MGT 7-1.indd - KMI Media Group

The Magazine of the National Intelligence Community 

Defense 

Analyst 

Robert 

Cardillo 

Deputy Director 

for Analysis 

DIA 

Cloud Computing 

✯ LIDAR ✯ Joint Geospatial Enterprise Services 

Large-Format Printers and Scanners ✯ Defense CI/HUMINT Center 

Special Operations GEOINT 

www.MGT-kmi.com 

February 2009 

Volume 7, Issue 1

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MILITARY GEOSPATIAL TECHNOLOGY 

FEBRUARY 2009 

VOLUME 7 • ISSUE 1 

FEATURES COVER / Q&A 

6 

10 

14 

24 

26 

32 

The Big Picture 

For geospatial users, the ability to move smoothly between 

the worlds of electronic and physical images—to produce 

high-quality prints from complex and detailed digital 

images, and vice versa—is essential. To meet those needs, 

a wide range of printers and scanners using advanced 

technology is available. 

By Erin Flynn Jay 

Computing Clouds Cast Geospatial Vision 

Cloud computing, the increasingly popular IT concept that 

uses a cloud to symbolize the Internet as the data and 

application services provider, shielding users from the 

underlying complexity, is extending its reach into the world 

of geospatial intelligence. 

By Cheryl Gerber 

New Light From LIDAR 

Advances in technology are facilitating the use of light 

detection and ranging (LIDAR) data and helping to expand 

its use into new areas, including simulation and training. 

By Peter A. Buxbaum 

In the Human Domain 

Two complementary disciplines, which both operate in the 

human domain, were recently merged into the new Defense 

Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center. 

Geospatial Edge for the Warfighter 

To better enable our warfighters to navigate today’s 

complex operational environment, the Army Topographic 

Engineering Center developed the Joint-Geospatial 

Enterprise Services program to build a bridge among the 

warfighter, the command center and the national level. 

By Jamal B. Beck and Dan Visone 

Special Operations GEOINT 

The U.S. Special Operations Command NGA Support 

Team is located at MacDill Air Force Base, the home of its 

mission partner. The team’s reach, however, extends much 

farther because of the worldwide mission that it supports. 

By Juanita T. Hartbarger 

21 

DEPARTMENTS 

2 

4 

18 

34 

35 

Robert Cardillo 

Deputy Director for Analysis 

Defense Intelligence Agency 

Editor’s Perspective 

People/Program Notes 

Industry Raster 

Homeland Vector 

Calendar, Directory 

INDUSTRY INTERVIEW 

36 

James Dolan 

Senior Vice President and General Manager 

Overwatch Geospatial Systems

MILITARY GEOSPATIAL 

TECHNOLOGY 

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 FEBRUARY 2009 

The Magazine of the National 

Intelligence Community 

EDITORIAL 

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ART & DESIGN 

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SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION 

Military Geospatial Technology 

ISSN 1552-7905 

is published six times a year by KMI Media Group. 

All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission is 

strictly forbidden. © Copyright 2009. 

Military Geospatial Technology is free to members of the 

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The House and Senate should have specific subcommittees with jurisdiction 

over federal geospatial activities, a new coalition of geospatial organizations 

has urged congressional leaders. But geospatial issues should be 

designated to existing subcommittees in each chamber, rather than creating 

new stand-alone panels, the Coalition of Geospatial Organizations (COGO) 

said recently. 

“We want to make certain that Congress has an effective structure for 

oversight and legislation over the increasing federal government activity in 

geospatial technologies, and its relationship with state, regional, local and 

tribal government, universities and the private sector,” wrote Cy Smith, COGO chairman and the 

Oregon state GIS coordinator. 

A focal point is needed, the groups contend, because responsibility for oversight and authorization 

of federal geospatial activities is currently spread among more than 30 House and Senate 

committees and subcommittees. More than 40 federal agencies include geospatial activities as part 

of their mission. 

COGO noted that the congressional committee structure also contributes to the inefficiencies 

in the executive branch, and provided recommendations for two committees in both the House and 

Senate with a direct oversight of geospatial activities that could be logical homes for a geospatial 

subcommittee. They are the House Committee on Natural Resources or the House Committee on 

Oversight and Government Reform, and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources 

or the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. 

The groups’ concerns are valid, although I tend to be skeptical of organizational solutions to 

issues of priorities and resources. And military and intelligence geospatial topics by their nature 

will largely remain under the sway of the national security structure on Capitol Hill. 

Even so, this sounds like a useful way to raise 

the profile of geospatial technology as a cross-cutting 

discipline meeting a wide range of military and civilian 

missions. 

KMI MEDIA GROUP FAMILY OF MAGAZINES AND WEBSITES 

Military Medical/ 

CBRN Technology 

www.MMT-kmi.com 

Special Operations 

Technology 

Military Geospatial 

Technology 


Military Information 

Technology 

Military Logistics 

Forum 

www.MLF-kmi.com 

Military Training 

Technology 

Military Space & 

Missile Forum 

www.MSMF-kmi.com 

Military Advanced 

Education 

www.SOTECH-kmi.com www.MIT-kmi.com www.MT2-kmi.com 

www.MAE-kmi.com

There are reasons why every U.S. Command 

chooses Overwatch Geospatial Systems 

Overwatch Geospatial Systems is the most mission-tested 

and production-proven solution provider in the industry. 

Our geospatial software and services solutions are being 

used to improve mission decision support by every major 

program within DoD. No other geospatial intelligence 

vendor is as deeply or broadly engaged in 

supporting the military’s global war on terror. 

trust. 

ease of use. 

reliability. 

mission success. 

REMOTeVIEW 

ELT/SERIES 

INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS 

 

V-TRAC 

FEATURE ANALYST 

LIDAR ANALYST 

URBAN ANALYST 

www.overwatch.geospatial.com/mgt1

Following a great 2008—highlighted by growth in both the number of magazine titles and in overall 

revenue, KMI Media Group is preparing for an equally dynamic 2009 that will center on continuing 

strong growth with our eight print magazines and our new and expanding online capabilities. Indicative 

of that growth, KMI Media Group is proud to announce several new additions to our staff. 

Kirk Brown – Vice President of Sales and Marketing 

Kirk Brown has more than 25 years of media sales and management experience 

in the defense, military and government markets. After graduating 

from Georgetown University with a B.S. in business administration in 1979, 

he joined Army Times Publishing Company (ATPCO) and was soon promoted 

to the national sales staff and held successively more responsible positions at 

ATPCO including computer advertising manager. In 2001 he went to work 

as the assistant general manager for the FOSE trade show at PostNewsweek 

Tech Media and became the general manager for the Professional Services 

Expo. In 2004, Kirk returned to ATPCO and became director of strategic 

accounts for Defense News. Just prior to joining KMI Media Group, Kirk was with O’Keeffe & Company. 

At KMI Media Group, Kirk will manage the advertising sales team as well as the marketing department. 

He will also liaison with many of the major accounts and help develop new areas of business. 

His e-mail address is kirkb@kmimediagroup.com. 

4 | MGT 7.1 

KMI Media Group 

Continues to Expand 

Nate Whitfield – MLF Account Executive 

Nate Whitfield joins the Military Logistics Forum sales team with an 

extensive background in sales and sales management. MLF has experienced 

tremendous growth and the response to the title has been so 

demanding that an increase in the sales team was mandated. Nate will 

be responsible for advertising sales and the liaison with potential clients 

wanting to reach the military logistics community. His e-mail address is 

natew@kmimediagroup.com. 

Colleen Marrello – MIT Air Force Account Executive 

Colleen Marrello joins KMI Media Group as the Air Force account 

executive for Military Information Technology. She was previous at L-3 

Communications where she was help desk team lead supporting over 

3,500 Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff. She has more than 15 years 

of experience concentrating on first tier help support and is a Certified 

Help Desk Team Lead through Help Desk Institute. Her e-mail address is 

colleenm@kmimediagroup.com. 

Jennifer Devlin – MSMF Huntsville Staff Writer 

Jennifer Devlin joins KMI Media Group as our on-location staff writer in 

Huntsville, Ala., for Military Space & Missile Forum magazine. Jennifer is 

an established writer and author with numerous books to her credit. She 

is well-known and recognized within the space and missile community in 

Huntsville and will be covering news, events and feature stories from the 

perspective of being on the ground there. Her e-mail address is 

jenniferd@kmimediagroup.com. 

Compiled by KMI Media Group staff 

people 

James Dolan 

Textron Systems has appointed 

James Dolan to senior vice 

president and general manager of 

its Overwatch Geospatial Systems, 

effective February 1, 2009, following 

the retirement of current senior vice 

president and general manager Kirk 

Brown. Prior to joining Overwatch 

Geospatial, Dolan was the operations 

director for General Dynamics-AIS 

Geospatial Intelligence Systems. 

Over his 31-year career, he has held 

leadership positions of significant 

operational, business development 

and program management 

responsibility within several organizations 

supporting the geospatial 

intelligence community. Dolan is a 

graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy 

and served as a naval intelligence 

officer in a variety of operational 

intelligence assignments. 

James Hoffman 

ObjectFX, a geospatial solutions 

provider that works closely with the 

federal government, has appointed 

James Hoffman as senior account 

executive for intelligence programs, 

responsible for coordinating all 

business within the intelligence 

community. 

www.MGT-kmi.com

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* With i1 Color Technology from GretagMacbeth. ** Display-permanence rating for interior displays away from direct sunlight by HP Image Permanence Lab and Wilhelm Imaging Research, Inc. on a range of HP media. For details: www.hp.com/go/supplies/printpermanence. © Copyright 2009 

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as 

constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

LARGE-FORMAT PRINTERS AND 

SCANNERS ARE KEY TOOLS FOR 

MEETING GEOSPATIAL USERS’ 

NEEDS FOR PRECISE AND 

ACCURATE IMAGING. 

BY ERIN FLYNN JAY 

MGT CORRESPONDENT 

For geospatial analysts and users, the ability to move smoothly between 

the worlds of electronic and physical images—to produce high-quality prints 

from complex and detailed digital images, and vice versa—is essential. To meet 

those needs, a wide range of printers and scanners using advanced technology 

is available. 

The industry uses large-format printers to produce quality and accurate 

color maps, charts and high-resolution imagery from satellites and aircraft. 

Scanners are used for electronically capturing maps and charts, and map 

overlay for geographical analysis. 

High-color fidelity is important when scanning difficult GIS maps containing 

light or dark shades of color. Users may be working with old or fragile 

documents or maps that have folds or imperfections, so it’s also important to 

use scanning technology that can scan and capture images properly. 

3-D printers, meanwhile, enable customers to produce quality terrain, 

urban and subsurface maps quickly. When used to print GIS data, they provide 

a color terrain map, not just a 2-D image. 

One company that is heavily involved in this field is HP, which offers a broad 

portfolio of large-format color printing technologies and solutions. There are 

a number of HP solutions available to meet the 

needs of professionals working in the geospatial 

industry. 

“These solutions should be selected based 

on the size of the work group and the volume 

of printing that needs to be fulfilled as well as 

the type of printing applications that will be 

produced,” said Eric DuPaul, U.S. federal government 

Designjet specialist, HP Imaging and 

Printing Division. 

HP Designjet printers are being used by the 

Eric DuPaul 

geospatial community to produce high-quality, 

eric_dupaul@hp.com highly accurate color maps, plats, charts and 

high-resolution imagery from satellites and aircraft. “With the federal government 

moving to a ‘distribute and print as needed’ model from a ‘print and 

distribute’ model, HP Designjet printers are helping to cut costs and reduce 

waste with quick print-on-demand capabilities,” DuPaul said. 

With built-in technology designed to allow geospatial users to easily print 

from applications such as ESRI ArcMap and Adobe PDF, HP Designjet printers 

do not require special modifications to meet the needs of the geospatial 

community. Such features as an easy-to-use print driver, built-in job management 

tools, user-changeable supplies and HP’s 

Advanced Profiling Solution ensure a great customer 

experience right out of the box, he said. 

After working with the federal geospatial 

community for more than a decade, HP has carefully 

considered this customer group’s needs 

when designing its printers. For example, all 

HP Designjet printers that include hard drives 

support HP Secure Disk Erase and Secure 

Sanitized Erase, as required under the Department 

of Defense’s 5220-22.M specification. 

MGT 7.1 | 7

Secure Disk Erase and Secure Sanitized 

Erase allow the erasing of information from 

the hard drive in a secure mode, which 

makes it impossible to have this information 

recovered. HP has also worked with customers 

to develop special driver and job submission 

routines that create an easier user 

experience. 

MEDIA VERSATILITY 

Products that are currently being used 

in the government geospatial market include 

the HP Designjet 110plus nr printer and the 

HP Designjet 130 nr printer. These printers 

are solutions for individual users who require 

media versatility and prints that range from 

letter size up to 24 inches by 36 inches, with 

rich, vibrant colors. 

Several government customers 

utilize these two platforms 

in their mobile units, 

allowing users to operate in 

the distribute-and-print environment 

versus the printand-distribute 

environment, 

DuPaul said. 

The HP Designjet T610 

printer is good for individuals 

and small work groups that 

require sharp line accuracy 

and excellent color quality as 

well as the ability to print on 

various media, ranging in size from A to E 

and greater. The HP Designjet T610 is currently 

in use with government customers, 

who demand high-quality output in a priceconscious 

environment. 

“Working in conjunction with case maker 

Deployable Systems, we have been able to create 

mobile solutions that allow these machines 

to be packed and moved with minimum setup 

and tear-down time,” DuPaul said. 

Another solution, the HP Designjet 

T1100 printer, is aimed at medium-sized 

work groups that need to print high-quality 

maps, renderings and presentations with 

excellent line quality. This printer series 

includes 24-inch and 44-inch models and 

allows several users to print and process at 

the same time for increased map production. 

Numerous agencies have chosen this 

printer series as a standard in their GIS 

environments. 

The HP Designjet 4000 and 4500 printers, 

which are HP’s flagship color production 

large-format printers, are capable of producing 

two D-sized line drawings in less than one 

minute. Designed for large work groups, the 


Bob Honn 

honnr@oceusa.com 

HP Designjet 4500 is a dual-roll system that, 

when grouped with the HP Designjet 4500 

stacker, allows users to print large amounts 

of maps unattended. 

The HP Designjet Z6100 printer series 

is available for large work groups requiring 

high-resolution color maps, mockups 

and displays that can be printed for outdoor 

use on materials such as Tyvek and vinyl, 

DuPaul explained. Designed to handle peak 

workloads, this printer is exceptionally fast, 

with print speeds of up to 1,134 square feet 

per hour, or 35 seconds per D-sized page. In 

addition to speed, the HP Designjet Z6100 

features outstanding print quality, media versatility 

and advanced color accuracy. 

PRINTING COMPLEX FILES 

Océ offers large-format 

printers for GIS applications— 

the TCS500 inkjet print/copy/ 

scan system, TCS300 inkjet 

color printer and ColorWave 

600 printer, as well as the TC4 

and CS4300 series scanners 

for scanning of monochrome 

and color documents. 

The primary purpose for 

the geospatial industry is to 

render high-quality prints 

from very complex and 

detailed images, said Bob 

Honn, director of product marketing for the 

Wide Format Printing Systems division of 

Océ North America. GIS images and files are 

so large and complex that printing them can 

often take an extraordinary amount of time. 

“Océ devices, with their powerful controllers, 

can not only quickly process the 

files for printing, but while this is happening, 

allow other users to print on the system,” 

Honn said. 

Productivity is often limited because traditional 

systems only have one roll to print 

to. Océ devices can be loaded with up to 

six rolls of media depending on the device, 

again increasing productivity by enabling 

users to print onto the right type and size of 

media and change rolls without needing to 

take the system offline. 

Océ devices have built-in intelligence and 

back-channel communication to the user, 

letting them plan and prioritize their printing 

around the available time of the printer. 

“The Océ TCS500 provides a flexible 

technology growth path with the addition 

of large-format color copying and scanning 

capabilities as the workflow requires, protect- 

ing the initial investment and enhancing 

options as needs change,” Honn said. 

New technology in the ColorWave 

600 printer enables color printing on economical, 

uncoated plain or recycled paper, 

and Tyvek for instantly dry, water-fast prints. 

It also prints with no ozone, odor or fine powder 

emissions, via a TonerPearls color toner. 

For scanning applications, users may be 

working with old or fragile documents or 

maps that have folds or other imperfections. 

“It’s important in such cases to use the proper 

scanning technology that can scan and capture 

the parts of the image that don’t lay flat 

on the glass plate with a sufficiently large 

depth of field,” said Honn. “It’s also helpful 

when users can operate the scanner without 

spending extensive time creating the proper 

settings for each job.” 

Customizable job templates for scan-tofile 

operations can significantly help streamline 

workflow. 

The Power Logic controller, the brains 

behind the TCS300 and TCS500, comes standard 

with 1 GB of memory and an 80 GB 

hard drive, with 40 GB for set processing 

and 40 GB for spooling, thus essentially 

taking the load off the application and the 

network. In the ColorWave 600 printer, the 

PowerM controller and optional PowerM Plus 

controller offer 1 GB or 2 GB of memory 

respectively, and an 80 GB hard drive or dual 

160 GB plus 320 GB hard disk capacity. As a 

result, the Océ systems can process complex 

color files quickly and reliably. As a printeronly 

configuration, files are processed and 

printed simultaneously. When scanning is 

required, files are processing, printing, copying 

and scanning all at once, creating valuable 

efficiencies. 

The company’s TCS printers provide up 

to three online rolls of media, while the 

ColorWave 600 printer offers up to six rolls 

of online media. Automatic roll switching 

selects the proper media based on the type of 

media loaded. Mid- to high-volume users may 

load multiple rolls of the same media to allow 

for longer runs and continuous production. 

The TCS printers also offer an optional 

high-volume stacker for unattended or overnight 

production. With these printers, users 

can easily change media and ink tanks while 

the system is printing without ever having to 

stop production. 

With Print Assistant (ColorWave 600 

printer), users no longer have to think about 

what print setting will give the best quality 

result for their file in the fastest time. The system 

makes this decision, choosing between 


the available print settings based on the file 

content. 

GIS operators must be able to manage 

the print queue to meet various users’ 

requirements and to ensure that priority 

print requests are completed first. Both the 

Océ controllers, coupled with Océ queue 

management software, allow a GIS operator 

to view the print queue to check the status 

of a job, view the number of sets and pages, 

reprint processed jobs, and check the ink 

levels and media type/size currently loaded in 

the printer. With password protection, select 

users can change settings of a printed job or 

manage jobs, such as placing jobs on hold and 

prioritizing rush jobs for urgent needs. 

3-D PRINTERS 

Z Corp.’s 3-D printers enable customers 

to output high-quality terrain, urban and subsurface 

maps in hours at very low cost. The 

technology improves the way clients use GIS 

data to communicate and enables them to analyze 

critical elements with quick, inexpensive 

and easily reproducible 3-D 

models. 

“Sometimes we get 

grouped in with 2-D printer 

manufacturers. We make 

3-D printers, not 2-D printers,” 

said Scott Harmon, vice 

president of business development. 

“So if you use them to 

print GIS data you get a color 

terrain map, not just a 2-D 

image.” 

The company’s large format 

printer has a build volume of 10 inches by 

15 inches in the x-y matrix and 8 inches in the z 

direction. 

They have been used in 

an array of different GIS 

applications. “It was used 

for security planning in the 

2005 presidential inauguration, 

and to monitor water 

levels, flooding and evacuation 

routes after Hurricane 

Katrina,” said Harmon. “It is 

routinely used by large construction 

firms for site planning 

and visualization.” 

Harmon finds that 3-D 

prints are effective at communicating 

information, especially to nonexperts. 

“A GIS professional can look at a 2-D 

satellite image and understand clearly what’s 

going on. But there are lots of people in the 

Scott Harmon 

sharmon@zcorp.com 

Dan Bennett 

db@contex.com 

HP Designjet printers are being used by the geospatial community to produce high-quality, highly accurate color maps, plats, charts 

and high-resolution imagery. [Photo courtesy of HP] 

world who aren’t GIS pros who could use 

a little extra help visualizing the lay of the 

land,” he said. 

PRECISION SCANNING 

As for scanning needs, the 

new Contex HD scanners— 

especially the 36-inch and 

42-inch models—would be 

a good recommendation for 

work in the GIS environment, 

suggested Dan Bennett, director 

of service operations for 

North and South America at 

Contex. 

Contex has developed a 

technology called Accuracy Lens Enhancement 

(ALE), which is an electronic correction 

of spherical errors in CCD-based camera 

systems. ALE corrects the 

anomaly that the pixels looking 

through the outer edges 

of the camera lens tend to be 

more elliptical than those pixels 

looking through the center 

of the camera lens. 

“Geospatial imaging is a 

very precise environment that 

requires high accuracy,” said 

Bennett. “The ALE technology 

maintains high accuracy when 

measuring any two points 

across the image. The results 

of ALE provide precise geometric accuracy of 

0.1 percent or better.” 

Contex scanners are used for scanning 

a variety of maps and geospatial charts. 

“Because of the high-precision scanning and 

resulting high geometric accuracy, our scans 

can be used for map overlay, where scanned 

maps containing varying information of a 

certain geographical area are sometimes layered 

[one map upon another] for geographical 

analysis,” said Bennett. “In order for this geographical 

analysis to be valid, reference points 

from each map must be positioned and registered 

in a precise manner. Therefore, scanning 

accuracy is a critical component in this 

process.” 

Contex products have been used in these 

environments and processes for years and have 

been recommended for use by GIS industry 

committees and consultants. “Our products 

have been proven to be the best solution when 

wide-format scanning is required,” said Bennett. 

“Our scanners have been developed over 

the years from market feedback, experienced 

engineering development using high-quality 

parts and state-of-the-art manufacturing 

processes.” 

The high color fidelity of Contex’s 48-bit 

CCDs provide accurate color reproduction 

when scanning difficult GIS maps containing 

very light or dark shades of color. “Many 

GIS maps contain very fine lines and other 

details with slight color variations. The 48-bit 

CCD provides ample means to differentiate 

between these small but sometimes very 

important details,” Bennett said. ✯ 

Contact Editor Harrison Donnelly at 

harrisond@kmimediagroup.com. For more 

information related to this subject, search our 

archives at www.MGT-kmi.com. 

www.MGT-kmi.com MGT 7.1 | 9

BY CHERYL GERBER, MGT CORRESPONDENT 



Cloud computing, the increasingly 

popular IT concept that uses a cloud to 

symbolize the Internet as the data and application 

services provider, shielding users 

from the underlying complexity, is extending 

its reach into the world 

of geospatial intelligence. 

The National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency envisions establishing 

a GEOINT distributed 

computing cloud, contained 

within a larger, high-performance 

cloud, to achieve many 

of the architectural objectives 

in the Department of Defense 

and intelligence community 

missions. 

Brian O’Toole 

NGA’s interest in otoole.brian@geoeye.com 

virtualization technology for 

storage, networks and server processing, 

and its alignment with service-oriented 

architecture (SOA) objectives advocated by 

DoD and the director of national intelligence, 

are paving the way toward consolidated 

cloud computing strategies for geospatial 

information. 

This comes at a time when geospatial 

image providers, such as GeoEye and Digital 

Globe, have experienced swelling demands. 

“The key trends are speed and volume. The 

volumes of data will continue to rise, along 

with the demand for increased response time 


and larger, higher resolution areas,” said Brian 

O’Toole, GeoEye chief technology officer. 

DoD and intelligence clients not only 

require more images faster; they also want 

better, more useful images. “The military 

wants larger areas that can be 

accommodated by one image, 

so we need to put multiple 

images together without any 

visible break lines between 

the images, to produce 

orthomosaics and orthoimages. 

The value-add requires 

additional processing of the 

images into the equivalent 

of maps,” said Ray Helmering, 

GeoEye vice president of 

engineering. 

Such volume, speed and 

variety of data presuppose the need for highperformance 

computing and 

easier access to information. 

“We’ve seen a growing 

trend by the military and 

intelligence community 

to employ Internet-based 

solutions for Web hosting of 

geospatial data,” said Stephen 

Wood, vice president of 

business operations and U.S. 

defense sales, Digital Globe. 

“The sharing of geospatial data 

and the setting up of easily 

Joe Kraska 

accessible geospatial cloud communities is 

where we are headed.” 

Cloud computing essentially utilizes 

virtualization and SOA in a networked, high 

performance, highly scalable and easily 

resizable computing paradigm, adding fault 

tolerance for guaranteed reliability and other 

“ilities,” as NGA refers to them. Information 

is stored on network servers, but cached 

temporarily on demand in client environments 

from desktops to wireless handhelds. Similar 

to comparing intranets with the Internet, 

private clouds provide better security than 

public clouds. 

Because many terms get bandied about 

when the subject of cloud computing is raised, 

experts like to clarify. “As some technology 

experts believe, virtualization gives you the 

illusion of your own computer, while cloud 

computing gives you the illusion of your 

own data center,” said Joe 

Kraska, manager, federal data 

center research and prototype 

operations, BAE Systems. 

“And grid computing is more 

static, while cloud is elastic 

and grows.” 

However, elasticity and 

growth raise the need for 

sophisticated security, an area 

BAE is now addressing. “We 

are looking at ways to deploy 

private clouds that would 

satisfy our customers’ security 

requirements,” said Kraska. 

VARYING IMPLEMENTATIONS 

Like the industry’s varying emphases 

on the definition, many different cloud 

implementations will likely emerge, given 

the recognized IT benefits. “Cloud computing 

virtualization provides an IT avenue to 

achieve many of the architectural ‘ilities’ that 

our customer missions require: reliability, 

availability, scalability, agility, interoperability 

and so on. SOA objectives are leading our 

communities of interest to drive toward 

interoperable, Web-enabled services offerings, 

potentially allocated and bundled to reflect 

centers of excellence,” said Christopher 

Cuppan, National System for Geospatial- 

Intelligence (NSG) chief architect, NGA Office 

of the Chief Information Officer. 

Many of NGA’s worldwide data providers 

are, in themselves, discrete centers of 

excellence that could reside on a cloud platform, 

collectively forming clouds within a 

larger cloud. “Our customers require seam- 

MGT 7.1 | 11

less access to this worldwide heterogeneous 

GEOINT data domain for posting, discovery, 

retrieval, synthesis/integration, exploitation 

and value-added update posting. They 

also require minimal latency in the content 

currency of this data domain to include 

value-added post-processing. Virtualization, 

thus cloud architectures, provides an excellent 

architectural pattern—albeit more of a 

metaphor—to satisfy these customer needs,” 

Cuppan said. 

Cuppan’s caveat—that cloud computing 

is still more of a metaphor than a finite construct—rests 

primarily on the lack of security 

and standards for this fast-growing but 

nascent technology. “Our concerns regarding 

security are sizable. As the myriad missions of 

the NSG often operate within multiple high 

security domains, we cannot have our data 

literally ‘disappear into the clouds’ when it is 

processed or exploited,” he said. 

This gives rise yet again to the time-honored 

IT quandary about the balance of security 

and flexibility. With cloud computing, 

the quagmire looms ever larger, given the 

lofty but still uncertain promise of this new 

framework to deliver concurrently not just 

flexibility and reliability, but also accessibility, 

security and the highest possible scalability. 

“Securing our data/knowledge may in fact 

impede accruing the processing benefits of 

the cloud. Conversely, the absence of processing 

control responsibilities levied on users—a 

desired attribute of cloud architecture—may 

undermine our requisite positive security 

controls,” Cuppan said. 

As a result, cloud architectures will levy 

heavy responsibilities on their supporting 

infrastructures, which will define and probably 

innovate the way secure, standardsbased 

cloud computing is structured for the 

defense and intelligence community. “The 

requirement to implement comprehensive 

data, attribute-level security and digitalrights-management 

capabilities appears certain. 

Thus, not just any infrastructure may 

be eligible for cloud processing membership. 

This may certainly narrow down viable extant 

infrastructure candidates,” he said. 

A flurry of commercial market activity 

revolving around cloud computing this year 

raised high expectations, while the realities of 

what it will take to deliver on them remain to 

be seen. “Cloud computing as a technology 

framework has evolved so quickly from a perfect 

storm—a lack of power, space and funding 

that focused people to share and optimize. 

It exploded to prominence before anybody 

had enough time to codify the standards and 


security for it, but industry is 

working quickly to figure out 

the solutions to these challenges,” 

said Robert Ames, 

director, deputy chief technology 

officer, IBM Federal. 

Prominent commercial 

cloud introductions in 

2008 included Microsoft’s 

Windows Azure, an offering 

that competes with Amazon. 

com’s Elastic Compute Cloud 

with the flexible combination 

of software and services 

that characterize cloud computing. 

Google introduced 

the Google App Engine for 

dynamic scalable Web serving, 

storage and automated load 

balancing. Amazon, meanwhile, 

announced Amazon 

CloudFront, a self-serve, payas-you-go 

Web service for content 

delivery with low latency 

and high data-transfer speeds. 

STANDARDS GROUPS 

While industry developments 

outpace standards and 

security progress, established 

standards groups have delivered 

the technology on which 

NGA operates. “The NSG is 

based heavily on standards 

and services for geospatial 

information discovery, access 

and general transactions as 

published by the Open Geospatial 

Consortium (OCG),” 

said Cuppan. 

Transactional services 

that are part of the OGC’s 

Spatial Data Infrastructure 

(SDI) and Sensor Web Enablement 

(SWE) standards suites 

assume highly distributed 

Web-based data and metadata, 

databases, sensors, collectors 

and processing capabilities 

across the NSG. As a result, 

NGA clients can discover and 

access information, such as sensor-to-sensor 

syndicated alerts, without any awareness 

of the underlying infrastructure delivering 

this capability, one characteristic of cloud 

computing. 

Meanwhile, the Open Grid Forum (OGF) 

has been developing international standards 

Robert Ames 

roames@us.ibm.com 

Sam Bacharach 

sbacharach@opengeospatial.org 

George Percivall 

gpercivall@opengeospatial.org 

Bob Lozano 

bob@appistry.com 

to hasten the adoption of grid 

computing and other distributed 

technologies such as 

virtualization, SOA and cloud 

technologies. IBM, Intel and 

Microsoft are members of the 

OGF. 

The OGC has been working 

with the OGF to develop 

standards for cloud computing 

in geospatial technology. 

The two groups developed Web 

Processing Service (WPS), a 

standard method of workflow 

to process raw data into more 

valuable information for decision-support 

systems. 

“WPS will identify a feature 

in an image, for example, 

to make the image smarter 

and more relevant to the task. 

It will grow image processing 

in the geospatial market,” said 

George Percivall, OGC chief 

architect. 

The OGC adopted WPS as a 

standard last year. “We’re now 

close to finishing the work on 

WPS,” said Sam Bacharach, 

OGC executive director. 

Industry acceptance of 

WPS is widely expected. “WPS 

would be an element of any 

geospatial compute processing 

cloud,” said Kraska. “But 

with that standard, you still 

don’t have a cloud. You still 

need self-healing and automated 

management to have 

a cloud.” 

There is also a difference 

between standards for interoperability 

and interaction. “The 

OGC has provided good standards 

for application-to-application 

interoperability. But 

standards for application-toapplication 

interaction are the 

necessary ground-up building 

of the SOA environment for 

cloud computing in geospatial,” 

said Bob Lozano, chief 

strategist and founder of Appistry. 

As with most geospatial information 

and image processing, WPS requires significant 

compute power, which is where 

cloud computing could support the process. 

“Data compositing as performed by WPS 

may be computationally intensive and need 


to be spread across commodity hardware 

and software grids to enable its near realtime 

completion and delivery,” said Cuppan. 

“Cloud architecture concepts may allow us 

to address processing transients and the 

fluid plug-and-play objectives of coalition 

operations.” 

VIRTUALIZATION MIDDLEWARE 

Meanwhile, industry innovations and 

implementations plow ahead, not waiting 

for the standards. One example is the way 

in which GeoEye and Appistry are working 

together to cloud-enable key applications 

using Appistry’s Enterprise Application Fabric 

(EAF) to create a fault-tolerant cloud. 

“We’re using the Appistry EAF fabric to move 

to a distributed processing system,” Helmering 

said. 

GeoEye supplies the algorithms and key 

software, while Appistry provides the EAF 

software. “We built frameworks on top of 

EAF that are customized for geospatial use. 

GeoEye is using it in production now for 

sensor data coming from a variety of satellites, 

taking raw data and creating refined 

product,” said Lozano. 

“We’ve gone from prototyping to building 

real software,” he said. “We’re cloudenabling 

GeoEye’s product that massages 

incoming data so they can run their applications 

on private clouds to achieve higher 

scales more quickly at lower infrastructure 

and operational costs by using off-the-shelf 

hardware.” 

EAF is virtualization middleware that 

is highly scalable and aggregated, pulling 

together different views of hardware 

to appear as one. “A key to cloud-enabling 

applications is how to aggregate the underlying 

resources, whether physical or virtual,” 

Lozano noted. 

EAF achieves fault tolerance by automatically 

reassigning work in the event of a 

processing problem. 

Lozano said EAF can cloud-enable applications 

easily in some cases by simply adding 

application metadata to tell EAF what the 

target application is doing. “When the situation 

is more complex, it includes [application 

programming interface] calls that are 

independent of the cloud,” he said. 

Lozano believes a missing ingredient that 

is essential to the success of cloud computing 

is the ability to make applications feel native 

to the world of the cloud. 

Using EAF is one way to cloud-enable 

applications. Another is Hadoop, an open 

source software platform for writing applications 

that process massive amounts of data 

on large clusters of commodity hardware. 

Hadoop uses the Hadoop Distributed File 

Systems (HDFS) to implement MapReduce, 

which divides applications into many blocks 

of work, while HDFS creates multiple replications 

of data blocks to achieve reliability. 

HDFS then places replications of data on 

nodes in a cluster. 

NGA has studied Hadoop as a blueprint 

by which to take an OGC geospatial metadata 

standard called Catalog Web Service (CSW) 

and distribute it broadly. “CSW backend 

implementation details that enable clients to 

discover data and related processing services 

might be implemented using HDFS, which 

are central cloud processing constructs for 

Google and Yahoo. The CSW indices may be 

distributed across a broad computational lattice,” 

said Cuppan. 

Both Amazon and Google have technology 

similar to Hadoop to cloud-enable 

applications, but it is kept proprietary as a 

way to encourage customers to bring their 

data to Amazon or Google’s cloud computing 

platform. Google’s Big Table is a compressed, 

high-performance RDMS built partly on 

the Google File System, which Google App 

Engine customers can access. 

However fast and petabyte-scale the 

Google Big Table database is, developers 

could need to rewrite their Big Table applications. 

“If you write your application to make 

use of Big Table, it’s proprietary and you can’t 

redeploy the application extensively without 

rewriting it,” Lozano said, adding that 

Appistry is working on a standard approach 

to minimize source code changes made in 

order to cloud-enable an application. 

FILE MANAGEMENT 

File management and security are essential 

issues with large global geospatial files. 

To ease existing file management issues 

resulting from complex, multiple network 

attached storage (NAS) or storage area network 

(SAN) systems that might not scale 

well, it is usually necessary to integrate storage 

and file systems. 

Establishing a common file system that 

is shared by Windows, Linux and Unix users 

can achieve seamless interoperability that 

carves a path to cloud computing. “In Windows, 

you would see a shared drive, like a D 

drive, that looks the same to one as another 

regardless of the underlying platform,” said 

IBM’s Ames. 

In one example, IBM’s existing, tested 

technology, the Scale Out File System 

(SOFS), accomplishes this objective. The 

SOFS is an NAS/grid system that manages 

and broadly scales out NAS environments, 

in part by optimizing storage. SOFS utilizes 

the company’s General Parallel File System, 

a highly secure, long-tested and established 

high performance computing system. 

IBM middleware, the Websphere Federation 

Server, contains an embedded RDMS 

and integrates remote, diverse data and content 

sources, making them appear as if 

they were the same database. The technology 

contains security management and user 

authentication. The SAIC Common Criteria 

Testing Lab successfully tested the security 

of Websphere Federation Server running on 

AIX and Red Hat Linux. 

“Using Websphere Federation Server, a 

user writes a single query, WRS then optimizes 

the query, sends the request across 

the heterogeneous information stores, which 

then joins the necessary information and 

sends it back to the user,” explained Ames. 

There is no question that the desire to 

achieve improved exploitation of available 

intelligence is leading to consolidated cloud 

strategies for geospatial information. 

“We have all these intelligence capabilities 

across the globe. It makes sense to integrate 

by cross-tipping or cross information 

providing so analysts could discover other 

capabilities. One example is combining imagery 

intelligence with signals intelligence. If 

you have a fixed high resolution image from 

a given time and a moving, lower resolution 

image, then it’s stronger to have the fixed 

image plus the moving image to acquire a 

much richer intelligence view,” said Ames. 

“By putting the information silos into an 

integrated information cloud, you can make 

the information much more usable, as it is 

easier to get to.” 

While NGA takes cloud computing seriously, 

the agency doesn’t have any unrealistic 

expectations about how easy it 

will be to deliver. “Placing GEOINT in an 

agile, high-performance computational 

cloud is certainly part of the strategy. However, 

that objective remains a vision and 

not yet committed to through the establishment 

of tangible acquisition programs,” said 

Cuppan. ✯ 







Advances in technology are 

facilitating the use of light detection 

and ranging (LIDAR) data and 

helping to expand its use into new 

areas, including simulation and 

training. 

The U.S. military has been 

accumulating a great deal of 

LIDAR data from aircraft and terrestrial 

vehicles in Iraq and plans 

to do the same in Afghanistan. 

Forces are using BuckEye, a system 

developed under the auspices 

BY PETER A. BUXBAUM 

MGT CORRESPONDENT 

of the Army Topographic Engineering 

Center, for example, to 

collect data on tens of thousands 

of square kilometers of Iraqi urban 

areas. 

LIDAR, which was first developed 

in the early 1990s, uses 

1.064 nanometer wavelength laser 

light pulses to gauge elevations by 

measuring the time delay between 

transmission of the pulse and 

detection of the reflected signal. 

A range finder mounted in an 

aircraft flying at an altitude of 

between 1,500 and 3,000 meters 

swings back and forth collecting 

data on up to 150,000 points per 

second, providing resolutions of 

one point per meter on the ground 

and one point per 15 centimeters 

USING LIGHT DETECTION DATA IN SIMULATION SYSTEMS IS PART OF A GROWING 

TREND TO FIND NEW WAYS TO BENEFIT FROM THE TECHNOLOGY. 


vertically. LIDAR has also been used at ground level to collect 

even more detailed information about terrain topology. 

The data returned by the LIDAR sensor provides location 

data on an x-y-z axis, referred to as a point cloud. 

In Iraq, the BuckEye system combines airborne LIDAR 

technology with digital color camera imagery to provide 

pictures to commanders and planners on the lay of the 

land. LIDAR elevation data has supported improved battlefield 

visualization, line-of-sight analysis and urban warfare 

planning. 

One example of the expanding use of LIDAR involves 

CG2, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quantum3D, which 

recently announced that the second phase of its LIDAR 

Database Generation Process is nearly complete. The initiative 

converts LIDAR scans into visual database terrain and 

models, an activity that includes placement of natural and 

manmade features, with little or no human interaction. 

The effort is part of a Small Business Innovation Research 

(SBIR) project Phase II sponsored by Naval Air Systems 

Command (NAVAIR). 

A key objective of this initiative is to minimize the 

manual labor required to build simulation environments by processing 

high-resolution LIDAR data. Using sophisticated automation 

and process acceleration that leverages the latest GPU 

technologies, the LIDAR Database Generation Process has been 

successful in identifying trees, buildings, roads and the terrain 

profile within the LIDAR point cloud, and then converting these 

features into visual database components. 

NAVAIR wanted Quantum3D to create a tool 

that would facilitate the incorporation of LIDAR 

data into simulation and training systems. 

“What they asked us to do is to come up with a 

solution that would use LIDAR data for simulation 

and training,” said Sandra Vaquerizo, Quantum3D’s 

director of business development. “We have 

developed methods to pull multiple LIDAR scans 

together into 3-D visualizations and to isolate 

features such as buildings, trees and changes in 

terrain.” 

NEW BENEFITS 

Quantum3D’s SBIR project is emblematic of the direction 

LIDAR developments have been taking of late. Decreases in 

costs have made LIDAR data ever easier to collect. The question 

is what to do with the data once it has been collected. Using the 

LIDAR data in simulation and training systems 

is part of the growing trend to find new ways to 

benefit from the technology. 

“Point clouds are actually nothing but a pile of 

x-y-z data,” said Oodi Menaker, marketing product 

manager at Israel-based Tiltan Systems Engineering. 

“The main challenge is to extract point cloud 

data with which you can then work to describe the 

ground, buildings, power lines, trees, power poles 

and many other geographical features.” 

That process could be done and has been 

manually, but that process is very labor intensive, 

explained Lisa Spencer, a senior research scientist 

The power line is a presentation of LIDAR results, automatically processed by Tiltan Systems Engineering. 

[Image courtesy of Tiltan Systems Engineering] 

Sandra Vaquerizo 

Svaquerizo@cq2.com 

Lisa Spencer 

lspencer@quantum3d.com 

at Quantum3D. “The previous methods for building LIDAR 

databases included consulting blueprints and photos to measure 

the height of buildings in order to visualize them on a graphic 

display,” she explained. 

“The more modern systems tackle this through automatic 

processing,” added Menaker. “We have automated the process 

of transferring point clouds to geographical 

features.” 

The latest improvements in the ability to 

depict precise features from LIDAR point-cloud 

data involve advances in the software algorithms 

used to process this information. 

In the case of Quantum3D’s SBIR grant, the 

initial object was to provide a mechanism to make 

LIDAR data more usable to the simulation and 

visualization community, Vaquerizo explained. 

“The LIDAR data is converted into the standard 

format for visualization called Open Flight,” she 

said. 

One of the problems associated with LIDAR 

data is the way it is collected. “Data is collected over a period of 

years, but terrain and cultural objects change,” said Vaquerizo. 

“Data is often old and of low resolution. The LIDAR point cloud 

data is collected in a more random fashion and doesn’t have a 

gridded structure to it.” 

One of Quantum3D’s accomplishments has 

been to create a tool suite that allows the fusion 

of LIDAR data from multiple reads and databases. 

“We are able to align the scans in such a way 

as to convert the contents of multiple random 

point clouds to a representation of buildings and 

terrain,” said Vaquerizo. “The output is in Open 

Flight, which means that it is with any image generator 

you have.” 

The first phase of the Quantum3D SBIR 

involved developing a product design that was 

accepted by the Navy, while the second phase 

involved building a working prototype. “We are 


in i the 

he process 

ss oof 

of f co comm commercializing mm mmer er erci ci cial al aliz i ing that 

at into a produc product uct t that w 

wil will il ill l 

be abl able bl ble to uti utilize ti tili li lize ze the tthe 

he LID LLIDAR 

ID IDAR AR data from 

om aan 

an n Op Open 

en Fli Flight li ligh gh ght databa database ba base se 

through an image generator for for training or mission rehearsal,” 

said Vaquerizo. 

She expects the company to launch the product toward the 

end of the second quarter of 2009. NAVAIR has reviewed but has 

not yet fielded the Quantum3D product. 

HELICOPTER VISUALIZATION 

Another Quantum3D innovation, which proceeded from the 

NAVAIR SBIR, is the ability to transfer relatively new LIDAR 

data into immediate visualizations, thus enhancing the mission 

rehearsal utility of that data. “The beauty of it is that the LIDAR 

data could be hours rather than years old,” said Spencer. “We can 

capture all the geometry of a building down to its finest detail all 

in an automated fashion. This opens up a new level of interest 

in mission rehearsal applications. The LIDAR data can be used 

to check for changes in the battlefield terrain or the possible 

presence of explosives, and it can be converted within hours or 

minutes without measuring or hand modeling anything.” 

This automatically generated 3-D rendering presentation was done by Tiltan Systems Engineering 

using LIDAR data. [Image courtesy of Tiltan Systems Engineering] 

This capability is being built upon in yet another Quantum3D 

SBIR grant, this one emanating from the Patuxent River Naval 

Air Station, Md. “The focus of this project deals with the critical 

issue of solving problems of having helicopters land in brownout 

conditions in desert situations such as Iraq, and the high mortality 

rate associated with this problem,” said Vaquerizo. 

This solution involves the use of data generated from LIDAR 

sensors to provide helicopter pilots with a visualization of the 

terrain after the helicopter pilot loses the ability to see what is 

happening outside of the cockpit. “LIDAR penetrates the dust, 

and this is helpful to the pilot in successfully landing the helicopter,” 

said Vaquerizo. “We are applying LIDAR technology to 

produce a database faster, in immediate mode, on the fly.” 

To make that happen, LIDAR sensors mounted on the helicopter 

are processed in on-board computers to be visualized and 

presented to the pilot right then and there. The visualization is 

continuously updated during the course of the flight. 

The process involved in penetrating brownout conditions is 

to figure out which parts of the LIDAR data represent the ground 

and which do not, explained Spencer. A traditional visualization 

of the terrain is then built off the ground points. The nonground 


po poin points in ints ts aare 

are re ggrouped 

rouped into cluste clusters t rs rrep 

representing e rese se sent nt ntin in ing g in indi individual di divi vi vidu du dual al ffeatures 

eatures 

su such 

ch aas 

as bu buildings 

s or tre trees. re rees es es. 

Each cluster is extracted to develop the geometry of objects, 

such as the height and shape of buildings or the elevation of the 

foliage canopy. As with the product Quantum3D generated in 

its NAVAIR SBIR, the output of the LIDAR data processing is in 

Open Flight format, allowing it to be visualized and displayed on 

a variety it of fiimage generators. t 

This scheme represents a dramatic change in the processing 

of LIDAR data in that it involves processing of streams of LIDAR 

data rather than processing them in batch. That is the traditional 

process for data, which is not intended to be displayed in real 

time. Streaming data is necessary in this application, Spencer 

explained, “because streaming data gets collected incrementally 

and all processes are updated incrementally.” 

Quantum3D can accomplish the feat by relying on its 

expertise in real-time software performance and new hardware 

technologies such as graphical processing unit acceleration 

and its own high-performance graphics hardware. “There have 

been some advances in technologies that fit this application 

very well,” said Spencer. “Our expertise in designing real-time 

software puts us at the leading edge on how to tackle this 

problem.” 

Quantum3D has completed the first phase of this project 

to rave reviews, according to Vaquerizo. She expects a determination 

on whether the Patuxent River Naval Air Station will 

proceed with a second phase of the project at some point early 

in 2009. 

ROADWAY DATA 

Another case of the innovative use of LIDAR data is an Army 

SBIR grant to TerraSim to improve an existing simulation product 

by using BuckEye LIDAR data to enhance information on 

roadways. 

Until recently, TerraSim’s RoadMAP product used black and 

white, panchromatic and color imagery to extract roadway center 

lines and topologies. These are incorporated in systems that 

are used by the military and other customers to simulate operations 

in dense urban areas. 

“Roads fall into the category of lines of communications,” 

said Dave McKeown, the company’s president. “The military is 

interested in simulating how to get in and out of an operational 

area. But roads really are the single hardest feature to get out of 

LIDAR without a fair amount of manual extraction.” 

The TerraSim SBIR takes advantage of the fact that LIDAR 

can be used well in conjunction with other spectral imaging 

methodologies. This allows LIDAR data to be collected and 

simultaneously added to data from other sensors such as hyperspectral, 

short wave, infrared and near-infra detectors. 

Automated feature extraction is a capability that allows software 

to recognize certain specific objects represented in LIDAR 

point clouds. Programming the software to be on the lookout 

for topographical features such as hills or manmade “cultural” 

objects, such as buildings, vehicles or power transmission lines, 

allows those features to be separately and distinctly portrayed in 

the LIDAR image. 

The TerraSim project is particularly challenging because it 

seeks to extract data with respect to roads, a feature not charac- 


terized teri ri rize ze zed d by dra dramatic ra rama ma mati ti tic ch cchanges anges in eelevation. 

le l vati ti tion. Fe Feat Features a ures suc such uc uch h as bui build- ui uild ldings 

gs are aare 

re eeas 

easier as asie ie ier to eext 

extract xt xtract fro from ro rom m LI LIDA LIDAR DA DAR R da data 

ta tha than h n road roads. ad ads. 

“There is a high level of discontinuity between the top of a 

building and the ground,” McKeown explained. “Current LIDAR 

extraction software is relatively mature when it comes to finding 

buildings or treetops.” 

But in the case of roads, the difference in elevation between 

the th center t of f a road d and d the th edge d of f a road d is i much h smaller. ll 

“Elevations over roads tend to be smooth and different from 

elevations characteristic of other features,” said McKeown. “We 

use LIDAR data to localize where to look in black and white or 

color imagery for more information and for further support of 

the visualization. Since we don’t expect to see roads running 

across the tops of buildings but between buildings, we are able to 

throw away a fair amount of imaging and data and concentrate 

processing on where roads are likely to be.” 

The LIDAR data that TerraSim is using as part of its 

Army SBIR project work provides its RoadMAP tool with a 

new piece of information from which to draft the measurements 

of elevations. “It will help us do a better job of finding 

roads and extracting road delineation information,” McKeown 

commented. 

TerraSim expects that the addition of LIDAR data will improve 

the accuracy and utility of its RoadMAP product. “LIDAR is being 

used to enhance and validate features extracted from other 

media, such as black and white or color imagery,” said Wilson 

Harvey, a senior computer vision scientist at TerraSim. “LIDAR 

gives a direct measurement of elevation much more accurate 

and reliable than trying to calculate elevations based on sets of 

imagery. It also adds a new set of data for systems to look at to 

ascertain road characteristics and to help augment what Road- 

MAP knows about a road. We expect to obtain much more fidelity 

in terms of the x-y-z position of the road, and this will have a 

huge impact in the 3-D visualization extracted from the data.” 

The TerraSim product will be organized to have independent 

evaluation modules, which will deal separately with color imagery, 

black and white imagery, and LIDAR data. “Each of these 

will talk to a higher level part of program, which will figure out 

where the roadbed lies and put the pieces together in a certain 

way to generate the road center line,” said Harvey. 

TerraSim’s SBIR is a two-year deal that started in October 

2008. “We have various six-month points where we link up with 

the contract administrators to make sure we all are on the same 

page and on the right track,” said McKeown. “We are expected 

to present evaluation versions in six-month intervals, which our 

Army sponsors run in their environment and give us feedback on 

the productivity and accuracy of what we are doing. 

“As with many SBIRs, we benefit from a close working 

relationship with the sponsor,” McKeown added. “They have 

the source data set and know the problems associated with the 

exploitation of that data. They have the expectation of succeeding 

in extracting road data from BuckEye. They suspect that process 

can be improved otherwise would not have let this contract.” 

McKeown expects the Army to evaluate TerraSim’s design 

of the LIDAR enhancement to its RoadMAP product and make a 

determination whether to go forward with a second phase. If the 

Army gives the green light, McKeown said, he believes that TerraSim 

could have a LIDAR-enhanced product in the marketplace 

within a year to 18 months. 

FEATURE EXTRACTION 

Perhaps the most important benefit from the incorporation 

of LIDAR data into simulation and training products will be the 

improved accuracy of feature extraction software. The continuing 

impediment to the adoption of automated feature extraction 

is its level of accuracy, according to McKeown. 

“A human h can do d it manually ll with ith 99 percent t accuracy and d 

it takes a day,” he explained. “A machine can do it with 80 percent 

accuracy in an hour. This still presents an impediment to 

using the machine solution if 20 percent of the data must be 

revisited to get it up to human-level performance. The problem 

is how much user correction you will tolerate before you say it is 

cheaper to do this manually.” 

But the LIDAR data allows significantly more accuracy to 

automated feature extraction. “If we can privatize the use of 

LIDAR,” said McKeown, “we can do two things. We are able to 

tell people that we are using LIDAR as a primary source, and we 

are able to present a commercial product that is going to provide 

a cost-effective feature extraction solution.” ✯ 


harrisond@kmimediagroup.com. For more information related to this subject, 

search our archives at www.MGT-kmi.com. 

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The Carbon Project has announced 

the Gaia Support Package, which enables 

customers to engage Carbon Project engineering 

staff to address specific extensions, 

changes and enhancements to its 

Gaia and CarbonTools products. This 

new support package is in response to a 

worldwide surge of activity in developing 

spatial data infrastructure based on Open 

Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. 

To help its growing user community 

address new and specific needs, the 

Carbon Project is providing a direct 

channel to the developers behind its products. 

The Carbon Project’s Gaia geospatial 

viewer is built using the CarbonTools 

PRO toolkit and is fully open source to 

CarbonTools PRO customers. Developed 

as part of the National Spatial Data 

Infrastructure Cooperative Agreement 

Program, Gaia 3.2 provides a robust 

Service Level Change Provides 

Advanced Satellite Imagery 

GeoEye, a premier provider 

of satellite, aerial and geospatial 

information, has finalized 

a service level agreement (SLA) 

modification to the company’s 

existing NextView contract 

with the National Geospatial- 

Intelligence Agency (NGA). The 

value of the SLA is $12.5 million 

per month for a period of one 

year. GeoEye will provide satellite 

imagery products to NGA under 

this agreement beginning with 

the commencement of commercial 

operations of its GeoEye-1 

satellite. GeoEye-1 is undergoing 

final calibration and alignments. 

GeoEye expects to start selling 

GeoEye-1 products soon. The 


Package Supports Spatial Data 

Infrastructure Development 

and open API that allows programmers 

to develop Gaia Extenders with 

or without a CarbonTools PRO license. 

The Gaia Extenders are light, easy 

to deploy and can alter Gaia’s 

functionality. 

Jeff Harrison 

jharrison@thecarbonproject.com 

SLA also includes imagery from 

the company’s IKONOS satellite. 

The contract, together with 

GeoEye’s recent modifications to 

its business model for international 

commercial affiliates, will 

enable the company to be much 

more operationally responsive 

in meeting the imagery requirements 

of the NGA through its 

NextView program. The program 

is designed to ensure that the 

NGA has access to commercial 

imagery in support of its mission 

to provide timely, relevant and 

accurate geospatial intelligence 

in support of national security. 

Mark Brender 

brender.mark@geoeye.com 

Grid-Computing Solution 

Aids Terrain Map Creation 

Lockheed Martin has 

grid-enabled its TOPSCENE 

mission rehearsal applications 

using the Digipede 

Network from Digipede 

Technologies, a software 

provider of grid computing 

solutions for the Microsoft 

.NET platform. The grid-enabled 

version of TOPSCENE 

will soon be installed at the 

Naval Strike Air Warfare 

Center at Naval Air Station 

Fallon, Nev., resulting in a 

dramatic increase in the speed 

and throughput of complex 

calculations required to 

produce accurate terrain 

maps for three-dimensional 

scene creation. The Digipede 

Network is an affordable 

distributed computing solution 

built entirely on Microsoft 

.NET that dramatically 

improves the speed and perfor- 

mance of demanding realworld 

business applications. 

Integrated with Microsoft 

SQL Server, Visual Studio, 

Windows HPC Server and 

other Windows Server products, 

the Digipede Network is 

radically easier to buy, install 

and use than other grid-computing 

solutions. The Digipede 

Network is the only grid-computing 

solution certified for 

Windows Server 2008. Using 

the Digipede Network, businesses 

can easily achieve the 

benefits of grid computing, 

including improved IT agility 

and increased application 

scalability. Developers can 

write .NET or COM applications 

that will take advantage 

of hundreds or thousands 

of computers, bringing the 

power of grid computing to 

the Windows platform. 

GSA Contract Offers 

Simplified Imagery 

Acquisition 

The General Services Administration (GSA) has 

awarded SPOT Image a contract to sell SPOT satellite 

imagery and related products and services to federal, 

state and local government agencies at pre-negotiated 

rates. Offered under the GSA Information Technology 

(IT-70) Schedule, the new SPOT contract greatly simplifies 

and accelerates the acquisition process for the 

multitude of government entities that rely on satellite 

imagery and derived products. Government users of 

geospatial information will find that nearly the entire 

catalog of SPOT products has been offered in the GSA 

contract, including new and archived 2.5 m–20 m standard 

SPOT images in a variety of scene sizes, geo-coded 

and ortho-rectified SPOTView custom mosaic products, 

Reference 3D data sets, Digital Elevation Models, 

SPOTMaps off-the-shelf mosaics, and vegetation data. 

The GSA offering also includes some special processing 

services as well as new and archived imagery from the 

Taiwanese FORMOSAT-2 satellite. 

Jessi Dick 

dick@spot.com 


Enhanced Predictive Tool Enables 

Suitability Analysis 

SPADAC, a leading provider 

of spatially enhanced technology 

solutions, today announced the 

release of Signature Analyst 3.1, the 

latest version of its patented and 

commercially available geospatial 

predictive analysis tool featuring 

an ArcGIS extension that provides 

users with advanced spatial statistics 

and modeling to enable suitability 

analysis, risk assessment 

and resource allocation. Signature 

Analyst 3.1 provides geospatial 

analysts an unbiased statistical 

approach to analyze events within 

an area of interest, discover relationships 

between events and 

factors, and predict where similar 

GPS-Enabled Units 

Support Field 

Operations 

The AT&T-enabled Nomad 800X 

Series computers from Trimble include 

three new models of its popular outdoor 

rugged handheld computer that offer 

wireless wide area network functionality 

and integrated quad-band GSM cellular 

data transmission, digital photography 

and bar code scanning in one device. The 

Nomad 800X Series models use a built-in 

high-speed wireless data modem and 

AT&T’s nationwide EDGE network to allow 

users to communicate from the field to a 

central office or other location. Nomad 

800X Series computer users can send and 

receive real-time data and SMS messages 

via a cellular network at speeds of up to 1 

Mb per second wherever cellular connectivity 

is available. The Nomad 800XE 

handheld computer features bar code 

scanning capabilities, making it a valuable 

tool across a broad array of applications 

where in-the-field bar code scanning 

is essential, including asset management, 

tracking and warehousing. It delivers 

up to three scans per second, offers easy 

events might occur. Input data 

layers include physical, sociocultural, 

economic, demographic 

and GEOINT factors from a variety 

of sources, including ArcSDE. 

Finished output products generated, 

called geospatial assessments, 

often are visualized as a hot-spot 

map. The software enables analysts 

the ability to analyze thousands 

of data layers and discover relationships, 

patterns and preferences. 

ArcGIS provides a variety 

of capabilities in GIS, cartography 

and visualization to enable highquality 

map production. 

Kristina Messner 

kmessner@focusedimage.com 

field- f i e l dto-office 

connectivity, and 

provides all-day usage 

of eight hours on a single battery charge. 

Users can choose from a range of compatible 

battery options, as well as add an 

ergonomic pistol-grip attachment that 

improves efficiency for mobile bar-code 

scanning. In addition, users can access 

the Internet and e-mail, and use optional 

software and built-in GPS capability to 

transmit their position in the field. 

LeaAnn McNabb 

leaann_mcNabb@trimble.com 


Geo-Specific Database 

Targets Fixed, Rotary 

Wing Applications 

Quantum3D, a provider of COTS real-time 

visual computing solutions, has announced the 

availability of Geoscape Worldwide. The geo-specific 

worldwide database follows on the company’s 

leadership in geo-specific databases, including 

those for the conterminous United States, Guam 

and more. Geoscape Worldwide is targeted toward 

fixed wing and rotary wing applications. Unlike 

competing worldwide databases that offer geotypical 

representations of the earth, Geoscape 

Worldwide is built from 15 m base geo-specific 

imagery covering 100 percent of the earth’s 

landmasses outside the polar regions. Augmented 

with 10 m geo-specific imagery covering the 

entire conterminous United States, the database 

also offers 10 FAA Level D Areas of Interest (AOIs) 

in CONUS built from geo-specific imagery with 

resolutions from 5 m to 60 cm. Base areas of 

the earth are represented by three levels of detail 

(LODs) morphing terrain, and AOIs are included 

with up to six LODs morphing terrain. Definite 

transition from landmasses to water bodies is 

provided by extensive use of vector shoreline 

data. So that users can add and remove AOIs in 

response to changing training mission scenarios, 

Geoscape Worldwide is structured to support AOI 

overlays onto the 15 m base LODs. Using overlays, 

users can expand, enhance and maintain 

the evolution of their own version of Geoscape 

Worldwide, as well as incorporate new AOIs from 

Quantum3D as they are developed. Geoscape 

Worldwide, which is optimized for Quantum3D’s 

Independence image generators, comprises 15 

separate regions joined seamlessly for worldwide 

continuous flight applications. 


�� 

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Image Processing that delivers fast and accurate results– 

Because behind every pixel there’s a person. 

ITT, the Engineered Blocks, and “Engineered for life” 

are registered trademarks of ITT Manufacturing Enterprises, Inc., 

and are used under license. ©2009, ITT Visual Information Solutions 

��

Q&A 

Stretching to Make Calls That Aid Decision-Making 

Defense Analyst 

Robert Cardillo 

Deputy Director for Analysis 

Defense Intelligence Agency 

Robert Cardillo is deputy director for analysis for the Defense 

Intelligence Agency (DIA), where he directs the analytical effort of 

approximately 7,000 analysts who are responsible for producing 

the national military intelligence required to develop and execute 

the National Security Strategy. He is also the designated GDIP 

functional manager for analysis. In this role, he manages all-source 

analytic responsibilities and leads efforts to evaluate and improve 

the performance of the analytic community, which includes DIA, 

the service intelligence centers, and the intelligence centers at the 

combatant commands. 

Cardillo has served in a variety of leadership positions within the 

intelligence community. Before assuming his current position, he 

served as the director, analysis and production, National Geospatial- 

Intelligence Agency. Other key leadership positions included director, 

source operations and management, and director, Office of Corporate 

Relations, National Imagery and Mapping Agency. He began his 

career in 1983 as an imagery analyst with the DIA and was selected 

to the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service in May 2000. 

Cardillo earned a Bachelor of Arts in government from Cornell 

University in 1983 and a Master of Arts in national security studies 

from Georgetown University in 1988. 

Q: As the deputy director for analysis at the DIA, you are responsible 

for thousands of analysts supporting the warfighter. How do 

GIS and geospatial technology help your work force accomplish its 

mission? 

A: GEOINT is a critical contributor to the various sources of intelligence 

used by our expeditionary analytic work force supporting 

the warfighter on the ground. Over 15 percent of DI analysts have 

deployed in the field. That impressive number is a credit to our work 

force. When our analysts can support the mission in theater, it helps 

them to combine their content—what information they know—with 

a context—knowledge gained from relationships, networks and collaboration 

from the warfighter. When content and context are put 

together, we can provide real analysis that is of consequence: analysis 

that provides decision advantage to our leaders. GEOINT and the 

use of geospatial intelligence systems take on a fuller and deeper 

perspective when developed within the same content and context in 

which the warfighter is operating. For those analysts supporting the 

warfighter stateside, GEOINT and GIS provide a key element to the 

products they are developing both in support of the warfighter and 

policy decision-makers. 

Q: You were asked to speak on a panel discussing human terrain 

and socio-cultural analysis at the GEOINT Symposium this past 

October. What, in your opinion, were the most important points of 

those that were shared? 

A: Experts from the ODNI, NGA, Marine Corps Intelligence and the 

Army Human Terrain System Research Center, as well as from academia, 

joined me to discuss this topic. We looked at how this area of 

intelligence calls upon us as leaders to develop systems that manage 

and mine the huge amounts of data gathered in support of the 

warfighter. In effect, knowing that providing contextually substantive 

intelligence is a key to success on the ground, our discussion centered 

on how we are re-engineering how we do the business of intelligence 

and, essentially, redefining the term “context.” Local and regional 

cultural issues—or human terrain as that area of intelligence has 

come to be known—is an area of analysis that hinges on geographically 

based socio-cultural intelligence to support a wide variety of 

missions. 

I’ve heard it estimated that some 65 percent of all information 

on the battlefield is geo-referenced, and while I can’t confirm that 

estimate, even at half that percentage, GIS has become pivotal to 

success in the field. The irregular, asymmetric threat that currently 

faces us can be found in a wide variety of socio-cultural environments, 

including urban areas. That means there is the added concern: How 

do we adjust our planning to take into account the safety of places like 

schools or other areas where children or families congregate? 


There are also important analytic challenges facing us in how 

we plan for postcombat stability operations. These plans must be 

focused around the people, taking into account culture, environment, 

existing facilities and filling any gaps created during the 

military conflict. This part of the mission must follow the guidance 

laid out in the recently released Army Field Manual 3-07, Stability 

Operations. We, in turn, must respond with systems that can sift 

through vast amounts of data to yield information that is relevant to 

the situation at hand. We also must put in place those informationsharing 

processes that will help our warfighters leverage extant intelligence 

and analysis. 

Q: A while back the Missile and Space Intelligence Center [MSIC] 

won an award for its innovative development and deployment of 

GEOINT-enabled analysis architecture. Can you give us an update 

of this effort? 

A: Within the last few months, MSIC began an initiative to improve 

and build upon the Foreign Missile Test Range Analysis architecture, 

which is the program for which it won the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence 

Foundation Intelligence Achievement Award. This follow-on 

effort will include more extensive training for all-source analysts, 

more interaction between all-source analysts and tool developers, 

utilization of state-of-the-art analytical tools and network appliances, 

ingestion and display of additional intelligence data sources 

and improved modeling of geospatial scenes. All of these efforts are 

expected to expand and improve this highly successful GEOINT-enabled 

tool and increase its utilization by MSIC’s all-source analysts. 

Q: How are analysts using collaboration tools to enhance information 

sharing, and thus, all-source intelligence? 

A: In an effort to broaden our information horizons, it’s important to 

realize that not all of the perspectives we need for our analysis reside 

in the intelligence community. We are continually looking for ways 

to engage non-IC specialists to leverage their unique knowledge, 

nontraditional views and the varied experience and contacts they can 

bring to bear. The days in which the IC has a monopoly on information 

are long since over. The challenge now is to access the abundance 

of information, rationalize it and make a more informed future 

projection. Thus, we need to engage much more broadly and apply 

classified added value to provide decision advantage to our leaders. 

The director of national intelligence issued Intelligence Community 

Directive [ICD] 205 on Analytic Outreach, which directs us 

to tap into outside expertise as part and parcel of how we do business. 

With security concerns, access and funding issues and priorities, 

however, this is easier said than done. In response to this need, we’ve 

created an outreach-coordination function to help our analysts find 

and engage subject-matter experts, whether it be attending a conference 

or networking informally. We’ve also stood up an Open Source 

Program Office to help analysts access and use information already 

existing in the public domain that can be used to provide further 

context to their analysis. We hope that as our analysts participate 

more fully and systematically in these activities, they will begin to 

take on leadership roles and organize outreach activities or special 

events that they deem worthwhile. 

In terms of technology or applications, we’ve found that in 

today’s dynamic environment, where responses to emerging threats 

are often time-critical, our traditional work practices and technol- 


ogy applications are not enough to create the collaborative analysis 

required for continued success. In September 2007, the Office of 

the Director of National Intelligence [ODNI] designated DIA as the 

executive agent to develop and implement A-Space. 

A-Space, enhanced by Web 2.0 technology, provides a completely 

new classified environment for leveraging social networking capabilities 

similar to those made widely available and popular by such 

Websites as Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Docs. The essence of 

A-Space is quite simple: It is a venue for all analysts to discover 

one another and new information sources. That accomplished, new 

teams will come into existence organically. These new teams are then 

able to discuss, debate and produce analysis within a highly secure 

online environment. When leveraged against larger mission challenges, 

A-Space becomes more than just social software. 

A-Space is just one initiative under the ODNI’s Analytic Transformation 

[AT] program. AT works to shift longstanding agency-independent 

intelligence operations and encourages greater 

collaboration. Enabling analysts to collaborate early in the analytic 

process, A-Space will provide the shortest, fastest path to IC expertise 

and emerging intelligence insights. The accumulation of peer-reviewed 

analysis will allow the IC to manage its collective knowledge 

about key intelligence topics without constraints. 

Q: The ODNI has made several issuances over the past few years, 

including setting analytic and sourcing standards. How have you 

implemented these standards, and are you seeing a benefit? 

A: Yes, we are seeing a benefit. The quality of our analysis and 

production has improved over the last year and a half. Our flagship 

product, the Defense Intelligence Digest [DID], has been very well 

received by the broader community, including recent kudos from 

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. A little over a year 

old, the DID has grown in both stature and breadth and now includes 

collaboration not only beyond DIA to the service intelligence centers, 

combatant commands and other combat support agencies, but further 

still to include our Commonwealth partners. We have instituted 

checks and balances to improve the quality of our analysis. All DID 

articles are reviewed for strict adherence to Intelligence Community 

Directive [ICD] 203: Analytic Standards. We’ve also instituted a highlevel 

peer review process called the Product Evaluation Board. This 

board consists of senior analysts who review and evaluate randomly 

selected products totaling approximately 3 percent of our production. 

Results from this process show significant improvement across 

the tradecraft standards set forth in ICD 203 and ICD 206: Sourcing 

Requirements for Disseminated Analytic Products. 

Q: With a constant stream of current intelligence demands, such as 

the events in Russia/Georgia and most recently the events in India, 

how do you ensure your analysis is not getting entirely bogged 

down by the daily customer requirements? 

A: There is no doubt that we are filling an unprecedented number 

of customer requirements for analytical products. But to effectively 

meet our customers’ needs for predictive analysis, we absolutely 

have to step back and take time to look at bigger regional 

and functional pictures; we need to consistently raise our analytic 

eyesight. In DI, we’ve embarked on an effort to develop strategic 

research plans, looking out over the next two to seven years, which 

will guide our long-term analytic efforts against the most impor- 


tant defense intelligence issues. These plans will help us implement 

analytic strategies to attack priority issues, identify hindrances to 

analytic success and even stimulate the development of collection 

strategies. They will also help us to share our areas of focus within 

the IC with our customers. This added transparency enhances collaboration. 

And, since budget and resource decisions are generally 

made several years in advance, we can use the plans to help shape 

these programmatic decisions. 

Our analysts are moving from counting things, quantifying 

ships, tanks, planes and guns, to using that information to assess 

capabilities and detail threats—and opportunities—at the earliest 

point possible. That is how we prevent problems from becoming 

crises, and prevent crises from becoming conflicts. We’ve already 

completed draft strategic research plans on several regions, including 

Europe and Africa, and several functions, including terrorism 

and proliferation. While not an easy undertaking, I believe taking the 

time now to build these long-range strategic plans is an important 

way to document and convey our priorities and analytic approach 

to both our customers and the analytic work force throughout the 

defense intelligence enterprise. 

Q: Along with being the deputy director for analysis at DIA, you are 

also the functional manager for analysis for the intelligence community. 

Can you describe this role? 

A: I think I can best describe it using an example first. Take ballistic 

missiles. There are many elements of defense intelligence that have 

a stake in this effort. The National Air and Space Intelligence Center, 

the MSIC and the Office of Naval Intelligence are the biggest players 

as they look at missile characteristics and performance. But there’s 

also DIA’s order of battle office, DIA’s command and control office, the 

regional offices that look at leadership intent and overall effect from 

a country’s perspective, and the combatant commands that track 

exercises, deployments and operational readiness. Customers needing 

analysis on the ballistic missile topic should not have to know all 

of the players and exactly what they do in developing analysis on the 

topic. It is just too big of a burden to put on the end-user. 

The bottom line is that as the functional manager for analysis, 

my goal is to ensure we provide the best possible intelligence for the 

customer by leveraging expertise wherever it resides through deliberate 

and routine collaboration. I do this by leading the execution of 

the Defense Intelligence Analysis Program [DIAP], which establishes 

the policies, procedures, responsibilities and levels of analytic effort 

required to provide this timely, objective and comprehensive intelligence 

to our customers. It promotes a division of labor among 

players, exploits organizational strengths, and ultimately reduces 

duplication to the greatest extent possible. One of our most successful 

DIAP initiatives was to align ourselves explicitly with the 

National Intelligence Priorities Framework [NIPF], which is used by 

the entire intelligence community. Prior to doing this, we had found 

ourselves trying to answer all customer requirements with the same 

priority level—high. With limited resources and nearly unlimited 

requirements, we realized that aligning ourselves to the NIPF, which 

is understood by all of our customers, allows us to better prioritize 

our work and assign the appropriate resources. 

Q: As the former head of analysis at NGA, how does that previous 

immersion in geospatial intelligence and technologies affect your 

leadership at DIA? 

A: GEOINT, by its nature, dictates a framework around an intelligence 

problem. It also only works with other data sources. While 

that is true for all intelligence disciplines, it gave me a very healthy 

respect for the need for a network and a team. This has informed 

and shaped my leadership style and direction at DIA. There is much 

that is similar to that previous role, but the one salient difference 

might be a shift from providing broad, foundational and contextual 

intelligence that provides value to the overall mission to providing 

all of that in a slightly different context—a context that puts more 

of a spotlight on using that context, adding substantive content and, 

where possible, wrapping a bow around it, taking risks and making 

a call—informing the warfighter and the policymaker on the tough 

decisions both on the ground and on the Hill. With that in mind, 

building our networks becomes more important than ever. 

Q: What are your goals for 2009? 

A: We had great successes in 2008, and we’ll continue to build on 

those, as well as refine areas where we can improve, in 2009. We’re 

definitely going to face the opportunities and challenges inherent 

with a transition of administration—the first since 9/11 and the 

creation of the posts of director of national intelligence and under 

secretary of defense for intelligence. This puts us in a great position 

to rethink our fundamentals. Our strategic intent for the year supports 

the priorities outlined by the DNI and in the DIA Strategic Plan. 

We want to enhance the quality and relevance of our all-source intelligence 

analysis by working on four areas. First has to be focusing on 

our core missions. We’ll partner with our customers to understand 

and manage priorities, always ensuring we leverage the broader IC, 

to include international partners and external experts, wherever 

possible. And, as I mentioned before, we’ll develop and implement 

strategic research plans to attack national and defense intelligence 

priorities while preparing for emerging challenges. Given U.S. 

national interests, we’ll place increased emphasis and resourcing on 

our South Asia account. 

We know we can’t simply describe events anymore. We need to 

go a step further, stretching to make calls with our analysis that will 

aid our leaders in decision-making. The day we think we can’t be 

wrong is the day we become irrelevant. Second, we’ve got to continue 

to strengthen our analytic capabilities by ensuring our collection 

requirements are known and met, as well as advancing analytic 

tradecraft and innovative analytic methods. Our third goal is to focus 

on our most valuable resource: our people. We need to continue to 

recruit and retain the best and brightest our country has to offer, and 

then help guide them through their career development, ultimately 

building the next generation of leaders. And fourth, we’ll foster a 

culture of innovation and excellence so our work force can easily 

collaborate, take risks and strive to excel. Success in these focus areas 

won’t happen overnight; in fact, it may take 2009 and then some 

to achieve the vision. But I am confident that our commitment to 

progress will drive us to where we want be. ✯ 





In the Human 

Domain 

NEW DEFENSE COUNTERINTELLIGENCE 

AND HUMAN INTELLIGENCE CENTER 

MANAGES COMPLEMENTARY DISCIPLINES. 

(Editor’s Note: This article, provided by the Public Affairs 

Office of the Defense Intelligence Agency, is the first of a series 

of profiles of key commands in the geospatial and intelligence 

fields.) 

The director of national intelligence’s Vision 2015 highlights 

that in today’s dynamic global environment, national security 

depends on anticipating risks and out-maneuvering adversaries, 

not just out-muscling them. Therefore, intelligence is more 

critical than ever, particularly counterintelligence (CI) and 

human intelligence (HUMINT). 

To streamline the management of the Department of 

Defense CI and HUMINT enterprises, these complementary 

disciplines, which both operate in the human domain, were 

recently merged into the new Defense Counterintelligence and 

Human Intelligence Center (DCHC). 

HUMINT is defined as a category of intelligence derived from 

information collected and provided by human sources, while CI 

is information gathered and activities conducted to identify, 

deceive, exploit, disrupt or protect against espionage, other 

intelligence activities, sabotage or assassinations conducted for 

or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations, persons or their 

agents, or international terrorist organizations or activities. 

DCHC was established within the Defense Intelligence 

Agency (DIA) to centrally manage departmentwide CI and 

HUMINT enterprises, develop programs that support DoD component 

CI and HUMINT functions, and execute assigned CI and 

HUMINT activities worldwide. 

The director of DIA, Army Lieutenant General Michael 

Maples, serves as both the DoD CI and HUMINT manager, 

while Army Major General Theodore Nicholas is the director 

of DCHC. 

“The standup of this center is an exciting development in 

the defense intelligence enterprise,” Nicholas said. “We are taking 

defense CI and HUMINT to a new level, ensuring outstanding 

support to our customers.” 


When creating DCHC, Nicholas looked at the existing CI 

and HUMINT oversight practices and took the best from each 

program and streamlined the processes, resulting in greater 

information sharing. CI focuses on preventing adversaries from 

collecting intelligence, while HUMINT seeks to collect intelligence. 

The two disciplines have commonalities when it comes 

to acquiring and managing sources, reporting information, 

training and targeting. 

The establishment of DCHC marks the first time that DoD 

has integrated CI and HUMINT at the defense level. 

“This integration reflects the importance that DoD is placing 

on CI and HUMINT. Both programs are indispensable to 

countering foreign intelligence threats and to winning the fight 

against terrorism,” Nicholas said. 

BEST DEFENSE 

The following analogy is an attempt to explain why CI and 

HUMINT are two very distinct but complementary disciplines 

that have been brought together. This analogy is not intended 

to minimize the complexities of the CI and HUMINT disciplines, 

but rather to simplify the concept in order to allow greater 

appreciation and understanding of why the two were placed 

side-by-side within DCHC. 

Consider the human domain as a playing field, on which 

there is a team consisting of an offense, HUMINT, and a defense, 

CI. To accurately understand this analogy, the old adage that 

“the best defense is a strong offense” must be embraced. 

In other words, CI, the defense, must be prepared to go on 

the offense at any time, and HUMINT, the offense, must keep 

its adversary on the defense. Both enter the playing field, or 

the human domain, just as a football team enters the stadium. 


Preparation and execution on the field requires that both follow 

a unified playbook, or strategy, as well as actively collaborate 

and continuously communicate with one another. Ultimately 

the team strives to achieve success; the offense scores, in the 

form of HUMINT collection, while equally importantly, the 

defense prevents the adversary from scoring. 

Unlike a football game, both CI and HUMINT play simultaneously, 

and for these two critical disciplines the game never 

ends—thus highlighting the importance of persistence, endurance, 

innovation and teamwork. 

“The functions of CI and HUMINT have similarities in 

which we can integrate and gain efficiencies while ensuring 

the unique functions of each discipline remain intact and separate,” 

Nicholas said. “‘This is why we created the Directorate 

for Counterintelligence (DC) within the center to provide the 

proper focus to defense CI functions for the community.” 

Prior to DCHC, the Directorate for HUMINT (DH) existed 

as a separate directorate within DIA, but now resides in the 

center. 

In addition to DC and DH, the center has three other components: 

the D2X Special Office, Defense Cover Office (DCO) 

and the CI/HUMINT Enterprise Management Office (DEO). 

DC oversees DoD CI and counterterrorism operational 

investigations and provides CI support to HUMINT operations, 

as well as all-source analytic support to the DoD CI community. 

DC brings together the CI efforts of the agency as well as those 

from the former Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), 

which merged into DIA as part of the establishment of DCHC. 

DIA had already been performing CI enterprise functions: 

strategic analysis and production; CI requirements management 

and CI support to the joint staff; and support and 

oversight of the CI staff officers at combatant commands. In 

addition, CIFA was providing operational CI support functions, 

including the management of operations and investigations, 

friendly force and adversarial situational awareness, and force 

protection support to DoD components. 

DH continues to plan and conduct defense HUMINT operations 

and centrally direct and manage DIA HUMINT personnel, 

to include the Defense Attaché System, DIA overt and clandestine 

collection field sites, contingency platforms and document 

exploitation. 

Previously part of DH, DCO now resides under DCHC and 

will continue to execute defense cover programs on behalf of 

DoD. 

ENTERPRISE FOCUS 

The two enterprise-focused elements within DCHC are D2X 

and DEO. 

D2X is the defense-level equivalent to the J2X CI and 

HUMINT staff element structure within the combatant commands 

and services. D2X, under the leadership of Thomas 

Gandy, was established to coordinate, de-conflict and synchro- 

nize DoD CI and HUMINT activities globally. Its responsibilities 

include situational awareness, requirements tasking, technical 

support, source registration and de-confliction, intelligence 

planning, and leading the development of integrated precision 

targeting strategies for hard targets. 

DCHC’s creation follows on the heels of the standup of the 

Defense Intelligence Operations Coordination Center (DIOCC). 

DIOCC manages intelligence operations across defense intelligence 

and serves as DoD’s entry point into the National Intelligence 

Coordination Center. 

DCHC, via D2X, will be closely linked to DIOCC, serving as 

the defense liaison for all CI and HUMINT collection requirements 

validated by DIOCC and tasked to DoD CI and HUMINT 

organizations. DCHC will also serve as the direct entry point for 

all other CI and HUMINT intelligence operation requirements, 

including operational communications, targeting and technical 

support. 

DEO combines the community program management functions 

of the former CIFA and the former Defense HUMINT Management 

Office and is responsible for managing commonalities 

across both disciplines. This includes overseeing DoD CI and 

HUMINT long-range planning; policy, doctrine, training and 

professional development; resource and performance management; 

and technology development. 

DEO establishes and implements the means, mechanisms, 

policies, procedures and plans necessary for the director of DIA 

to lead, manage and direct DoD CI and HUMINT communities 

as horizontally integrated enterprise operations. 

As a defense-level organization, DCHC will provide greater 

organizational alignment with CIA’s National Clandestine Service, 

FBI, Department of Homeland Security, the combatant 

commands and services. 

DCHC will lead, direct and centrally manage the DoD CI 

and HUMINT enterprise in close collaboration with each of the 

services, combatant commands and the national community. 

Equally important, the center will serve as an advocate for and 

ensure support to each of the CI and HUMINT executors— 

Army, Air Force, Navy and the combatant commands. This will 

be accomplished via established linkages to all, thus facilitating 

necessary and continuous coordination and de-confliction with 

all throughout the enterprise. 

“We have an organization that can represent all of defense 

CI and HUMINT capabilities and requirements to Congress, 

other members of the intelligence community, and all internal 

and external stakeholders. DCHC provides unified strategic 

direction, requirements management and prioritization,” 

Nicholas said. ✯ 







Geospatial Edge 

for the Warfighter 

JOINT-GEOSPATIAL ENTERPRISE SERVICES PROGRAM BUILDS A BRIDGE 

BETWEEN THE WARFIGHTER, COMMAND CENTER AND NATIONAL LEVEL. 

Profound changes in science and technology are better 

equipping our soldiers with the tools necessary to accomplish 

their missions efficiently and effectively. Yet in the constantly 

evolving world of geospatial services, the number of programs, 

platforms and formats seems endless. 

Deciding which of the many commercial- and governmentoff-the-shelf 

GIS solutions best fit the specialized needs of the 

warfighter is a daunting task, especially as adversaries adapt to 

the Army’s combat tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs). 

Today’s solutions may not solve tomorrow’s problems. The soldier 

must remain two steps ahead by improving current tactics 

and equipment or developing new tools and procedures. 

To better enable our warfighters to navigate today’s 

complex operational environment, the Army Topographic 

Engineering Center (TEC) developed the Joint-Geospatial 

Enterprise Services program (J-GES) to build a bridge among 

the warfighter, the command center and the national level of 

the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. J-GES enables 

every soldier to serve as a sensor by providing each with the 

ability to evaluate and implement COTS and GOTS technol- 

BY JAMAL B. BECK AND DAN VISONE 

ogy to collect, update, maintain, 

visualize and share their own geospatial 

information quickly, easily 

and accurately. This approach 

improves the soldier’s situational 

awareness and probability of mission 

success. 

“The goal of J-GES is to 

migrate geospatial information 

and services to a net-centric envi- 

Dan Visone ronment, enabling technologies 

and standards to support horizontal, 

vertical and peer-to-peer interoperability from national to 

tactical,” according to Dan Visone, J-GES program manager. 

Specific goals of the J-GES program include: 

• 

• 

Facilitating the early transition of emerging technologies 

and net-centric C4ISR geospatial services 

Partnering with industry to enhance commercial GIS 

technology to support complex J-GES needs 


• 

• 

• 

• 

Collaborating with emerging joint network architectures 

and C4ISR services 

Providing a transition pathway for basic and applied 

research to the warfighter 

Developing geospatial policies and procedures, including 

military TTPs 

Serving as geospatial validation/verification facility for the 

Army’s geospatial information officer. 

SUPPORTING TOOLS 

To support the J-GES program, TEC constructed a laboratory 

consisting of five reconfigurable enclaves that support 

netcentric geospatial experiments. Enclaves can be “mixed 

and matched” to support a variety of customers and experiments, 

from counterintelligence/human intelligence to human 

terrain (cultural) to current programs of record like the 

Digital Topographic Support System. The J-GES laboratory 

can provide state-of-the-art support to identify operational and 

technical gaps and solutions with respect to the collection, 

synchronization, management, dissemination and exploitation 

of geospatial data and geoprocessing services. 

To facilitate experiments with soldiers using a surrogate 

command and control application, J-GES leverages the Commander’s 

Support Environment (CSE), a state-of-the-art system 

designed to monitor and control forward elements of the 

Objective Force, resulting in reduced staffing requirements. 

The CSE supports cross-functional, collaborative mission 

planning and execution, providing a common operating picture 

for enhanced, real-time situational awareness in a netenabled 

environment. Users have the ability to determine how 

their products might work in a command and control environment 

that demonstrates the various areas of the intelligence 

preparation of the battlefield process: intelligence, command, 

fires and battlespace manager (maneuver). 

Network issues are especially critical on the battlefield, 

where the balance between volumes of geospatial data and limited 

bandwidth is a constant challenge. Throughput directly 

impacts the soldier’s ability to access and share geospatial 

information. The use of network analysis software that emulates 

the networks and performs network analysis will answer 

key questions of network-related application performance. 

Shunra is a commercial software package that emulates 

networks by simulating packet loss, latency and bandwidth. 

Soldiers at Fort Benning, Ga., participating in a J-GES experiment evaluating the BuckEye imagery for mission planning. [Photo courtesy of Army Topographic Engineering Center] 



Once the software is activated, information may be passed from 

system to system virtually through the emulated network. 

Silk Performer, from Borland, complements the Shunra 

software and provides extended analysis information on the 

performance of application in a net-centric environment. With 

Silk Performer, scripts simulate the use of an application with 

multiple virtual users. The virtual users can be added “dynamically,” 

in “steady state,” or “all day” options. 

The Shunra and Silk Performer software packages provide 

statistics on how an application or Web server may perform in 

the field. The report gives information such as response time 

per transaction time or per number of users. Users may experience 

simulated field performance before deploying the application 

to the field. Using network diagrams and parameters for 

Stryker Division, Brigade and Battalion, transaction times and 

responses can be generated using Shunra. 

PROGRAM SPIRALS 

To date, the J-GES program has been executed 

in three spirals. Through the use of five operational 

vignettes, the first two spirals demonstrated 

the need for net-centric geospatial services, or the 

“art of the possible” for current and future battle 

command systems. High-level military decisionmakers 

have seen the potential benefits of the collection 

of data to support many applications, the 

value of data discovery for the unanticipated user, 

and the role of dynamic geoprocessing services. 

The initial technology focus areas of spirals 

one and two leveraged COTS and GOTS technology 

to design, test and evaluate: 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Soldier as sensor using mobile GIS 

technology 

Discovery services using metadata portal concepts 

High-resolution sensor exploitation 

Geo-database synchronization 

Spatially and temporally explicit link analysis 

Terrain reasoning services 

3-D terrain visualization 

The third spiral is focusing on experiments that fall into 

three general areas: 

• 

• 

• 

Value—the usefulness of geospatial information to the 

commander in support of the military decision-making 

process 

Commercial technology—the operational utility of COTS 

technology to support the warfighter’s military business 

logic 

Architecture—understanding how and where to provision 

geospatial information and applications based on existing 

and future architectures and corresponding network 

topologies. 

J-GES experiments quantify the value of geospatial information, 

work with industry to ensure products meet the war- 

fighter’s requirements, and model the movement of geospatial 

information on the battlefield. 

“If the information has no value to the commander and 

makes no difference, why provide it?” said Visone. “We have 

also provided invaluable feedback to industry on the utility 

of their products for military applications. Our hope is that 

industry sees value in our experiments and uses our results to 

make their products responsive to Army requirements.” 

VALUE EXPERIMENT 

The J-GES program successfully executed a value experiment 

on site with soldiers at Fort Lewis, Wash., and Fort 

Benning, Ga., in late November 2008. The experiment assessed 

the military planning value of high-resolution imagery and 

Personnel at Fort Lewis, Wash., also were part of the assessment of high-resolution imagery and elevation data. 

[Photo courtesy of Army Topographic Engineering Center] 

elevation data. Specifically, data collected by TEC’s BuckEye 

was compared to conventional NGA products as the soldiers 

were tasked to set up hasty vehicle control points in different 

parts of Iraq. 

This experiment evaluated the effect of better data (tool 

set remaining constant) instead of evaluating a tool set (data 

remaining constant). The results are currently being evaluated 

by experimentation subject-matter experts from George Mason 

University’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers 

and Intelligence Center in Fairfax, Va., and will be published 

next quarter at www.tec.army.mil/JGES/gazette.html. 

The GMU C4I Center has also been conducting architectural 

experiments focused on using advanced geospatial 

terrain reasoning products from the Battlespace Terrain Reasoning 

and Awareness-Battle Command (BTRA-BC) program 

in a networked environment. There is concern that tools such 

as BTRA-BC might demand more capacity than Army tactical 

networks have available in specific situations. GMU is working 

to characterize BTRA-BC tools in the distributed battlefield 

environment to configure the software for most effective use. 

These measurements enable quantitative characterization 

of the fundamental BTRA-BC computing and network require- 


ments. GMU is using this data to construct an architectural 

model that will enable prediction of BTRA-BC requirements 

over a wide range of conditions. 

GMU has developed a family of software models that can 

predict performance of tools such as BTRA-BC at specific levels 

of computational power and network capacity. These models are 

expected to be essential when requirements of operating the 

BTRA-BC services over tactical networks are explored. The end 

product will be a system that can support the warfighter most 

effectively while making supportable demands on networks and 

computers in the tactical environment. 

The J-GES program has also executed a series of replication/ 

synchronization experiments evaluating ESRI’s 9.2 synchronization 

capabilities against a series of use cases provided by 

the Maneuver Support Center at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. The 

primary goal was to understand whether this COTS technology 

supported the concept of operations for data collection, generation 

and update of the Army’s Theater Geospatial Database in 

the field. 

A secondary goal was to understand the doctrine, organization, 

training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel 

and facilities issues associated with fielding this technology to 

the soldier. This is critical to understanding the overall impact 

to the warfighter as new technologies are evaluated. Initial 

findings in this series of experiments are that the technology 

works but will need customization to make it usable by the 

soldier in the field. 

The J-GES program’s ability to speed technology transition 

to the battlespace, assess the value of information, evaluate 

intelligence and geospatial information-sharing architectures, 

and develop geospatial policies and procedures will accelerate 

the fielding of select future force capabilities. J-GES also leverages 

and enables interdependent, network-centric warfare— 

ensuring that warfighters collect, exploit and share up-to-date 

geospatial information to gain competitive advantage in the 

operational environment. 

More information on these experiments and other ongoing 

experiments can be found at www.tec.army.mil/JGES/index. 

html. ✯ 

Jamal B. Beck is the public affairs specialist, and Dan Visone 

is the J-GES program manager, for the Engineer Research and 

Development Center-Topographic Engineering Center. 




To support the J-GES program, TEC constructed a laboratory consisting of five reconfigurable enclaves that support netcentric geospatial experiments. [Photo courtesy of Army Topographic 

Engineering Center] 



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NGA SUPPORT TEAM MEETS SPECIAL FORCES’ HIGH-INTENSITY NEEDS FOR GEOSPATIAL AND IMAGERY ANALYSIS. 

The U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) NGA Support 

Team (NST) is located in Tampa, Fla., at MacDill Air Force 

Base, the home of its mission partner. The NST’s reach, however, 

extends much farther because of the worldwide mission that it 

supports. 

SOCOM is a unified functional command with lead responsibility 

for synchronizing the global war on terrorism (GWOT) 

and organizing, training and equipping special operations forces 

(SOF) warriors to defend the United States and its interests across 

the globe. While much of this activity is in the CENTCOM area of 

responsibility, the GWOT is just that—global. This global mission 

sets the terms for how NGA’s SOCOM NST does its job. 

To carry out its mission to provide timely, relevant and accurate 

full-spectrum GEOINT, the SOCOM NST has analysts working 

at MacDill—SOCOM headquarters—and embedded with the special 

operations units of U.S. military services within and outside 

the continental United States. These global requirements produce 

BY JUANITA T. HARTBARGER 

a unique staffing pattern. According to the NST chief, “Our analysts 

go out on two to three deployments of 30 to 120 days at any 

given time, several times a year.” 

What makes the SOF warrior different from NGA’s mission 

partners at other combatant commands? These soldiers, sailors, 

airmen and Marines, whether active duty, reserve or National 

Guard, are members of elite, specialized military units that can be 

inserted behind the lines via land, sea or air to conduct a variety of 

nonstandard operations. 

Personnel for these units are carefully selected. According to 

the recent SOCOM posture statement, they must start with “the 

necessary aptitude and attitude for entry into the special operations 

community.” And that’s just the beginning. Once accepted, 

they undergo a demanding two-year training program that 

includes direct action, strategic reconnaissance, counterterrorism 

and theater search and rescue, along with regional and cultural 

orientation and, increasingly, language studies. 

32 | MGT 7.1 www.MGT-kmi.com

The rigorous selection process and the initial training set them 

apart. The deputy chief of the SOCOM NST characterizes the SOF 

this way. “SOF servicemembers are older and hold higher rank than 

their regular service counterparts. Their training is more intensive, 

and they have three to five more years of experience than their counterparts 

in the regular military.” 

MEETING SOF STANDARDS 

When a SOCOM NST analyst deploys, this is his or her customer—an 

experienced, highly trained warfighter. To be effective in 

serving an SOF warrior, the analyst has to meet SOF standards. One 

NGA imagery analyst (IA) illustrates this point when talking about 

her fourth deployment. “My latest deployment was in support of a 

task force in theater. Most of the products I provided had anywhere 

from 15- to 30-minute turnaround deadlines. My job was to provide 

GEOINT support as fast as possible. That’s why we’re embedded with 

the unit. 

“You have to know your stuff and get the analysis right consistently,” 

she continued. “Even when you do, it takes a long time for 

them to warm up to you. You’ve got to earn their trust over and over 

again—because they’re trusting you to bring them home safe.” 

She has learned to think beyond the immediate request and look 

at how to solve the problem. “Give them more than they ask for. You 

have to think like the mission partner. What does he need to do his 

job?” Her questions include: 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Where is he going? 

What’s his objective? 

What’s the safest way for him to achieve it? 

What’s around it that could cause a problem or conceal an 

adversary? 

The analyst and the SOCOM warfighter work together, side by 

side. In the IA’s words, “Your SOF mission partners become your 

friends. Look at the intelligence problem set like you’re looking out 

for your friends. [If there are] more risks they have to take going in 

… then I’m not doing my job.” 

Side-by-side collaboration with warrior partners is a benefit 

enthusiastically described by a geospatial analyst (GA) who has just 

begun his second deployment in theater supporting SOF warriors. 

“As a first-time deployer, my experience was simply incredible. The 

personal satisfaction I’ve experienced from providing mission-critical 

support to the warfighter is both overwhelming and self-rewarding. 

Knowing that my actions and products have had a direct impact 

on the mission was a unique experience, which is unparalleled,” he 

noted. 

“The deployment greatly accelerated my professional experience 

as well,” said the GA. “I now have a greater understanding of how 

products should be tailored, prepared and presented and how they 

are applied toward tactical mission planning for the war planner and 

operators—the boots on the ground.” He added that he has gained 

a greater understanding of the operational deployment hierarchy, 

concept of operations, and mission planning, tactics, techniques and 

procedures. 

“For every element within the task force, [the GA] provided support 

to virtually every person, ranging from LNO [liaison officers], 

interagency, all strike forces, to the commander himself,” said a 

senior task force official, commenting on the GA’s support to the unit. 

“His primary support was for operational and tactical planning, target 

development, situational awareness and training. Typically he worked 

from [2:30 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.] seven days a week.” 

Not only must SOCOM NST analysts be highly skilled, proficient 

in their craft and agile and resourceful in the creation and delivery of 

GEOINT products, but they must also work long hours. 

Three quarters of the SOCOM NST’s analysts are on nonstandard 

duty: 24/7 recall with a one- to two-hour report. What that means 

is that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the analyst must be ready, 

when called, to pack a bag and report for duty within one to two 

hours, get on a plane and head for the battlespace. In the words of the 

deputy NST chief, “You measure your life in two-hour segments.” 

FAST-PACED ENVIRONMENT 

The work is high-stress, the environment fast-paced. The SOCOM 

NST is not the place for a junior-level IA or GA. Military support experience 

is a key qualification for service. Once that qualification is met, 

only experienced and high-performing analysts need apply. 

A snapshot of the IA’s life during her recent deployment shows 

why the staffing criteria are so rigid. “There was one imagery analyst 

and one geospatial analyst in the unit to support 18 other analysts 

from [U.S.] government agencies and all-source analysts representing 

different countries or regions. We gave twice-daily reports on any 

project we were working for the team as well as support to the analysts 

that were assigned to outstations in other countries,” she said. 

The IA noted that she was the only member of the team whose 

computer had the capability to exploit imagery. “Because of this, I was 

usually supporting multiple ISR assets at the same time. I had access 

to all the people on the team and could provide any of them with 

products to support the mission they were monitoring.” 

The chief of SOCOM’s Geospatial Intelligence Branch testified to 

the effectiveness of the SOCOM-NGA collaboration. “The command, 

to support our special operations forces effectively, needs to look at 

historic data to get a baseline, and it is in this area that NGA is invaluable. 

Its analysts and its geospatial imagery data provide operations 

support, support that allows for the movement of forces. NGA’s data 

provides context—for example, answering the important question of 

where the adversary might be.” 

The reason for the SOCOM NST’s invaluable contribution is its 

people. According to the NST chief, the support effort can be daunting 

at the deployer level. It’s not unusual to have an analyst running 

to a helicopter carrying GEOINT to a servicemember about to go out 

on a mission. 

“We have amazing analysts supporting amazing people,” the 

NST chief said. “Special operations units go out in small teams quietly 

in the night and take care of the nation’s business while we’re 

sleeping.” 

When they do, they’re armed with timely, relevant and accurate 

full-spectrum GEOINT provided by the SOCOM NST. ✯ 

Juanita T. Hartbarger is a public affairs officer with NGA’s Office 

of Corporate Communications. This article originally appeared in 

the January/February 2009 issue of NGA’s Pathfinder Magazine. 





Portable 

Solution Offers 

Fused Data 

Without Network 

Access 

Most customers install Google 

Earth Enterprise software—an enterprise-class 

solution for authoring and 

serving stand-alone earth databases that 

includes imagery, terrain, vector and 

KML data—on servers in their own data 

center. Employees and other authorized 

users can connect to these servers from 

anywhere they have access to that organization’s 

network. In certain circumstances, 

however, users need to access 

their Google Earth globe but do not 

have network access or have limited 

bandwidth. To meet these requirements, 

Google now offers Google Earth 

Enterprise Portable, which is ideal for 

disconnected users or those with limited 

bandwidth in situations such as disaster 

response, field operations and remote 

viewing. The Google Earth Enterprise 

Portable solution offers organizations 

the flexibility to utilize fused geospatial 

data even without network access. 

The Google Earth Enterprise Portable 

is loaded on a customer-supplied USB 

drive or a large partition on a user’s 

laptop using VMWare. Options are available 

for single- or multiple-user access 

to the portable software. The Google 

Earth Enterprise Portable should be 

synced with the Google Earth Enterprise 

Software prior to field deployment with a 

wired connection to the principal Google 

Earth Enterprise server. Collected data 

in remote locations can be transferred 

to the primary system when network 

connectivity is restored. 


Spatial Insights has released 

CartoUS 2009, updated with 

enhanced and reformatted U.S. 

Census Bureau TIGER files. With 

a total of 66 layers of mapping 

data, the seamless CartoUS 2009 

data are available by county, state, 

region or nationwide. Ten new 

layers of data are included with 

this new release. 

Layers provided in CartoUS 

include roads (primary, secondary 

and local), Census boundaries 

(from block group and larger), 

metro areas, landmarks, legislative 

and school district boundaries, 

railways, water features, 

American Indian reservations and 

ZIP code tabulation areas. New 

layers include military installations 

and five new Economic 

Census boundaries. 


“What If” Mapping Software Helps 

Emergency Managers 

Depiction has released new “what 

if” mapping software for emergency 

managers and others at a price that 

helps them with their own economic 

emergencies. The software’s price of 

$89 means that more community 

services can apply this new what-if 

mapping software to explore, prepare 

for and manage disaster scenarios. 

That’s particularly good news for 

police, firefighters and other first 

responders who need what-if mapping 

tools. Depiction is easy-to-use software that runs 

on standard laptop and desktop PCs. Depiction’s 

powerful mapping technology allows users to 

quickly depict scenarios that answer “what if” 

questions. For example: “What if this levy broke? 

What would flood? What areas would be cut 

off from rescuers?” In an emergency, Depiction 

provides such rapid and intuitive scenario 

mapping integrated with live reports transmitted 

Cartographic 

Package 

Includes Latest 

Census Data 

from other locations. Usable both online and 

offline, Depiction provides free access to public 

data about communities, such as satellite images, 

road networks, elevation and more. Users can 

add their own images and information such as a 

spreadsheet of volunteers, a scanned paper map 

or fax. Once they’ve created their depictions, they 

can save and quickly share them with others or 

present them to an audience when Internet access 

may not be available. 

Solution Offers 

Integrated Data 

Visualization 

XeDAR and IDV Solutions have announced a 

strategic agreement with the goal of building a 

software solution specifically for the U.S. defense and 

intelligence communities and the energy development 

and land management markets. The solution, 

utilizing IDV’s Visual Fusion Suite, will integrate the 

customers’ proprietary data (concerning national 

security, land development, natural resources, and so 

on) with various existing Internet and Web services 

and shareable work group files. The result will be both 

Web-based applications and a mobile application. 

This integration allows users who require a visual 

representation of data exactly that: a user-friendly, 

secure and easily accessible way to manage and 

analyze their own data. Users can share this data and 

work with it collaboratively in real time, and they will 

discover powerful, new ways to analyze their data, 

making them more efficient decision-makers. The 

collaboration translates to a competitive advantage 

for XeDAR in the form of a powerful new tool for 

existing defense and homeland security customers, as 

well as energy and natural resource customers. 


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. 

MGT CALEND A R & DI RECTO RY 

ADVERTISERS INDEX CALENDAR 

BAE Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C2 

www.baesystems.com/gxp 

ERDAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C4 

www.erdas.com 

ESRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 

www.esri.com/careers 

HP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 

www.hp.com/go/cashin59 

ITT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 

www.ittris.com/envi 

Sony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 

www.sony.com/sxrdpixels 

Textron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 

www.overwatch.geospatial.com/mgt1 

USGIF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3 

www.usgif.org/events_techdays.aspx 

NEXTISSUE 

VOLUME 7 ISSUE 2 

Cover and In-Depth 

Interview with: 

Lloyd Rowland 

Deputy Director 

National Geospatial- 

Intelligence Agency 

Features: 

Marine Corps 

GEOINT 

The Regional Expeditionary 

Intelligence Portable Resource 

is now answering the Marines’ 

demand for mobile geographic 

intelligence. 

Web 2.0 

Geoweb, a relatively new term 

that implies the merging of 

location-based information with 

the Internet, offers potential 

benefi ts to military and 

intelligence users. 

February 23-25, 2009 

Multi-INT Summit 

Washington, D.C. 

www.idga.org 

March 8-13, 2009 

ASPRS 2009 

American Society of 

Photogrammetry 

Baltimore, Md. 

www.asprs.org 

March 25-27, 2009 

Satellite 2009 


www.satellitetoday.com 

April 19-22, 2009 

Geospatial Infrastructure 

Solutions Conference 

Tampa, Fla. 

www.gita.org 

April 22-23, 2009 

Spring Intelligence 

Symposium 


www.afcea.org 

May 4-6, 2009 

Sea Air Space 2009 

National Harbor, Md. 

http://events.jspargo.com/ 

sas09/public/enter.aspx 

July 13-17, 2009 

ESRI International User 

Conference 

San Diego, Calif. 

www.esri.com 

Interoperability 

A Joint Interoperability Test 

Command facility makes sure that 

systems comply with a key standard 

for imagery transmission. 

Human Terrain 

The Army is developing technology 

for mapping cultural and social 

differences. 

Command Profi le: 

NGA St. Louis 


INDUSTRY INTERVIEW MILITARY GEOSPATIAL TECHNOLOGY 

Q: Can you tell us about your company 

and the products and services it offers 

to military customers? 

A: Overwatch Geospatial Systems is a 

leading provider of geospatial intelligence 

[GEOINT] solutions and services 

to the defense and intelligence communities. 

For more than 20 years, our 

software solutions have combined technology 

innovation with a detailed understanding 

of the geospatial intelligence 

needs of military and intelligence users. 

Our solutions, as a result, enable the 

geospatial intelligence analyst to provide 

mission-critical GEOINT to warfighters 

and decision-makers. Specifically, our 

software allows analysts to accelerate 

geospatial intelligence production workflows 

and provide timely and highly 

accurate geospatial intelligence information, 

which is critical to military and 

homeland security operations. 

Q: What unique benefits does your 

company offer military customers? 

A: Simply stated, Overwatch Geospatial 

Systems solutions and services make it 

easier for intelligence and military geospatial 

analysts to do their jobs. We provide 

a user interface that is designed for 

the military intelligence analyst’s work 

environment and does not encumber the 

intelligence analyst to operate with complex, 

highly technical terminology. Our 

solutions are preferred by the military 

since they consistently enable the analyst 

to produce geospatial intelligence 

in Department of Defense and NATO 

standard formats. We’re helping analysts 

provide the military with GEOINT that is 

timely, relevant and accurate. 

Q: What are some examples of the benefits 

experienced by military customers? 


James Dolan 

Senior Vice President and General Manager 

Overwatch Geospatial Systems 

A: Military geospatial analysts who have 

limited access to formal classroom training 

can gain proficiency quickly with our 

solutions and build geospatial intelligence 

products that meet mission requirements 

associated with precision targeting, situational 

awareness and three-dimensional, 

animated mission rehearsals, for example. 

Q: What areas are you working on for the 

future in meeting military needs? 

A: With the proliferation of traditional and 

emerging types and formats of geospatial 

data, a number of challenges and opportunities 

are presented for geospatial intelligence 

software providers. Full-motion 

video, LIDAR [Light Detection and Ranging], 

Advanced Geospatial Intelligence and 

other emerging formats can potentially 

inundate and overwhelm military geospatial 

intelligence analysts. Our software 

makes it easier for the geospatial intelligence 

analyst to retrieve, process and analyze 

a wide variety of geospatial data and 

quickly produce highly accurate geospatial 

data products with a variety of formats. 

We also are developing integrated tool sets 

that enable the user to simultaneously 

analyze traditional overhead data sources 

and full-motion video data. This means the 

analyst can quickly gain situational understanding 

of the dynamic environments in 

which the military operates. 

Q: What is Overwatch Geospatial Systems’ 

approach to developing these solutions? 

A: We spend a lot of time with our users in 

their operational environments and hear 

their concerns that they are often being 

overwhelmed by technology. Many users 

describe situations in which they are provided 

highly complex technical solutions 

that actually make it harder for them to 

do their jobs. We observed situations that 

actually made the analysts become “prisoners” 

of the technology that was supposed 

to be helping them. Understanding 

the needs of the user and the urgency of 

their missions drove us toward a paradigm 

of providing integrated technical solutions 

with a “military operator friendly” user 

interface. Based on the feedback we are 

receiving from users on our software solutions 

and services, I believe we are moving 

in the right direction. 

Q: Do you have anything further you 

would like to add? 

A: Enhancing the geospatial analyst’s 

access to geospatial data sets is critical. 

The volume, variety and complexity of 

raw and refined geospatial intelligence 

data is expanding at an exponential rate, 

and operational users are seeking easy 

and reliable ways to access the data they 

need, when they need it. We have had 

positive responses to our cataloging technologies 

and are fielding new desktop and 

enterprise-level products that will make 

it easier for geospatial intelligence analysts 

and production organizations to use 

multi-source geospatial intelligence data. 

jpdolan@overwatch.textron.com 






The fourth annual 

GEOINT Tech Days is 

just around the corner! 

Tech Days provides a valuable 

and unique opportunity for 

USGIF Members from government, 

industry, and academia to 

showcase the latest geospatial 

intelligence technologies and 

capabilities in a small, inviting 

environment. 

For more information, visit 

http://www.usgif.org/Events_TechDays.aspx 

SAVE THE DATE! 

GEOINT TECH DAYS 

JUNE 3-5, 2009 

DAY 1 - WED. JUNE 3 

DAY 2 - THURS. JUNE 4 

DAY 3 - FRI. JUNE 5 

NGA TECHNOLOGY DAY 

Join us for a classified day of demonstrations 

from the NGA directorates 

NGA Headquarters - Bethesda, MD 

INDUSTRY TECHNOLOGY DAY 

USGIF Members display the latest technologies 

in an unclassified setting, while the Emerging 

Technologies Showcase and Tradecraft 

Roundtable highlight and discuss some of the 

innovative technologies within the community 

Hyatt Regency Reston - Reston, VA 

GEOGALA BLACK-TIE DINNER 

Be sure you stay for Friday night’s black-tie 

GEOGala… always the talk of the town 

Hyatt Regency Reston – Reston, VA 

(By Invitation Only) 

Produced by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) 

in partnership with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)

MGT 7-1.indd - KMI Media Group

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