIF 10.6 | 7
As the resolution gap between
satellite and aerial imaging narrows, accuracy and processing time become critical
factors.
By Karen E. Thuermer, GIF Correspondent since each offers unique characteristics and The end of aerial imagery has been prestrengths regarding resolution, data type, dicted at least since the launch of the first weather and location accuracy. high-resolution commercial Other considerations are locasatellite in 1999. But just as tion accessibility, speed and the Y2K bug failed to produce coverage, and cost. the anticipated worldwide comWith the development of puter crash on January 1, 2000, new generation large format the demise of aerial imagery digital cameras, aerial imaghas never taken place. ery is now possible to capture In fact, with the launches project areas with a resolution in the not-too-distant future up to 2.5 centimeters. When of the powerful GeoEye-2 and GeoEye-2 is launched it will WorldView-3 satellites, the line Sean Love offer a 34 cm imagery capabilbetween high resolution satelity, while WorldView-3, devellite imagery (HRSI) and aerial oped by GeoEye’s soon-to-be corporate partner imagery will continue to blur. DigitalGlobe, will provide 31 cm panchromatic Both methodologies are increasingly resolution, 1.24 m multispectral resolution, being used together to collaboratively collect and 3.7 m short wave infrared wresolution. data. Industry analysts say the gap between Still, even high resolution satellite imagthese two usually complementary imaging ery falls in the low to mid range of digital aertechnologies is getting smaller in terms of ial imageryresolutions. resolution, and thus raising the importance of issues such as accuracy, acquisition and processing time. Resolution Issue The challenge is to make informed decisions about which technology to choose Sean Love, director of business develfor mapping and other projects, especially opment in the Chantilly, Va., of Northrop 8 | GIF 10.6
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want different imagery. “For the military, Grumman, sees resolution as the numberHRSI makes sense because it is not possible to one distinguishing feature between HRSI and have aircraft all over the world,” imagery largely because satelLove commented. “Also, satellites orbit and collect images lites cover an area in a shorter from outer space, while airamount of time.” borne imagery collects data by Another difference is that flying lower to the ground. an airplane can be tasked much “Depending on Federal more quickly. Aviation Administration (FAA) Satellites are also limited restrictions, aerial acquisition in terms of ground sample disaircraft can fly very low and tance (GSD)—the distance obtain their own high resolubetween pixel centers meation aerials,” he said. “These Gordon Lawson sured on the ground—and the must be collected in line ability to see from the oblique because the sensors are so close angle. For example, GeoEye-1 has a GSD of to the ground, whereas satellites can cover 0.41 meters—effectively 0.5 meters due to U.S. gigantic swatches of land mass.” government restrictions on civilian imaging. Consequently, aerial imagery is ideal, for Aerial imagery, on the other hand, offers example, for the National Agriculture Imagery end users a greater level of detail—3 inches Program, which acquires aerial imagery, priversus 1 meter, and also a greater view, espemarily digital ortho photography, during the cially when employing an oblique sensor. agricultural growing seasons in the conti“This oblique view allows operators to view nental United States. “But if you’re looking all sides of, say, a potential building in order at urban planning, HRSI is absolutely fine,” to identify ingress and egress routes,” said he added. Gordon Lawson, vice president, international These requirements are no different for for Pictometry, an aerial imaging company. military and intelligence uses, although they www.GIF-kmi.com
GIF 10.6 | 9
over the exact same place at the same time “It also allows for measurements in the Z of day, meaning that the sun is always in direction—the ability to measure height— the same location. This adds consistency to to assist in identifying ideal overwatch posiimages and data. tions, and it gives the ability to measure “This gives them a very well managed bearing and elevation for tactical operations.” acquisition cycle,” Maselli adds. “Given Pictometry has the ability to offer highweather conditions, aircraft carrying airresolution metric oblique images, which borne imagery sensors are sometimes lucky it recently demonstrated when capturing to get up off the ground. This changes the over 200 square kilometers of images over windows of opportunity for acquiring prime Central London prior to the Summer sensitive targets. ” Olympics. This imagery showed each side of For most commercial satelevery structure, roadway and lites, a collection window exists other outdoor objects across for any given area of interest. the area, with views from all This can result in a “one time” four cardinal directions. of day window when the sat“Imagine a security serellite passes over the area of vice being able to map and interest. measure critical changes in “Varying look angles effecVIP routing in a matter of tively support imagery colseconds,” said Richard M. lection from multiple orbital Hurwitz, Pictometry’s chief paths, expanding the collecexecutive officer. Skip Maselli tion window and providing This level of reliability oblique imagery when needed,” is very difficult with HRSI, explained Sheldon Piepenburg, Lawson said, adding that aerdirector, business development ial imagery is superior to HRSI at M.J. Harden, a GeoEye comwhen an added level of situapany involved in turnkey maptional awareness is required. ping services. “At about 45 Skip Maselli, vice presidegrees off nadir, the accudent of geospatial solutions for racy of both aerial and satellite Overwatch, an operating unit imagery noticeably decreases.” of Textron Systems, added that On the plus side, aerial airborne oblique sensors now acquisition aircraft take every make it possible to know, for Sheldon Piepenburg opportunity to fly in cloud-free example, not only how tall a conditions, and can also fly building is, but how far its under clouds to collect aerial images. doorways are recessed, whether the door Except for synthetic aperture radar satknob is on the right or the left, and if the door ellites, which can be effective in all condiopens in or out. tions, the images collected by satellites can “These are things that are not traditionbe blocked when they cross over areas of large ally thought about in traditional remote senscloud covering. ing,” he remarked. “Of course, there’s much more control of aerial data since the aircraft is flying lower,” Terrain Constraints Maselli remarked. In fact, aerial acquisition aircraft offer the Maselli of Overwatch, which delivers flexibility of being fitted with an exotic range multi-INT, geospatial analysis and custom of sensors such as multispectral, hyperspecintelligence solutions, noted that aerial imagtral/thermal and other survey sensors. “A ery’s platforms are more subject to terrain lot of it has to do with just physics,” Maselli and environmental constraints than its sateladded. lite counterparts. Most aerial cameras offer a fourth near“Satellites are also more agile in an interinfrared band of imagery as well as standard national context,” he said. “Satellites can get RGB bands. Aerial acquisition also beneinto certain places much faster and are more fits from the fact that newly developed techpredictable, since multiple satellites can cross nologies can be adapted very quickly to an over the same area over a 24-hour period.” aircraft. Unlike aerial imagery, which must be car“More exotic technologies such as wide R, ried on an aerial acquisition aircraft or UAV, high resolution thermal, IR, P bands, I bands orbiting satellites also benefit from crossing 10 | GIF 10.6
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and UHF radar are less available on satellites,” Maselli commented. Aerial acquisition aircraft operators also can be more surgical on how they operate boutique sensors such as thermal or air breathing sensors. This is particularly the case for UAVs. “Warfighters like this because they do not have to go through all kinds of channels to get a satellite tasking, especially in the case of nationally and commercially controlled satellites,” Maselli said. “They can control the UAV with a joystick.” Unlike aerial imagery, however, the locations over which satellites can orbit are not restricted. “They also do not have to deal with as much terrain, urban structures and relief displacement,” he added. “Aerial imagery and HRSI have different geometrics that complement each other, and each can operate sensing modalities where the other cannot.” Consequently, when images are brought together, there can be an overwhelming amount of data, but it is not mutually exclusive. “When doing terrain analysis or military purposes, for example, we’re less concerned about using multiple sensors to find targets,” he said. “We are looking to characterize the terrain over a period of time. For intelligence purposes where the goal is to identify potential vehicles in certain areas at a certain time of day combined with other events at the time, then timing is critical.”
Force Multiplier Pictometry offers two examples of where the Department of Defense is seeing the benefits of aerial imagery to achieve its installation management mission. One is the White Sands Missile Range, N.M., the world’s largest military installation. “In the past, public works had to manually track all of the utility poles on its installation with field crews, a process which took years to achieve,” Lawson said. “However, the use of Pictometry and utilization of oblique imagery has reduced this process to a desktop endeavor that is achieved in months.” On the environmental front, the Marines are utilizing Pictometry imagery to measure and track the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker on its East Coast installations. “DoD mandates that endangered species be protected and the woodpecker falls into this category,” Lawson explained. “All of the military services place a premium on environmental compliance.” www.GIF-kmi.com
Lawson sees satellite imagery is a great force multiplier for military and intelligence. “The ability to provide imagery in a concealed manner provides policymakers with accurate information to make strategic decisions,” he said. Who controls the platform and vehicles on which it operates makes for another argument, especially when comparing commercial needs to those of DoD and the intelligence community. “It can be difficult to get the level of detail needed from the sky for, say, an USDA agricultural program,” said Love. “But the requirements for the military are basically no different.” What is different is that commercial satellite imagery is not classified, and can easily be shared with U.S. allies. This is in contrast to closely guarded military and intelligence needs, such as terrain or event analysis. Consequently, it’s important to note the differences between what aerial and satellite payloads offer, and compare the capabilities, experts say. “Most importantly, know when to use which collection capability,” Piepenburg emphasized. “I think far too much emphasis is placed on the platform, and not enough on the image requirements.” This is especially the case since satellites are capable of collecting imagery identical to that collected by aerial platforms. “It is relevant only to similar products with the same specifications. I have long held the belief that if you placed an aerial and satellite image at the same specifications in front of most users, they would be hard pressed to see the difference,” Piepenburg remarked. In other words, if one subscribes to the notion that a pixel is a pixel, then the platform has significance only in how the image was collected. “Having said that, the notable differences between aerial and satellite imagery are the reason aerial imagery has not been totally replaced,” Piepenburg contended. “For collections over areas where an aircraft cannot be used, then commercial satellite becomes the obvious and preferred collection tool.”
Cost Factors Generally, HRSI is more expensive than aerial imagery, although satellite operating costs are more predictable. “The cost to operate a satellite is distributed over a large and diverse array of GIF 10.6 | 11
customers,” Maselli said. “But preemptive authority on commercial satellites has to be contracted, and costs more than buying commercial imagery.” Aerial imagery can offer the cheaper alternative since the capital costs to maintain a fleet of aircraft and camera systems are less than putting and maintaining satellites in orbit. Yet, there are many areas of the world where it is just not feasible to fly an aircraft due to political situations. “We like to say that our aircraft are suited to peacetime or ‘lightly kinetic’ areas,” Lawson remarked. “In areas where flight clearances are difficult to impossible, HRSI is superior.” There also can be added expenses since aerial survey companies charge for their time, even if that means the aerial acquisition aircraft sits on the tarmac. Then there are issues of how fast imagery can be downloaded, and safety considerations. “You have to consider the vulnerability of these systems,” Maselli remarked. “Manned aircraft and platforms are more vulnerable, especially if operating over hostile areas. Lives cannot be replaced. Once up, satellite sensors are stable over time.” Ultimately, however, the industry is moving towards a combined approach. In bringing the two types of imagery together, a lot of information can be ascertained. “Each has different geometries that complement each other and can operate sensing modalities where the other cannot,” Maselli added. Given appropriate metadata, satellite imagery is also not simpler than aerial, or vice versa. “The National Imagery Transmission Format (NITF) product format, for example, places the exact same metadata fields in the imagery regardless of the platform,” Piepenburg remarked. “The content of the NITF tags certainly identifies the platform and related collection parameters, but the end image product is similar, if not identical, at any given sensor, GSD and accuracy specification.” As a result, technical advancements parallel both aerial and satellite capabilities in much the same fashion. “We’ve seen advances in software that support production and analysis of the imagery as well as improvements in sensor/ payloads,” he added. “We also see tremendous advancements in cloud computing and the ability to disseminate imagery on a widespread basis.” 12 | GIF 10.6
Future Directions Lawson sees federal budget issues in the next few years as a major impeding factor. However, the need for critical visual intelligence will remain. “In addition, Pictometry is seeing great benefits with the use of aerial imagery to support domestic military installation operations,” he added. “Some of the nation’s largest bases are using oblique imagery to save on operations and maintenance costs, and companies that can show this strong return on investment to the government will be in a better position to weather the current fiscal challenges.” An example he uses from a defense perspective is that Naval Special Warfare recently used his company’s imagery for the 2012 Trident Spectre exercise. “In coordination with Lockheed, the imagery was integrated into 3-D models to provide the SEAL operators with enhanced situational awareness of their operating area,” he explained. Heading the list of advanced sensor developments surrounding many environmental and military applications, regardless of the platform, are capabilities such as LiDAR, hyperspectral and thermal. Perhaps the newest area of interest in the remote sensing field, however, is the miniaturization and use of sensors onboard UAVs, which are expected to dominate the remote sensing industry in the coming years. “I see this accelerating when the FAA releases portions of the national airspace for commercial applications employing UAVs,” Piepenburg noted. The FAA has indicated this may be as early as January 2013. Piepenburg also predicts that there will be greatly expanded cross-cuing between UAVs, aerial and satellite systems supporting better data and imagery collections, with an increase in ISR multi-INT fusion capability. Love concurs, noting that UAVs take many of the challenges facing aerial imagery out. “But even UAVs have challenges with weather.” Collaborative intelligence is where market is heading, he added. “The user doesn’t care how it’s collected, processed and presented. The issue is how to make it all standard.” O For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.
www.GIF-kmi.com
INTEL UPDATE
By George Meyers
With the congressional year all but over, there is much to be done. There are still more than 40 pending intelligence-related bills on the calendar. The authorization bills look like they will be passed, which may help with some policy issues. But, the appropriations (funding) bills appear to be stalled as we wait for the November elections, making it very hard for government program managers to
execute their projects. Expect a six-month continuing resolution providing stopgap funding for the first half of the new fiscal year. Agencies are busy balancing their checkbooks and determining which end-of-year projects they will fund. Now is a great time to contact the people you know and let them know about your innovative technology or solution that will help save money. O
George Meyers
gmeyers@gmeyers.com Bill #
Sponsor
STATUS
S.3454
Sen. Feinstein On Senate calendar (D–Calif.) waiting for vote
Summary Senate Intelligence Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2013 Authorizes appropriations for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the U.S. government.
H.R.5743 Rep. Rogers (R-Mich.)
Passed the House and referred to Senate
House Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 Authorizes appropriations for fiscal year 2013 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the U.S. government.
H.R.4251
Rep. Miller (R-Mich.)
Passed the House and referred to Senate
Securing Maritime Activities through Risk-based Targeting for Port Security Act Authorizes, enhances and reforms certain port security programs through increased efficiency and risk-based coordination within the Department of Homeland Security.
H.R.2764
Rep. Meehan (R-Pa.)
Passed the House and referred to Senate
WMD Intelligence and Information Sharing Act Establishes weapons of mass destruction intelligence and information-sharing functions and requires dissemination of information.
H.R.3674
Rep. Lungren (R-Calif.)
Referred to House Energy and Commerce Committee
PRECISE Act of 2011 Directs the Department of Homeland Security to protect federal information systems and critical infrastructure information systems by fostering the development of essential information security technologies and capabilities for protecting systems.
H.R.3834
Rep. Hall (R-Texas)
Passed the House and referred to Senate
Advancing America’s Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Act of 2012 Amends the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 to authorize activities for support of networking and information technology research.
H.R.2096
Rep. McCaul (R-Texas)
Passed the House and referred to Senate
Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2011 Directs agencies participating in the National High-Performance Computing Program to prepare a cybersecurity strategic R&D plan. It also provides for the award of computer and network security research grants by the National Science Foundation.
H.R.4257
Rep. Issa (R-Calif.)
Passed the House and referred to Senate
Federal Information Security Amendments Act of 2012 Re-establishes the oversight authority of the director of the Office of Management and Budget with respect to agency information and security policies. Includes complying with computer standards and ensuring uniform standards for information systems and national security systems. It also ensures the information security management processes are integrated with budget processes.
H.R.3140
Rep. Speier (D-Calif.)
Passed the House and referred to Senate
Mass Transit Intelligence Prioritization Act Directs the Department of Homeland Security to make it a priority to create mass transit intelligence products that assist law enforcement agencies and promote more consistent and timely dissemination of mass transit security-relevant information.
H.R.3523
Rep. Rogers (R–Mich.)
Passed the House and referred to Senate
Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act Adds provisions to protect intelligence and information sharing from cyber-threats and allow the intelligence community to share cyber-threat intelligence with the private sector.
S.3414
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)
Failed Senate vote
Cyber Security and American Cyber Competitiveness Act Enhances the security and resilience of the United States against cyber-attack, increases U.S. competitiveness and investments in the information technology sector to create jobs.
H.R.4310
Rep. McKeon (R-Calif.)
Passed the House and referred to Senate
House National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 Authorizes appropriations for fiscal year 2013 for military activities of the Department of Defense and prescribes military personnel strengths.
S.3254
Sen. Levin (D-Mich.)
Passed Committee and on Senate calendar
Senate National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 Authorizes appropriations for fiscal year 2013 for military activities of the Department of Defense and prescribes military personnel strengths.
George Meyers is partner, the Meyers Group. www.GIF-kmi.com
GIF 10.6 | 13
INDUSTRY RASTER GEOINT Package Offers Full Spectrum of Mapping, Analysis BAE Systems has built a powerful geospatial-intelligence software product from the ground up. SOCET GXP v4.0 merges the full spectrum of mapping and analysis capabilities—image analysis, geospatial analysis, photogrammetry and remote sensing—into a single package. Commercial, defense and government customers worldwide can now use the same tool to create and share a wide range of products, from complete 3-D city models to GeoPDF intelligence reports. Novice and expert users are now able to take advantage of new SOCET GXP v4.0 workflows to complete projects in a fraction of the time required by other products. Version 4.0 features real-time, interactive 3-D views synchronized with 2-D imagery to simulate the operating environment. Built-in cue cards offer step-by-step instructions for creating and auto-texturing building models and other geospatial processes on-the-fly. SOCET GXP v4.0 also features new LiDAR analysis, Triangulated Irregular Network terrain modeling, and automatic feature extraction capabilities to accelerate tedious manual tasks. SOCET GXP v4.0 uses imagery and video from government and commercial sources to identify, analyze and extract ground features quickly for improved situational awareness. It reads and processes data natively to save excess steps such as importing and reformatting data. Charles Ratzer; charles.ratzer@baesystems.com
Application Indexes Maps and Images by Area of Interest The Army Geospatial Center (AGC) and TerraGo Technologies have developed eIndex Server, a browser-based application to deliver on-demand maps and imagery from the AGC’s extensive library of geospatial PDF resources. Acting as a geospatial PDF library navigation, data retrieval and integration tool, eIndex Server allows AGC to define an area of interest and discover all of the available geospatial PDF content falling within that area. EIndex Server simplifies map selection and accelerates map book production for the fast distribution of maps and map books. The AGC and TerraGo Services used TerraGo Composer for Server, TerraGo SDK and Esri ArcGIS Server to create to eIndex Server. Future upgrades of eIndex Server incorporating the latest release of TerraGo SDK will help AGC users to add WMS layers to the browser, support multiple map templates for specific scale, as well as support 3-D GeoPDF content. The next evolution of the program will also focus on enabling self-service content integration for user specific functions.
Cloud-Based System Offers On-Demand Visual Intelligence With the recent launch of Pictometry Connect, the power of the cloud has come to aerial imaging, combining the company’s library of 145 million high-resolution aerial oblique images with customer-specific GIS data. The result is the industry’s most capable and easily deployable solution for on-demand visual intelligence. Current solutions can create installation and ongoing interoperability challenges with existing software packages. Due to its cloud-based, standards-driven approach, Pictometry Connect operates differently, allowing turnkey integration with leading GIS and CAD applications, as well as existing workflows. Deployment can occur at the desktop, via a local server or through a web browser interface. With professional-quality aerial imagery being stored in the cloud to ensure world-class management and updates, customers no longer have to continually manage and update terabytes of imagery on their own servers. Instead, they securely upload their own location-based data sets to Pictometry Connect, which are then layered on the images alongside proprietary measurement and analytics tools to deliver unparalleled visual insights. Karissa Raymond; kraymond@mcdougalltc.com
Afghanistan Mapped With Hyperspectral Imaging For the first time, about 70 percent of a country has been mapped using an advanced remote sensing technique known as hyperspectral imaging. In order to assist Afghanistan in understanding their abundant natural resources, in particular the development of an economically viable minerals market, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of Defense Task Force for Business and Stability Operations led an effort to fully map Afghanistan with hyperspectral data. Airborne hyperspectral sensors measure light reflected from the earth. The spectrum of the reflected light can be interpreted to identify the composition of materials at the surface, such as minerals, man-made materials, snow and vegetation. These materials can be identified remotely due to their unique light spectra. In addition, these data allow large geographic areas to be mapped quickly and accurately, showing mineral resources, natural hazards, agricultural conditions and infrastructure development. In developing the maps, more than 800 million pixels of data were generated.
John Deaver; jdeaver@terragotech.com
14 | GIF 10.6
www.GIF-kmi.com
Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
Desktop Application Adds LiDAR Improvements
Blom has released v3.5 of its desktop geospatial application, BlomDesktop, including significant improvements to LiDAR functionalities. Aimed at professional and academic GIS users, BlomDesktop Viewer offers advanced measurement and interrogation capabilities, in a standalone package. The latest release largely focuses on the addition of new LiDAR viewing and measurement features. Improved features include new measurement tools for the LiDAR 2-D profile view; customizable LiDAR color modes based on classification, height, true color and intensity; additional LiDAR viewer functionality, including point size and image export; new GUI for 3-D viewer and improved performance; increased proxy support; and a range of improvements including improved language support. BlomDesktop Viewer is compatible with all Blom data models, including vertical and oblique aerial imagery, height data and the recently released Blom3D city models, all in one unique application.
Firms Selected for Defense Intelligence Analysis Support The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has selected 11 companies to offer worldwide analytic support across a variety of intelligence areas, with the goal of providing intelligence personnel with the information they need, when they need it. The indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract, Solutions for Intelligence II from the Virginia Contracting Activity in support of DIA, has an estimated cost ceiling of $5.6 billion and a period of performance of two base years and three one-year options. The companies are BAE, Booz Allen Hamilton, Buffalo Group, CACI, CTC, Cyberspace Solutions, L-3, Lockheed Martin, Mission Essential Personnel, SAIC and Veritiss. The contract covers a wide range of services, with the selected companies being able to compete for individual task orders.
Global Imagery Integrated Into Cloud-Based Content System Esri has licensed the rights for DigitalGlobe’s Global Basemap imagery layer. The imagery layer will be integrated into Esri’s existing imagery basemap in ArcGIS Online, Esri’s cloud-based mapping and collaborative content management system. Later this year, ArcGIS users will be able to use the imagery in their web maps and easily share the results with other users online. In addition, ArcGIS for Desktop users can leverage the same ArcGIS Online service to use the high quality data in their desktop applications. In a separate announcement, DigitalGlobe recently said that it had reached an agreement with the Enough Project to continue providing imagery and analysis services to monitor evidence of bombings, razed villages and possible threats to civilians in Sudan in an effort called the Satellite Sentinel Project. Along with the imagery and analysis provided under the terms of this new agreement, DigitalGlobe will also contribute additional in-kind services.
Partnership Offers Wide-Area Airborne Persistent Surveillance
Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) and ITT Exelis have teamed to build Vigilant Stare, a manned aircraft-based wide-area airborne persistent surveillance system capability. This partnership will offer customers proven, advanced solutions in airborne wide-area surveillance on an affordable, fee-for-service basis, saving upfront costs and risks. Hosted on a Twin Otter aircraft, the Vigilant Stare system is derived from an operationally proven Air Force system. Vigilant Stare will provide visible and infrared coverage of city-sized areas, providing real-time motion imagery directly to diversified users involved in domestic support missions. Vigilant Stare motion imagery simultaneously covers three tiers: the full field of regard; multiple sub-views of the full field of view; and best-resolution tactical chip-outs. These products will be provided to users through an enterprise dissemination backend with best-resolution chip-outs provided directly and in real time to users engaged in ground operations. The Vigilant Stare partnership between SNC and Exelis brings mature operational capability to market, delivering ready-now widearea airborne surveillance capabilities with multiple service options that help customers meet their mission needs on a more affordable and flexible basis. Irene Lockwood; irene.lockwood@exelisinc.com michelle erlach; michelle.erlach@sncorp.com
Integrated Solution Processes Imagery for 3-D Databases Astrium GEO-Information Services has launched Street Factory, a fully integrated solution enabling fast and fully automatic processing of images from any aerial or street camera for the generation of a 3-D textured database. Realistic and precise 3-D data is essential for all professionals working with 3-D modeling and visualization in areas such as urban planning, risk management, defense and telecommunications. Street Factory helps users tackle their day-to-day challenges by providing accurate 3-D models, with intricate details and imagery free of distortions. This 3-D modeling is fully automatic and www.GIF-kmi.com
processed within hours after acquisition, regardless of the sensor. Street Factory also includes a versatile 3-D viewer that is compatible with all standard operating systems. This viewer’s features include 3-D measurements, water-level simulation and integration of GIS databases. Street Factory is a solution for users who require fast and fully automatic processing of imagery from any platform into highly precise and accurate 3-D data. Jessi Dick; dick@astrium-geo.com GIF 10.6 | 15
Intel Professional
Q& A
Bridging the Gap Between National and Tactical Intelligence Major General Stephen G. Fogarty Commanding General Army Intelligence and Security Command Major General Stephen G. Fogarty assumed duty as commanding general, Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), on March 5, 2012. A native of Georgia, Fogarty entered active duty as a Military Intelligence (MI) Corps second lieutenant in 1983, upon graduation from North Georgia College. His recent assignments include deputy chief of staff, intelligence, CJ- 2, International Security Assistance Force, Operation Enduring Freedom; director of intelligence, J-2, U.S. Central Command; and director, Joint Intelligence Operations Center, Operation Enduring Freedom. Fogarty served in command assignments as commander, Long Range Surveillance Detachment, 125th MI Battalion, 25th Infantry Division (Light); commander, 732nd MI Battalion, 115th MI Group; and commander, 116th MI Brigade. He also held key staff assignments as S-2, 2d Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Fort Lewis, Wash., and Operation Just Cause; chief, Analysis and Control Element, G-2, later S-3 (Operations), 311th MI Battalion, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault); S-2, 75th Ranger Regiment; G-2, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault); and chief, Integrated Survey Program, U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., and Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan. Fogarty holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from North Georgia College. He is a graduate of the Army War College with a Master of Science degree in strategic studies, and holds a Master of Science degree in administration from Central Michigan University. Fogarty was interviewed by GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly. Q: To put things in context, please outline the mission and organization of Army INSCOM. A: We’re the Army’s operational intelligence force, and we bridge the gap between tactical and national. We have a foot in both arenas, so we really are the ‘one-stop shop’ for intelligence for the Army. The bottom line is that the intelligence enterprise is our weapons platform— our foundation. What we have to do to be successful is for our soldiers and civilians to be able to plug into the intelligence enterprise, and INSCOM provides a lot of that capability for the Army. Whether it’s providing communications, or training through our Foundry program, which will certify and train soldiers and civilians to get into the enterprise, that’s our principal mission and role. Not only do we plug people into the enterprise, but we also conduct multi-discipline, all-source intelligence operations all around the globe. INSCOM has more than 17,000 personnel assigned to it, including military, civilian and contractors. We’re located in 30 countries and 180 locations all around the globe. The sun never sets on INSCOM. Ten percent of our force is currently deployed to Afghanistan, and another www.GIF-kmi.com
15 percent are forward stationed. We live in the combatant commands’ [COCOM] time zone and battlespace, we’re co-located with them and we’re operating with them every single day, as we do collection, analysis and reporting. We have 17 major subordinate commands, with five theater intelligence brigades and 12 functional or single-source brigade equivalents. It’s a very large and complex organization, which is completely tied into the national community, but also at the tactical level. We have the flexibility and responsive capability within the Army for intel, because we can push out highly trained teams very quickly, and with the right equipment. I’ve got significant responsibilities in training the force, including state of the art GEOINT training through our Foundry program. Our mantra is, ‘No military intelligence soldier at rest, and no cold starts.’ We want to make sure that our soldiers are working the mission every day, whether deployed or back in garrison. By doing that, it assures that we’re ready if we have to deploy quickly. Q: In broad terms, how would you describe the role of GEOINT technology in the work of INSCOM? A: Everything starts with a dot on a map, and GEOINT is foundational for us and all of our analytical products. Everything we do is tied to an identity and a location on the globe. We think GEOINT provides that foundational layer. You can break it out into everything from full motion video to commercial imagery to national imagery that is GIF 10.6 | 17
provided, and each one of those has very discrete capabilities that we use to build situational awareness, provide indications and warnings, and provide targetable intelligence. It depends on the mission, so we can support anything from humanitarian assistance to more conventional, decisive operations, to counterinsurgency, which we’ve gotten pretty good at over the last 11 years. Q: How does GEOINT fit into your vision of multi-INT intelligence? A: It is absolutely vital to the visualization and integration of multi-INT intelligence, and it provides the foundational layer. GEOINT provides the texture, context and perspective that we layer a lot of other disciplines and inputs over. What I’ve seen personally in the past 11 years is that our ability to paint the picture has become much better. If you’re trying to explain a situation to a commander or an operator who is getting ready to go on a mission, we can load them up with reams of documents, or we can provide a picture with embedded information on it. We find that they’re able to assimilate that much faster, and it provides the context that they need in order to make a decision. Without the GEOINT layer, our job would be much more difficult. We’ve battle-tested our GEOINT products over the past 11 years. Every time I go out in theater, or see a product, it just gets better. As the ISAF J-2 and CENTCOM J-2, what I found was that GEOINT really helped me work with my foreign partners. Sometimes words or written documents will fail you, but being able to put an image with the appropriate supporting data—that is absolutely a winner every single time. You can see the light go on in someone that you may have had a communications problem with. But when you lay the map down or lay the image down, particularly when you can lay other pieces of data on top of that, it becomes very easy for people to understand. So it really helps us communicate. Q: What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the Army in establishing multi-INT domains? A: We have to be interoperable with the joint community, with the interagency, and with our multinational partners. That is the foundation to all of this—the joint, interagency and multinational interoperability. We’ve spent the last 11 years learning one of our greatest lessons from the war—that we don’t fight just as an Army, but within the joint interagency, intergovernmental, multinational [JIIM] construct. As a result, we have to be able to make sure that all of our systems can plug into that. We’ve spent a good amount of effort breaking down stovepipes that existed when we started this period of conflict. We’ve worked hard to make information very discoverable and accessible. The greatest challenge is to continue to move down that road, and continue to improve that. If every soldier is going to be a sensor, then he has to be connected to the enterprise, and we have to be able to push products from the enterprise down to the guy on point, as well as take the data that he is collecting and be able to integrate that real-time data into our common operational picture. If a service goes out on its own, they accept a lot of risk and frankly undo what we’ve all been working for, which is common accessibility to the data. Q: What are some of the important ways that your command works with NGA? A: NGA is a critical partner for INSCOM and the Army. They have been with us as we deployed, and they expanded very quickly to 18 | GIF 10.6
meet requirements. They not only expanded their architecture, but they also improved their ability to push products down to the point of the spear. They have put exceptional people forward to act as a storefront for their capabilities. They link up with tactical elements, and they are very flexible and responsive. I think NGA has been one of the true heroes of the past decade. They have worked with us to be able to provide information to our partners very quickly. Sharing is certainly in their culture. There was a period when NOFORN [not releasable to foreign nationals] was the challenge, and frankly it was the bane of an intel guy’s existence. NGA was one of the first to break through those barriers, whether it was providing commercial imagery or taking a look at the imagery they had and appropriately releasing it, so that partners had the same information we had. One of the things I found as a J-2 was that people would come to me and lay out their requirements, and say, ‘We’re going to war with you, and the United States has tremendous capabilities, particularly in intelligence. In order for us to actually be a member of your team, we have to have that information, because it protects our soldiers just like it protects your soldiers.’ We struggled with that initially, and NGA really gave us a good example on how to approach that problem and resolve it. So one aspect of it is the fact that they have reached out to us and integrated within the ground components. That’s exceptional. On the other hand, we also have integrated into NGA. If you go to their new campus, you’ll see that our Army GEOINT Battalion is in the complex. Instead of building a stovepipe for the Army, we’ve been able to integrate fully into the NGA enterprise. That’s given us significant advantages, beginning with power, space and cooling, so we don’t have to build facilities separately, which is a good deal for the taxpayer. It puts us in the center of their operation. We understand what they’re doing, and the direction that Director Long is taking the NGA enterprise, and we’re a part of that from the ground level. It also gives us a voice in the direction that they’re heading. By being with there with them, we’re able to influence and shape what the enterprise is going to look like and ensure that Army requirements are accommodated as they build their enterprise. We’re also able to avail ourselves of the cutting-edge technology, training and mentorship that comes from working with the professionals in this business line. They’ve gone out to us, and we’ve embedded with them for everything from training to systems to state-of-the-art technology that we’re able to get from them. We think that’s absolutely critical. Integrating that battalion inside NGA is key to our success. We didn’t build our own facility, and we’re not hanging outside looking in, but have our noses underneath the tent. What that does is that we understand NGA’s culture, we are part of it, and we’ve been able to prevent stovepipes from occurring. We’re there, they consider what we have to say, and we have the ability to make our voices heard from the ground up on any solution that they propose to deploy. Q: Having in effect created the problem of “too much data,” how can technology help to solve it? A: I don’t think there is a problem with too much data. I’m a big-data proponent. It’s our ability to analyze that data that is the challenge. First, we want ubiquitous access to the data, at all levels—tactical, operational and strategic. It goes back to every soldier being a sensor. We have the responsibility to provide relevant intelligence to the edge. Any soldier, whether intel professional or not, should have the ability to plug into the enterprise and get a response to their question. But also, if he’s plugged into the system, not only can he query www.GIF-kmi.com
it, but he also has the ability to help populate it by providing data inputs into the system from the lowest level. We have 17,000 soldiers and civilians operating around the globe, but we’re just 30 percent of the Army’s intelligence force. You have all these other sensors out there, which are providing inputs into the system. We have tremendous automated capabilities. Think about the thousands of hours of full motion video that are collected, and the thousands of images collected over a period of a few days. If I can’t access that data, I can’t analyze it, and I can’t get to the answer to my question, that becomes the challenge. That’s what we’re working with NGA, our national partners, the other services and industry to help solve. So I think big data is a really good thing for us. Sometimes, you don’t know when you’re collecting data that it is important, but you get tipped or cued at another time that a target or entity is important to you. You don’t want to start collection then. What you want to be able to do is to look into the big pool of collection that has occurred, and be able to go to the exact piece of information that will answer the question. As General Petraeus used to put it, my mission as CENTCOM J-2 and ISAR J-2 was to be ‘first with the truth.’ The ability to collect large amounts of data helps me to do that, because it allows me to establish relationships that might not be intuitively obvious, and it gives me a bigger pool to sample from. So we think this is a big deal. We’re think we’re getting at that, and are full partners in development of the intelligence community’s cloud, which is critical to our ability to reach into that data and extract the information that we want. It’s absolutely required to handle the velocity and volume of data that is now available to us. The bottom line is that cloud computing is a big part of the answer, along with the analytic tools. The Distributed Common Ground System-Army [DCGS-A] is our flagship system, which allows us to answer the questions and be first with the truth. As collection and data continue to expand, that’s what’s required to enable us to answer the questions. Q: What can INSCOM and the Army do to improve dissemination of GEOINT information to the warfighter at the edge? A: It’s about leveraging state-of-the-art technology and having the ability to provide that discrete piece of data. What we often don’t need is the entire frame of imagery, but rather a chip or piece of it. What we need to be able to do, and are working hard at, is enabling the user to define his personal requirement. If I’m operating in a village, what I should be able to do is exactly like buying a map online. As a user, I define the type of map or image that I want. I can set the scale and resolution, and determine if I want a map or an image. But what I want to be able to do is to overlay my data on that. In order to pull that chip from an enterprise, it has to be in a format that allows me to define and chip out exactly what I need, and no more. That’s the key to success, and we’re working hard on it. That’s one piece, but in order to do that, you have to have an architecture that allows you as a customer to reach into that store or those apps, and be able to use them effectively. Then I also have to have the hardware that enables me to correctly display that information. Those three components are critical. As you look at Army intelligence and our vision for 2020, we think we hit all of those components. But we can only do that because we’re completely interoperable. DCGS-A is interoperable, and meets IC standards. That becomes our foundation layer. There is education required; we have to train our soldiers to be able to use the tools, establish the architecture and understand how they plug in and take advantage of those services. www.GIF-kmi.com
Q: How does INSCOM use the Distributed Common Ground System, and where do you see that system going in the future? A: It’s our flagship system, and we see it continuing to evolve. I think the principle of user-defined capabilities is very important. For INSCOM, we have five fixed DCGS-A facilities, at each of our theater intelligence brigades. That’s where we plug into the Army service component and the COCOMs. Those are critical locations for us. Also, we have DCGS-A that is pushed out to the tactical edge. Everything from the corps to division, brigade combat team, battalion and even the company intelligence support team has the ability to use DCGS-A. What happens is that you have a foundational capability that an Army intelligence professional has the ability to access, not only in the field but also in garrison. That’s absolutely key. As far as GEOINT capability, the DCGS-A fixed GEOINT domains are in the NGA program, and we’re on a good transition schedule for those. Our INSCOM futures shop is leading the effort of both advancing the analytics and also moving DCGS-A into the IC cloud. We’re also one of the drivers from the converged infrastructure, which is thin clients, data center migration and multi-level security capability. Q: What role does full motion video (FMV) technology play in your command’s work, and what new capabilities would you like to see in that area?
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GIF 10.6 | 19
A: There is insatiable demand from the warfighter for FMV as well as other things. First, there is the ability to layer other information on top of the FMV, real-time. They need better resolution, so high definition is a step in the right direction, and has to get better. Our ability to catalog and retrieve discrete information quickly is an absolute imperative. Before I left ISAF, we submitted a requirement for an all-weather capability, whether that’s streaming SAR or some other capability. There are certain areas where the ability is pretty bad at points during the year, and we have to have the ability to penetrate that and be able to display it in a manner that’s intuitive to look at. In the Army, we’re looking at our current fleet of airplanes, and what we’re working on now is mounting an FMV capability on all those platforms. One of our lessons learned from a decade of war is to have multi-INT capabilities on all of our platforms. You want not only SIGINT collection, but also imagery collection. What you really want is the ability to tailor a sensor package based on the operational and intelligence requirements. Having that multi-INT, all-weather capability is essential. The other thing that we have to look at is the ability to receive FMV on smaller devices. Every infantryman wants a smaller, lighter and more secure receiver for imagery. Another important capability that we’re scratching the surface on involves the 120 aerostats of different sizes that we’re in the process of deploying in Afghanistan. As we have experimented with different sensors on those platforms, including FMV, we’ve found that you should be able to plug in any place in the enterprise and see what each one of your sensors is reporting, and be able to access it. If you’re interested in that area, you should have access to that. It’s the whole idea of ubiquitous access. There are a lot of different platforms that are collecting FMV. How do you get access to that if it’s in an area you’re interested in? Finally, there is the ability to seamlessly share, as we fight as a joint, interagency and multinational force, and pass information to our partners. Q: What changes would you like to see in the way that the GEOINT and other intelligence-technology companies work with INSCOM? A: First, I will say we have a very strong relationship with our industry partners. Over the years, there is a level of inter-dependency that has been created, and we should embrace that rather than fight it. It’s through these partnerships that we’ve identified requirements, and our industry partners have developed cutting-edge technology and capability. We’re going to continue to rely on the commercial sector. That’s where competition is very tough. They understand that, and are working hard to improve ideas or requirements that we’ve put out there. That relationship is essential to us. Secondly, we need our industry partners to understand that we are part of a joint, interagency and multinational force, so they have to deliver solutions that are completely interoperable, and allow us to share with our partners. We can’t afford stovepipe solutions. We spent the past decade breaking stovepipes down and allowing ourselves to see what all of our sensors are doing, and being able to access that at every level. What we can’t afford to do is regress. We’re going to partner if they partner with us. That has to be one of the operating principles that they understand—we’re not looking for proprietary or stovepipe solutions, but for solutions that allow us to work effectively within the JIIM environment. That is our operating environment, so industry has to understand that any solution they propose has to be interoperable and as efficient and effective as possible. At this point, 20 | GIF 10.6
with shrinking budgets, we’re going to be very selective in what we acquire. If you don’t meet those basics, your chances of being selected are significantly reduced. If you look at DCGS-A, multiple contractors contribute to that platform. That’s the future. You’ve got to understand where you provide advantage. It may be a particular app—we call it an ozone widget—that we can use. Where a lot of money can still be made, and where a lot of work is still needed, is with these discrete pieces. It goes back to who is first with the truth. That means I can’t give you the litany or the big answer. What I need to do is answer your question. That’s what we’re going to be looking it. DCGS-A is our platform, so we need companies to listen to us, understand our requirements, and then answer that question or fix that discrete problem. We’ve learned a lot in the last 11 years, but our challenge is to not be satisfied with what worked best in Afghanistan or Iraq. We have to look at the future environment. There are certain things that we want to bring forward, but others that worked well there, but there may not be a place for them in the future. We’re going to be very selective in what we take forward, and we won’t take forward something that isn’t interoperable, doesn’t have provision for sharing with our partners, is expensive to maintain, and has stovepiped communications or architecture, so the system can’t ingest data or be tipped and cued by other platforms. Our communication to industry is that to move forward with this, you have to have that mindset. Q: Is there anything else you would like to add? A: I’ll be talking soon to the NGA workforce here. The thing I’ll tell our GEOINT professionals is that they have been superb. We have not had to put a strong demand signal on NGA, because they have anticipated every requirement we have had. They have been forward with us on the battlefield. It’s an exceptionally well trained and dedicated workforce, principally civilian, who have had multiple tours in Afghanistan and other places around the world, rubbing shoulders with us. When you look at the foundation, we have a tendency to talk about systems, platforms and architectures. But the essential element is the human being. We’ve had some brilliant minds that have gone forward, and because they have been forward, they have been able to see the challenges and identify where friction has occurred. They’ve been able to get that into their system and resolve it very quickly. I can’t recall all the times when, on a holiday weekend or late at night, there is someone back here working on a problem as hard as they can. For me, that’s the culture of NGA. They anticipate and are problem-solvers, and it’s been a privilege to work with members of the GEOINT enterprise over the past 11 years of conflict. So I’m very confident that as long as we can clearly articulate our requirements, and continue to work collaboratively with NGA, they will have a solution for any problem we have, which will be a joint solution and will work for all of us. That’s the message I will send to their workforce, and that’s the key to success. After my first visit to the NGA East campus, I sent a note the Admiral Murrett and General Clapper about how awesome it is. It’s a facility that really captures NGA well, and it’s the appropriate workplace for a community from which we expect the most cutting edge technology to emerge. Because of the vision they had to build that type of facility for that workforce, you can get inspired just driving up to the door, and ask yourself, ‘What great things can I do today?’ I look at NGA and the GEOINT community and say, ‘What great things can we do together?’ O www.GIF-kmi.com
HPC can greatly reduce timelines for delivery of GEOINT while
enhancing processing performance and enabling advanced analysis. Warfighters and decision makers cannot wait days for data, so the National System for Geospatial-Intelligence (NSG) Expeditionary Architecture (NEA) Integrated Program Office (IPO) is providing new technology and architecture solutions to ensure timely access, discovery and retrieval of GEOINT now. “We need the enabling technologies to make all this happen, from cloud computing and mobile GEOINT to application development and management,” said National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Director Letitia A. Long at a recent employee forum. “Achieving efficiencies and taking advantage of technology innovations are critical to our ability to realize our vision.” NEA will employ commercial and open-source cloud computing technologies to expand upon benefits the commercial community is already seeing from virtualization and high-performance computing (HPC). A highly virtualized, scalable environment adapts to growing needs and can benefit the entire GEOINT user community. It brings existing data and services to a wider audience, enables the development of advanced analytical services, and greatly reduces the cost of developing and deploying new capabilities and maintaining current hardware and software. NEA’s GEOINT HPC vision includes supporting the warfighter through a distributed set of physical and virtualized compute, storage, network and data infrastructure resources. Essentially, HPC implements parallel or distributed processing, which splits a task into chunks several different entities can work on simultaneously. While the processing, or compute resources are distributed across many physical locations, they remain accessible from any part of the architecture. Nearly unlimited amounts of processing power can be available to work a task, which can be completed much more quickly than if a single entity processed it as a single task. The NEA IPO will design other resources, such as storage, network and data infrastructure, to work together to manage and execute the processing tasks using HPC. HPC is highly applicable to GEOINT processing since its data sets are often far larger than with other, non-GEOINT text-based data. When coupled with other benefits of cloud architecture, such as resource scaling and dynamic allocation, HPC can greatly reduce timelines for delivery of GEOINT into the hands of the user while enhancing processing performance and enabling advanced analysis that was previously unattainable. For example, a user may need light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data, which uses pulses of laser light to generate 3-D images, over a specific area. Today, that user could wait for extended periods of time www.GIF-kmi.com
By Keith L. Barber
for a source to acquire, process and provide the data. Many processing steps may be required before an analyst can use the data, such as segregating the data of interest and applying geographic coordinates. In a Hadoop cluster (or other parallel/distributed processing HPC configuration), the source can split the LiDAR processing among multiple servers that work simultaneously, significantly reducing the time the user must wait for delivery of the processed data. Distribution of parallel data and compute power like with Hadoop, combined with specific image processing and analytics accelerators delivered as part of the NSG GEOINT HPC environment, will enable this. Examples of these technologies include graphic processing units, which are specialized, efficient electronic circuits that can rapidly process images displayed on a user’s workstation monitor, mobile phone screen or other display device, and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). FPGAs are integrated circuits used in nearly any type of openstandard hardware configuration; users can re-program them on the fly to work with different applications. The NEA cloud framework changes the set-up from stovepiped and limited access to globally accessible and usable. As new analyst needs emerge and the warfighter mission evolves, the framework will facilitate the rapid development and deployment of additional capabilities in a services-based, virtualized environment with quicker access to data and resources across the cloud. A key aspect of the framework is the automated scaling of compute resources to support virtualized environments that are distributed horizontally across the enterprise, better enabling capabilities such as advanced analytics. The value of parallel/distributed computing is further enhanced with automated scaling. Available compute processing will “scale up” if there’s a greater demand from the user and “scale down” when the demand no longer exists. During these downtimes the resources may work lower priority standing tasks, such as non-time sensitive data processing. Users can share and use computing power anywhere in the cloud, which gives each user access to greater processing resources and greater performance than they would have with one computer at one desk. HPC automated scaling further decreases processing timelines for time-sensitive analysis that would otherwise be limited to the compute power of an analyst’s physical workstation.
Remote Exploitation New sensors continue to increase the volume and velocity of GEOINT data available to NSG partners. NEA aims to reduce the GIF 10.6 | 21
amount of data moving around just for processing purposes, with a goal of processing data in place whenever possible. HPC nodes will deliver a new virtualized model that supports remote connections. These remote sessions, combined with intelligence community, Department of Defense and other GEOINT service-based applications, provide remote processing and exploitation without moving the data. Remote exploitation, combined with HPC processing, will be critical for advanced exploitation capabilities such as activity based intelligence (ABI). Effective ABI involves layering multiple sources of data and then applying mathematical solutions or automated algorithms to them to flag which activities might warrant further investigation by an analyst. ABI will be available as a service on remote servers so those with access can use their tools to analyze data at rest and download or disseminate only the finished ABI products they need. NGA will update and modernize these virtualized services as new versions become available, making them immediately available to the entire GEOINT community. ABI is poised to save thousands of hours of analysts’ time while making discoveries that might otherwise go unknown. Some ABI capabilities are already available in theater. HPC is just one of many key components to an on-demand, userfocused, cloud-based architecture. Though HPC can be allocated ondemand by a user, HPC does provide compute resources at many levels of the architecture. It provides compute power to run platforms (such as development platforms or virtual desktop operating systems) and software (especially fully featured, rich client desktop applications), as well as data (primarily for data ingest, processing and automated
HUMAN
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Maximizing Force Efficiency through Intelligence in the Human Domain Social and Cultural Human Geography and Intelligence Focus Day : November 12, 2012 Main Summit: November 13-14, 2012 Washington, DC Featured PreseNtatioNs Will HigHligHt: • understanding the local culture and history of specific populations • socio-cultural situational awareness in the field • utilizing remote sensing to analyze human actions • enabling enhanced decision making through social media monitoring and analysis • the role of Human terrain systems (Hts) within the us army
www.HumanGeographyEvent.com 22 | GIF 10.6
analysis). This approach offers a drop-in anywhere set of information technology capacities, termed NEA global nodes, with built-in infrastructure services that unify those nodes into the larger continental and outside the continental U.S. information technology enterprises. Analysts can now process GEOINT datasets such as full motion video, wide area motion imagery, LiDAR and hyperspectral imagery directly from ingested sensor platforms and use tools such as NSG Video Services, Google Visualization Services and the Full Spectrum Tool Kit served by the HPC platform to exploit them. Interoperability is key to the successful implementation of cloudbased architecture. New standards and procedures must address how technology behaves rather than just describing it. A cloud-based environment is a vast ecosystem of components that must be interoperable, and the approaches to designing within this ecosystem differ from traditional methods. This shift in design patterns must keep and facilitate interoperability between mission partner systems while sustaining a coherent, mission-based global GEOINT service-model for the NSG.
Resource Management The NEA cloud framework introduces a GEOINT-specific concept of cloud resource management called the Global Resource Manager (GRM). The GRM is not a set of systems administrators or data managers, but rather a set of services that manage data within the architecture. For example, the GRM will direct the parallel/distributed compute power, as it allocates all resources across the cloud, on-demand and in support of the mission. This provides robust, shared and reusable services enforced through open IT standards. Users across the intelligence community and DoD can access a community of applications, services, data and derived products without affecting or altering them. The GEOINT HPC platform provides scalable, elastic, distributed and responsive virtualized services to users. Users will have faster access to GEOINT, virtual access to the latest services and exploitation tools, and a framework that provides the infrastructure to support the best mission performance possible. This enables users to quickly share and act on GEOINT. The NEA cloud framework changes the set-up from stovepiped and limited access to globally accessible and usable. As new analyst needs emerge and the warfighter mission evolves, the framework will facilitate the rapid development and deployment of additional capabilities in a services-based, virtualized environment with quicker access to data and resources across the cloud. NSG users and organizations will take advantage of access to content, as well as self-service GEOINT tools and applications to meet time-critical mission objectives. In addition, NGA will gain efficiencies for deployed environments—for example, a reduced overseas footprint and other cost savings. HPC is an initial step towards implementing this vision for NEA users—giving NGA’s tactical users an additional needed edge. O Keith L. Barber is director, National System for Geospatial Intelligence Expeditionary Architecture Integrated Program Office. This article originally appeared in the July/August issue of Pathfinder, the magazine of the National Geospatial-Intelligence agency.
For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.
www.GIF-kmi.com
GEOINT for Mission Planning
Systems integrate geospatial intelligence through all aspects of tasking, collection, processing, exploitation and dissemination. By Peter Buxbaum GIF Correspondent
intelligence, assessing how to fill those gaps, assigning tasks, trackMission planning is a multifaceted discipline, and the incorpoing the satisfaction of requests and ultimately generating geospatial ration of geospatial data into mission planning systems represents a products for decision-makers.” variety of opportunities and challenges. The vast number of sensors “Geospatial information comes from all over the and communications devices that has been deployed place,” said John Metzger, senior manager for Lockheed over the last few years means that the U.S. military Martin’s TacScape product. “There are satellite images, has more geospatial data than ever from which to video from UAV overflights and LiDAR data. The key to identify targets, develop routes, and otherwise help success is the quick turnaround of the data, the mergwarfighters prepare to execute their missions. ing of the information together, and getting it to warfIn fact, in order to provide the high resolution, ighters in time for the quick missions that they are high fidelity mission planning images that warfightexecuting. The main thing is data relevancy that supers need and rightfully expect, it is critical to collect ports ongoing tactical operations in a timely manner.” data from a variety of sources and sensors. Aviators “Customers are experiencing rapid growth in both want realistic video of the terrain over which they the type and quantity of GEOINT data,” said Manzo. will be flying. Drivers want to preview the ground Mike Manzo “We’re working to help our customers derive value from over which they will be traversing. In this way, mistheir big data by leveraging it to provide situational sion planning overlaps to a large extent with mission awareness through analytics and cloud architectures.” rehearsal. Then there is the perennial problem of big data. The massive volumes of geospatial data being genDynamic Updates erated are overtaking the capabilities of both human beings and machines to handle them. There are far In this era of rapid paced, highly mobile warfare, too many channels of information to monitor, all of planning for missions is constantly changing, with the which put out relevant signals for particular tasks. latest data serving to clarify and hone the purpose and The challenge has become to make the most out scope of missions as well as the identification of targets. of all of these intel sources to do the job. It’s far too “Mission planners want to take their baseline data and much for humans to do alone, and the stakes could update it dynamically,” said Dr. Scott Goldstein, senior John Metzger mean life or death. vice president, manager of the national systems setor, This presents an ongoing computational challenge QinetiQ North America. “They want to be able to modfor the identification of targets and the transmission ify missions and optimize routes in order to maximize of relevant information in real time to analysts, commission performance.” manders and warfighters making last-minute deciThe variety of data and its massive quantities pressions about missions, in many cases while they are ent challenges to this type of mission planning vision. already in transit to the area of operations. Current “Some issues that come into play are the need to inteltechnology deals with these challenges to a degree, ligently correlate and compress data,” said Goldstein. but more is needed, and research is ongoing. “When you take big data to the tactical side, where the “Geospatial intelligence is integrated with mispipes tend to be smaller, you have to consider ways the sion management through all aspects of tasking, colparadigm could be changed by looking at front-end prolection, processing, exploitation and dissemination,” cessing of data to gain actionable intelligence. You have Dr. Scott Goldstein said Mike Manzo, director for geospatial solutions at to be able to update in real time the data you gathered General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems before the mission began.” (GD-AIS). “Mission management utilizes imagery, maps and any Using multiple sources of large amounts of data is the key for develsource of geo-referenced intelligence needed to satisfy the planoping such a dynamic planning capability, according to Metzger. “The ning requirements of a mission. This includes identifying gaps in battlefield is constantly changing,” he said. “If you stick with just one www.GIF-kmi.com
GIF 10.6 | 23
source you will find that the data will often be stale. This was proved by the U.S. experience in Afghanistan. “If you haven’t had a satellite overflight in a while, you won’t have the most up-to-date data. But video from a UAV overflight, or even still imagery from a handheld device, can be used to update what you have. A lot of our customers have targets pop up, and they have to hit them quickly and accurately. Having up-to-date information makes a big difference. Even the height of a wall can be significant,” he added. GD-AIS provides end-to-end mission management solutions to customers in the defense, intelligence and homeland security communities. “We deliver mission-based solutions, systems development, integration and operations support,” said Manzo. The company’s products include the Multi-INT Analysis and Archive System (MAAS), which enables analysts to screen, review, manage and tag intelligence events taking place in one or more missions for immediate reporting, mission planning or future exploitation. “Reports can be generated and published in several formats within seconds of an event occurring, including HTML web pages, PowerPoint and Word. All intelligence data created, including highlight videos, can be archived in the MAAS library and is fully searchable within the enterprise,” said Manzo. MAAS is compatible with the Distributed Common Ground System Integration Backbone and Coalition Shared Data Server. The Enterprise Mission Management Toolkit (eMTK) is a COTSbased, intelligence mission-management toolkit. “EMTK optimizes the analyst user experience by providing the right level of analyst
24 | GIF 10.6
support and metrics needed to manage the mission,” said Manzo. “It is scalable and can be deployed in large virtualized cloud-based ISPs or to a laptop for the forward-deployed user.” EMTK includes web-based modular capabilities such as collection management, exploitation management, intelligence work flow management, discovery and search, multimedia product generation and reporting, and collaboration. GD-AIS’s customers include the Army, Navy, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. coalition partners. “Mission planning is one element of mission management where we interface to understand the impact of mission planning on the overall success of the mission,” said Manzo. “We provide input to mission planning software based on customer needs. We take the data generated as the result of mission planning, and support the generation of products to satisfy the customer’s needs.”
Mission Rehearsal TacScape is a line of Lockheed Martin products that includes the Topscene mission rehearsal system, used by the Navy, Air Force, Army and special forces. Products within TacScape include end-user systems for mission rehearsal and battlefield awareness, as well as geographic information systems tools and services. Enabling technologies include visualization systems and force understanding services. “Topscene is a program of record that has been around for 20 years,” said Metzger. “Several thousand of the systems have been deployed in Afghanistan and before that in Iraq.” Topscene interfaces with aviation mission planning systems like FalconView and the Joint Mission Planning System. “Topscene capabilities give the warfighter increased situational awareness of the mission operating environment before execution of combat or training missions,” said Metzger. “The technology converts geospatial intelligence from multiple sources into interactive, three-dimensional scene visualization.” In addition, information from intelligence sources, such as target and threat information, urban features, vegetation and order of battle data, can be added to the scene via the database generation process and through the mission planning interface, greatly increasing the realism of the mission operating environment. “The mission systems lay out information in two dimensions,” said Metzger. “With Topscene, a user can hit a button and we scoop up all that information and put into immersive environment that is high resolution and high fidelity. Databases are produced at government facilities by Lockheed and other companies. It is all government-owned data, and it is updated daily. We pull in all the threat information, routes, and the mission intelligence for the day and fuse it all together on a high resolution geospatial back plane.” Warfighters can repeatedly rehearse and analyze all elements of a mission, including aircraft and vehicle routes, sensor predictions, target details, weather and tactical intelligence. “Rehearsal and visualization with realistic representation of the terrain and objective areas greatly increases the mission’s probability of success,” said Metzger. Topscene’s virtual environments put users in the pilot’s seat of fixed wing aircraft, helicopters and even behind the controls of a ground vehicle or guided missile seeker. The system also gives a ground-level view of environments, especially useful in urban warfare. “The mission planner can then take identified threats and project them out to understand their trajectory and range,” said Metzger. www.GIF-kmi.com
“When will my troops be in harms way? How can I mask them with a mountain range? The mission planner can play the mission forwards and backwards and simulate different types of conditions. They can figure out the best route for a wing of Black Hawks to get through a AAA site. Then the pilots can sit down with Topscene before jumping into the cockpit and drivers of ground vehicles can review the mission before getting behind the wheel to pre-fly and pre-drive the routes under simulated conditions, including nighttime and weather conditions.” Topscene now runs on a regular laptop computer. Over 20 years it has adapted to technologies from mainframes to advanced graphic workstations. “We have already ported the technology to smaller form factors such as smartphones and tablets,” said Metzger.
time to update the data and get it in country for mission rehearsal,” said Metzger. “We also have the ability for the end user who has a new image to drag and drop into the viewer. This automatic ingestion feature fuses the new image onto the database right on the spot. The new data could literally be minutes old.” The Lockheed system is able to process and ingest data from multiple sources through its geospatial processing backbone, called Rosetta. “It works as a data extraction layer,” said Metzger. “We can take disparate image formats and pull that into common internal structures. We use different manipulators to process all that imagery and publish different formats for different views.”
Performance Models
Manzo predicts that future mission management systems will have unprecedented access to intelligence data as systems move away from legacy stovepipes and towards the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model. “Open standards and interoperability are underlying tenets of the PaaS architecture,” he said. “The PaaS model will allow legacy and future intelligence systems to thrive in this ecosystem by providing discrete services that act on data that is relevant to each user. The current large, hardware-dependent systems that are deployed will be replaced by a series of user-defined services that can be tailored to ensure a user or system accomplishes a specific task.” Mission planning systems will also continue to tackle the ongoing big data problem. “As time lines compress, there is a growing need and requirement to make informed decisions quickly and accurately,” said Manzo. “With all the sensors and systems currently deployed in the field, the amount of data available to analyze is overwhelming. The challenge is ensuring you are able to find the data that is relevant to your mission and act accordingly. Activity based intelligence systems are being developed to address the needle in the haystack problem. The end goal of these systems is to ensure that the right data gets to the right user at the right time for the right action.” Those problems are also the focus of Goldstein’s research at QinetiQ North America. “Dynamic planning involves updating data in real time to provide actionable intelligence for mission planning and the operation itself,” he said. “We are looking into how we can process more data up front to extract information rather than have sensors act as vacuum cleaners to collect everything and store it.” The hardware, in the form of sensors and processors, is in place to make this happen. “What we are talking about is coming up with more advanced software and more intelligent processing to handle the data,” said Goldstein. “The issues of where the processing would be done and how the data would be stored depend on different operational needs. We are looking at capabilities that can reduce the volume of data and intelligently correlate the information to deliver the minimum amount of data needed for mission planning and the mission itself as it evolves.” All of these efforts have the goal of allowing warfighters to execute their missions more efficiently. “What we all want,” said Metzger, “is to enable our warfighters to execute their missions more effectively, and to come home safely.” O
QinetiQ North America has been instrumental in developing advanced mission planning tools for the Army and special operations. The Army Aviation Integration Directorate, Aviation & Missile Command (AMCOM) and the U.S. Special Operations Mission Planning and Execution (SOMPE) Program Office awarded a contract for the continued design, development and maintenance of those tools to the company. SOMPE provides integrated mission planning software to Special Operations Command. QinetiQ North America’s mission and performance planning technology team has provided mission planning software products to Army Special Operations Command since 1994. Through subsequent contracts, QinetiQ North America developed flight performance models and performance planning calculator applications for all rotary wing aircraft assigned to the USASOC. Recently, these mission planning tools have been expanded to cover a number of C-130 Hercules flown by Air Force Special Operations Command. The company recently announced that it will demonstrate a cloudbased, software-as-a-service global performance planning solution called Stratos. This innovative capability provides consistent, accurate and up-to-the-minute data for aviation mission planning and execution. Stratos, which is also available as a traditionally installed application, models flight test and engineering data, as well as data collected from other mission-related databases, and uploads it to a secure network. Pilots and crews can retrieve the information from secure and authenticated devices, including laptops, desktops and mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. The cloud-based Stratos solution can currently be applied to rotary and fixed wing aircraft that handle tactical, transport and cargo missions. Ensuring interoperability across legacy and modern platforms remains an essential component of any deployed mission management solutions. “The ability to interconnect and, more importantly, interact with intelligence providers and their intelligence systems is the differentiator in successfully planned missions,” said Manzo. “Understanding that systems and users are deployed globally, providing timely information and capabilities across all partner domains, remains a challenge as we need to ensure our systems and solutions adhere to and enforce well-established and essential policies and protocol for information sharing. It is all about the right information at the right level at the right time.” Lockheed Martin’s Topscene has tacked the interoperability issue from a data standpoint. It starts with a master database, which is modified as missions come up. “We may have several hours of lead www.GIF-kmi.com
Platform as Service
For more information, contact GIF Editor Harrison Donnelly at harrisond@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.gif-kmi.com.
GIF 10.6 | 25
HOMELAND VECTOR Esri, Microsoft Ally for Disaster Response Management Esri and Microsoft have announced a strategic alliance to assist public and private agencies and communities around the world during disasters. Microsoft will display Esri public information maps on its cloud-based Disaster Response Incident Portal, as well as point citizens to the maps via its online outlets, such as MSN and Bing. Esri’s ArcGIS integration within a number of Microsoft’s disaster response management solutions will provide governments and leading aid organizations with a more
comprehensive set of tools to address key challenges. These growing efforts will exponentially increase situational awareness and information sharing during disasters. Benefits include rapid data dissemination to targeted audiences and the general public during a disaster; better situational awareness through Esri and Microsoft technologies for critical decision support; and more information management resource availability for governments and leading response organizations.
Visualization Tracks Historic Twisters A new, publicly accessible visualization application from IDV Solutions lets users interactively explore more than 60 years’ worth of data about tornadoes in the United States. The original Tornado Tracks infographic was featured on the IDV Solutions blog. It spread rapidly across the Web and in national media. The new interactive application, created with Visual Fusion data visualization software, lets users filter the data by month, tornado intensity, injuries, fatalities or value of property damage. Users can also navigate a timeline to view tornado activity in the U.S. on any date between January 1950 and December 2011. The application can be accessed from IDV Solutions’ website at: www.idvsolutions.com/demos/interactive-tornado-map.aspx. Tornadoes are one of many events and risks that organizations can visualize with Visual Fusion and its sister product, Visual Command Center risk analysis and response software. In the visualization, fireworks-like white trails crisscross a dark map of the U.S. Each line on the map represents an individual tornado path, and the brightness of the color denotes its intensity, with brighter strokes representing more violent storms. The application uses data from NOAA.
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Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
Camera Module Provides Military-Grade Geotagging A new module for Ricoh digital cameras provides the most advanced solution for precise, secure and portable military-grade photo/video geotagging. The thumb-sized Ricoh SE-7 GPS hardware module bolts on to the ruggedized Ricoh G700SE digital camera. This combination enables users to automatically geotag images with location information immediately useful in navigation, mapping, planning, analysis, strategy, reporting and more. The module, which sets a new standard in GPS speed and accuracy, offers a more compact and convenient geotagging solution than traditional systems requiring a laptopcamera combination. The SE-7 also generates location coordinates down to the meter, which is far more precise than consumer-grade products. For even better accuracy, the Ricoh G700SE/SE-7 combination is forward-compatible to 18-satellite GPS processing, a military standard scheduled to take effect in 2016.
Automated Support System Tracks Wildfire Response This summer, as wildfires burned relentlessly in Colorado, the Department of Defense assisted in the fight to save civilian lives and property. Two thousand miles to the East, these efforts were being coordinated using the DoD Defense, Defense Support to Civil Authorities Automated Support System (DDASS), developed by the Army Geospatial Center. DDASS is used to assist the civilian population, enabling DoD to coordinate support requests from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and, via the National Interagency Fire Center, seven other federal agencies. It also is tracking the progress, duration and expenditures of the various missions, and supporting clean-up efforts in areas of Ohio and West Virginia hit hard by recent severe weather. Even as real world events unfolded, a newer, CAC-enabled version of DDASS was being tested in a national level exercise, Vibrant Response, where DDASS helped orchestrate the actions of thousands of joint service personnel were involved in response to a simulated nuclear detonation in the Midwest. Operational since 2007, this Web-based government off-the-shelf software has been used continually in a variety of civil assistance missions, from hurricanes to tsunamis, replacing paper and file folders with an automated collaborative suite of command and control tools that enable the DoD to more effectively assist the civilian government.
www.GIF-kmi.com
The advertisers index is provided as a service to our readers. KMI cannot be held responsible for discrepancies due to last-minute changes or alterations.
GIF RESOURCE CENTER
Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
Advertisers Index BAE Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 www.baesystems.com/inscom CSSS.Net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 www.csss.net DigitalGlobe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C2 www.digitalglobe.com/smartest
Esri. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3 www.esri.com/gif General Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C4 www.gd-ais.com/sensors-to-knowledge IDGA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 www.humangeographyevent.com
Calendar September 17-19, 2012 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exhibition National Harbor, Md. www.afa.org September 25-27, 2012 Modern Day Marine Quantico, Va. www.marinemilitaryexpos.com
October 8-11, 2012 GEOINT Symposium 2012 Orlando, Fla. http://geoint2012.com October 22-24, 2012 AUSA Annual Meeting and Exhibition Washington, D.C. www.ausa.org
NEXTISSUE
October 29-November 1, 2012 MAPPS/ASPRS 2012 Specialty Conference Tampa, Fla. www.asprs.org November 8-9, 2012 GEO Huntsville Conference Huntsville, Ala. www.geohuntsville.com
Volume 10, Issue 7 October 2012
Cover and In-Depth Interview with:
Letitia A. Long
Director National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Industry Roundtable:
Industry role in intelligence enterprise • Web Mapping Services • Open Geospatial • Mobile Apps • Video Services • Intelligence Media
Bonus Distribution GEOINT 2012 Symposium Orlando, Fla. October 8-11, 2012
Insertion Order Deadline: September 14, 2012 • Ad Materials Deadline: September 21, 2012 www.GIF-kmi.com
GIF 10.6 | 27
INDUSTRY INTERVIEW
Geospatial Intelligence Forum
Colonel Jim Stockmoe (Ret.) Director for Defense Strategic Growth BAE Systems Inc.
Colonel Jack McCracken (Ret.) Director, Irregular Warfare Analysis BAE Systems Inc.
Q: What do you see as the challenge facing industry, the Department of Defense and the intelligence community? A: Over the last decade, the intelligence community has transformed and modularized, in preparation for challenges posed by asymmetric threats and harsh operating environments. Future environments will remain complex, dynamic and unforgiving. While the Department of Defense resets the force for future operations, our adversaries continue to adapt by employing unsophisticated, low-cost capabilities and techniques to deliver precision fires, conduct information operations and inflict cyber-effects. Increasingly, the threat has taken advantage of gaps and seams in unstable states, ungoverned tribal areas, cyberspace and the legal ambiguity of international waters. It is imperative that industry, DoD and the IC continue to collaborate and develop new systems and processes that allows us to stay ahead of the emerging complex hybrid threats. In this time of decreasing budgets, it is vital that this partnership follow DoD acquisition guidance and develop systems and processes that are relevant, essential and affordable. Q: How would you define the emergent and enduring operational intelligence requirements? A: The operating environment is constrained by shorter timelines based on a find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze and disseminate targeting model and a more compressed sense, decide and act decision cycle. Targeting cycles are shrinking and require increasingly more accurate geospatial precision and analytical fidelity. Therefore, the requirement for timesensitive, high-resolution tracking and realtime intelligence support to operations will continue to drive our capabilities. In the most recent conflicts, the four most significant mission contributors were full motion video, signals intelligence, document and media exploitation, and human intelligence. The nature of irregular warfare requires decentralized execution, sensitive site-exploitation tools, prosecutorial standard 28 | GIF 10.6
forensic capabilities, and a degree of crosstraining in skill sets previously found only in specialized multi-disciplined units. We must adapt to each new operational environment, which will require leveraging fundamentally different sensing capabilities and attributes, varying analytical processes and reporting thresholds. The more networked the threat, the greater the degree of temporal, geospatial, contextual and identity resolution required to defeat it. Sensing capabilities must continue to illuminate unfamiliar environments with optimized multi-disciplined intelligence sensors. Technological solutions will not always work against a low-tech hybrid threat, so we must also maintain language, regional immersion and human sensors to provide unique capacity and insights to successfully prosecute the irregular warfare requirements. We can no longer afford inefficient single sensor-analyst lash-ups. Future processing and analytical systems must be capable of leveraging multiple sensor inputs, with ubiquitous access to relevant data and unprecedented temporal, geospatial and identity precision. Enabling communications architectures must provide access to massive, integrated data sets and suitable analytical applications, processing, communications and dissemination means. Systems must perform the data analysis, leaving the analyst to provide context and act on relevant discovery. Q: What are the imperatives for the defense industry? A: In order to stay ahead of the emerging complex hybrid threat we will face in the future, it is imperative that industry adapt to the following: deliver essential, relevant and affordable end-to-end solutions and support
to worldwide mission requirements; enhance the ability to ubiquitously sense, decide and act on vital intelligence in real time; enable tracking and multi-intelligence confirmation with unprecedented temporal, geospatial, contextual and identity resolution levels; meld end-to-end capabilities—sensors, processors, analytical software, advanced skill training, and multi-disciplined analysis; enable sensors, advanced analytics, data access and data sharing to operate ubiquitously; and provide environmentally optimized multi-discipline sensor solutions and revolutionary advanced analytical and exploitation capabilities to illuminate unfamiliar environments. Also, supplement intelligence capabilities with language and cultural immersion; develop dynamic, transparent and precise collection management with real-time tracking down to the sensor and platform level; deliver comprehensive, diverse, mission-focused, essential training; supplement the force with distributed and federated advanced intelligence skills to enable real-time support to operations; connect those who sense, decide and act with ubiquitous access to synthesized data, robust multi-disciplined sensors, communications and visualization tools; and deliver decisive, essential, relevant and affordable global support to keep pace with evolving full-spectrum operations in complex operating environments against hybrid threats. Industry, DoD and the IC must adopt the lessons from the most recent conflicts while planning for adaptable mission sets in a complex environment. As we look to the future, we must remember impacts of past events. Human intelligence is a long-leadtime “sensor,� with significant commitments of human capital; we cannot allow this perishable capability to atrophy. In order to optimize our intelligence resources, we must tailor our platforms to optimize sensor phenomenology, and provide greater training emphasis to multi-disciplined analysis. Above all, the defense industry teamed with DoD and the IC must evolve as our adversaries do to meet the next complex, hybrid threat. O james.stockmoe@baesystems.com john.mccracken@baesystems.com www.GIF-kmi.com
Mission Informed, Mission Controlled Fuse sensor data with geography to deliver ISR to the edge of the battlespace. With EsriÂŽ Technology, you can analyze and view information in a common operational picture, transforming ISR data into accurate, actionable intelligence to support your mission.
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General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems is a provider of end-to-end ISR solutions to help ensure our customers have the right information when they need it to act decisively in their high stakes missions. Our domain understanding and proven experience fielding mission solutions allow us to quickly and accurately draw actionable intelligence from Big Data. Taking an open architecture approach to capability and systems integration, we provide customers with seamless, remote access to missioncritical intelligence at any time from the enterprise to the edge.
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