Changes in thinking, along with technology advancements, are helping the U.S. Department of Defense deliver satellite imagery to the units in the field more quickly, helping to improve operations and save lives, officials with the Pentagon said.

"Imagery traditionally has been available only to a closed community," said Bill McDonald, director of technology development for the combat support office at the U.S. Department of Defense. "It has been hard to get it in front of all the warfighters and in the cockpit, but by adding communication systems, working with unclassified imagery, setting up libraries on the Internet in a secure location with archives of raw data for other analysts to exploit and archive products we have produced the data is being made more widely available."

The U.S. National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), the agency responsible for procuring satellite imagery for the military, has stepped up its efforts to bring imagery to the warfighter by deploying collection technology and imagery analysts to areas within the theater of operations, said U.S. Army Col. Russ Robertson, director of the NGA’s office of military support. "Our job is to try and link NGA capabilities with the warfighter," he said. "A few years ago, the biggest thing NGA did was to do more of a push type of operation — create maps and charts and send them forward. Now we have folks in theater, several hundred, working in [tactical operations centers]. They typically are at the joint level and sometimes go down to brigade level or lower based on needs. They are side-by-side with soldiers and can quickly collect, analyze and disseminate products. This is much further forward than we ever envisioned before."

The key to these advancements was not technology but rather a change in the thought process at NGA initiated by the agency’s former director, retired Gen. James Clapper. Clapper took over the agency shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, and stepped down in June. "Once the war on terrorism started, Gen. Clapper recognized that the services were probably behind in their capability to bring technology that already existed down to the level that was needed," Robertson said. "The services are all transforming, and the Army is increasing its number of terrain and imagery analyst by almost double. In the meantime, they were still operating off standard product maps and not able to get real-time imagery as quickly as they could have. Gen. Clapper made the decision to push people forward into the theater with equipment, bandwidth, powerful computer hardware and software in order to do things on the ground that soldiers didn’t currently have."

The change in mindset, along with some technology advancements that have improved the ability to collect and analyze data on the ground, have improved delivery time of critical information, Robertson said. The NGA previously had to perform its operations in the United States and put products in the mail or delivery them by aircraft to spots around the globe. "Depending on what we are talking about, it could take weeks to get the information from a port to a truck for delivery," Robertson said. "Now we can do that within a matter of hours, if not minutes, through NGA assets in theater."

Mobile Imagery Units

The services also have initiated efforts to bring imagery to the warfighter, highlighted by the Eagle Vision program, an expandable trailer the size of a small truck that houses the electronics and a 5.4-meter antenna that allows operators to collect and analyze imagery.

Eagle Vision was created as a result of lessons learned from Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s, and the mobile unit can be deployed around the globe quickly using a pair of C-130 transport aircraft and is designed to provide imagery to warfighters for use in mission planning. By having a system that can be delivered to areas of operations, imagery has been made available to a wider number of people within two to four hours of collection, MacDonald said.

The first system, dubbed Eagle Vision 1 and operated by the U.S. Air Force out of Ramstein Air Base in Germany, has been deployed to Al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates in support of the current operations in Iraq. "One of the reasons behind Eagle Vision all along is the ability to load it on an aircraft and drop it somewhere," said MacDonald. "When you are in a local situation you can integrate into operations at that location and when you add in a communications architecture you can take advantage of other systems in place." By linking Eagle Vision to the Global Broadcast System, that same data being produced for personnel in theater also can be made available to users around the world, he said. "When more and more people have access to that information, the more value you can extract from that data."

Eagle Vision also can be used to do classified work, but the operators try to rely mainly on unclassified imagery in order to make their products available to as wide a user base as possible, especially when they are called upon to support humanitarian relief efforts, MacDonald said.

Eagle Vision was designed originally to receive and process imagery from the French Spot series of imagery satellites — Spot 2, Spot 3 and Spot 5 — and now has been upgraded to downlink imagery from the U.S. governments Landsat satellites, Canada’s Radarsat and India’s IRS satellites among others. Some of the units also can work with selected high-resolution imaging satellites operated by U.S. companies, but the program’s main focus remains the lower-resolution government spacecraft, MacDonald said. "We have had some of the international deals for ages," MacDonald said. "When Eagle Vision popped up [in 1994], it was before the U.S. commercial companies came along. Our relationship with some of the international providers has been in place for so long and we have procured so much data that it’s just a great relationship."

The government-operated and government-funded satellites also do not have the pressure to help turn a profit, as the commercial imagery satellites do, meaning that the pricing deals can be much lower, MacDonald said. "The 2.5 meter imagery from Spot 5 is at a price point that is very, very good for us and allows us to do mapping missions. … Right now for high- resolution, the price point is extremely high, however, we have put in a communications architecture that lets the vendor collect and then move that data into a library that units can access when the data is hours old."

The combination of the different imagery sources also allows Eagle Vision to "put the whole package together," MacDonald said. "It’s a complete toolkit versus just the high-resolution imagery."

Five more Eagle Vision systems have been built and deployed since Eagle Vision 1. The Air Force operates three other units: Eagle Vision 3 is with the Nevada Air National Guard in Reno, while Eagle Vision 4 is with the South Carolina Air National Guard. Eagle Vision 5 is used by the Hawaii Air National Guard and Pacific Air Forces. Eagle Vision 2 is based with U.S. Army Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colo. The Air Force also may procure another unit, Eagle Vision 6, for the Alabama Air National Guard.

All of the Eagle Vision units have undergone gone upgrades throughout the last 18 months to increase their ability to collect and disseminate satellite imagery and products, MacDonald said. Improvements under way or already completed will allow units to downlink Canada’s new Radarsat-2 satellite, scheduled to be launched in early 2007, and the Air Force is investigating adding the ability to work with new Indian and European imagery spacecraft. Other upgrades will improve the workstations in the units, giving operators and analysts more current toolsets and the latest software.

Educating The User

While bringing operations into the war theater has proven to be invaluable, ultimately, the NGA would like to reduce its footprint in theater to bring more of its operations back to the United States while maintaining the same level of service to the warfighter, said Robertson. This will be made possible through programs such as the Global Broadcast System, which uses commercial satellite technology to move information to warfighters. The system, operated by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office and the Defense Information Systems Agency, can push a high volume of intelligence, weather and other information to terminals.

"With services such as the [Global Broadcast System] we can create products in Bethesda and shoot it down to Norfolk, where it is beamed into theaters and have it there in a matter of hours," Robinson said. "… I don’t think the long-vision is to send people downrange. As [the Global Broadcast System] GBS becomes distributed throughout the Army, we will start doing things at headquarters and pushing it forward. With the communications technology constantly growing, there is no reason it can’t be done here and pushed forward."

U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Robert Murrett, who has been nominated for appointment to vice admiral and assignment as director of the NGA, is expected to continue Clapper’s efforts in these areas. He "clearly is a warfighter, and his focus will be on the last tactical mile and providing direct support to the warfighter as long as it is needed," Robinson said.

While technology advances always will be available to both the Air Force and the NGA, Robinson said educating potential users about the availability of the data and the advantages it will offer remains a big key to improving operations. "It goes back to the change of thinking," he said. "A lot of soldiers in the field don’t know we have the imagery, and they don’t know [the Global Broadcast System] has ability to transmit huge amounts of data. For the last several years, we’ve made a push to educate units at training and at installations on the NGA and what is available through their own system."

The NGA has made tremendous progress on educating warfighters, as demonstrated by Walls, but the agency continues to push the availability of its services at all levels of the military, Robinson said. NGA personnel are deployed at facilities such as the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and other military colleges and at training facilities such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Hood in Texas.

"First, we are trying to push more [geospatial intelligence] into the institutional training and getting this in a schoolhouse environment. We want to add this to the curriculum," Robinson said. "Second, we want this at unit-level training for units about to deploy. Before they are deployed, we are going through mobilization exercises to asses a unit’s [geospatial intelligence] capability. If they are behind and could use more training, we send a mobile training team. We’ve only been pushing this at the unit level for the last two years."

NGA has received wide praise for its efforts, perhaps none more concrete than a letter from Army Capt. Chris Walls, a company commander with the 82nd Airborne Division. "All my platoon leaders had imagery products readily available to them, which they used in the every day planning of their missions," he wrote. "No other company in the entire brigade had this type of support. As a result of its effectiveness, my fellow commanders used my data set to make imagery available to their platoon leaders.

Walls credited the availability of the data and NGA education efforts as the reason his did not suffer a serious injury or death due to ambush or improvised explosive device during the deployment. "Simply put, [the] time and effort saved the lives of my men," he wrote. "At first this may seem overstated, but I ensure you it is not. As a result of these products my leaders had a better understanding of their area of operations than anyone else in the battalion."

— Jason Bates