PE&RS September 2000

It is an honor to address the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS). I always look forward to engaging in dialogue with the private industry, academic, and government experts that are leading the photogrammetry and remote sensing community into the twenty-first century.

As the director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), I understand and appreciate the contribution to national security made by professional societies like ASPRS. The problems and issues facing NIMA – and our nation – as we pursue national security after the Cold War, are solvable by us working together. This is especially true in the realm of remote sensing systems and associated applications. With the increasingly dynamic commercial remote sensing market, the collaborative process engendered by professional societies is increasingly important.

Just as the intelligence community must focus on fusing and integrating separate intelligence disciplines and information sources to provide the most accurate and relevant information to decision makers, so too must industry, academia, and government focus on sharing our knowledge and experience. We cannot afford to work technical and scientific problems separately.

Accordingly, I look forward to working with ASPRS and other associations to conquer the challenges of the 21st century. I encourage the members of ASPRS to learn more about NIMA and, as you do, to think about how NIMA can better migrate from an analog, 20th century organization to a digital, 21st century information provider. Toward this end, I will discuss some noteworthy issues and developments at NIMA that should be of interest to ASPRS members. Before doing so, however, I’ll provide background information on NIMA and discuss some of the changes NIMA faces as we move into the 21st century.

The National Imagery and Mapping Agency

NIMA was established on October 1, 1996 within the Department of Defense (DoD) as a Combat Support Agency and within the U.S. Intelligence Community as an intelligence agency. NIMA advises and supports the U.S. government on all imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information matters and manages the nation’s imagery and geospatial analysis and production. This includes tasking (and managing the tasking of) national imaging systems.

While “imagery” and “imagery intelligence” are well known terms, the term “geospatial information” is not fully understood within the DoD or the intelligence community. The term “geospatial information” was commonly used in the defense mapping community in the decade proceeding NIMA’s 1996 formation but has never fully entered common usage outside certain communities. Slowly, this is changing.

In our establishing act, “geospatial information” is defined as information that identifies the geographic location and characteristics of natural or constructed features and boundaries on the Earth, including: statistical data; information derived from, among other things, remote sensing, mapping, and surveying technologies; and mapping, charting and geodetic data, including “geodetic products.” Today, NIMA defines “geospatial information” as information about any object—natural or man-made—that can be referenced to a specific location on the Earth. Geospatial information conveys the “what” and the “where.”

In addition to tasking responsibilities, NIMA is charged with developing and consolidating geospatial information and imagery collection requirements, as well as managing the processing and exploitation of collected data. We also disseminate – or ensure that others disseminate – imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information by the most efficient and expeditious means available.

I should note that this is an area where we need to make progress. Our customers expect qualitative and quantitative improvements in information at the same time that our collection sources are increasing, and, due to advances in commercial and airborne collection, we will soon have to deal with large amounts of streaming video and multi-spectral information. User expectations for information outputs, technology requirements for information and knowledge management, and even the data inputs (what is collected) are all changing simultaneously. This changes the scope, breadth, and fluidity of the overall dissemination challenge.

To accomplish our dissemination mission and associated duties, NIMA prescribes and mandates standards for the overall end-to-end technical architecture associated with imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information. We do this for Defense Department components and non-Defense intelligence  elements. Included here are standards for the following: general and specific training of all types (e.g., advanced imagery analysis courses, cartography, and personnel performing imagery tasking); geospatial information collection; and, standards for the processing, exploitation, and dissemination of imagery intelligence and geospatial information.

As an adjunct to prescribing and mandating standards, NIMA is heavily involved in the research, design, development, initial deployment of, operation, and maintenance of systems related to the processing, dissemination, and archiving of imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information. Of course, NIMA does not do this alone – we simply could not do this without cooperative agreements and partnerships.

NIMA also serves as the sole DoD action agency for all purchases of commercial and foreign government-owned imagery-related remote sensing data. Upon request, we also serve as the primary action agency for such purchases by any other Federal department or agency.

NIMA’s Mission and National Security

NIMA was assigned these and other roles and responsibilities in accordance with our mission to provide timely, relevant, and accurate imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information in support of U.S. national security objectives. Here, the term “national security objectives” is broadly defined, encompassing all aspects of protecting and preserving American values and national interests at home and abroad.

The January 2000 U.S. National Security Strategy describes three levels of national interests: vital interests, important national interests, and humanitarian and “other” interests. The range of national security issues outlined in National Security Strategy is as diverse and challenging as are the myriad issues confronting policy makers. Generally, policy makers advance national interests by simultaneously pursuing activities falling into broad areas, including: “shaping” the international environment so that democracy and freedom flourish; deterring aggression; engaging in military activities (from combat to peacekeeping to non-combatant evacuation operations); and addressing transnational threats such as terrorism and drug trafficking.

To successfully advance U.S. national interests, which include the interests of our allies and partners across the world, decision makers require accurate, timely, and relevant information. This requires more than the best information sources or the most modern collection systems. Truly providing our policy makers with an information edge requires an end-to-end information architecture with the very best leadership, people, systems, doctrine, and training.

It is now almost trite to refer to the growing importance of information technology and knowledge management. Still, in an age where information overload threatens to overwhelm decision makers during crises, and at a time when policy-makers confront multiple, interdependent issues, we must continue to refine and polish our understanding of how information technology and knowledge management can be applied to national security decision making. A key part of this is developing and operationalizing an end-to-end architecture enabling decision makers to visualize issues and decisions in a way that facilitates problem solving and coarse of action development.

Imagery and imagery intelligence are, without a doubt, among the most valuable knowledge-enhancing resources available to policy and decision makers. The public became more familiar with imagery, and with the value of national technical means in general, after the Director of Central Intelligence approved the declassification of CORONA imagery. The scope and breadth of knowledge about imagery and imagery intelligence has also increased due to the growth of the remote sensing industry, which has moved some discussions of imagery resolution, increased spectral collection, and systems capabilities into the public domain.

Despite increased understanding of imagery and imagery intelligence, I think we still need a better understanding of the value the synergy of imagery and geospatial information brings to decision making and to the full range of military operations. Every day we see this synergy at work in the commercial sector, where the explosive growth of geographic information systems and applications has engendered the expectation that any database can be geospatially visualized (e.g., shipping information; crop performance).

This synergy, which enables us to visualize problem sets and possible solutions, is one way NIMA adds value to decision-making processes. Information is more useful and powerful when it is placed in an intuitive, realistic context that facilitates and compliments our natural visualization and imagination capabilities. Presenting information from all sources on an imagery and geospatial information foundation eases the burden on decision makers by exploiting natural visualization and spatial reasoning processes, particularly those involved in the ordering, assimilation, and comprehension of large amounts of information. Indeed, it is the power of visualization that enables what is known as a “common operating picture,” which is a key element of information superiority.

Information Superiority

The term information superiority gained prominence in military science and national security discussions when it became a central part of the U.S. military’s capstone doctrine for future operations. This document, Joint Vision 2010 (JV 2010), published in 1996, defined information superiority as the capability to collect, process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying an adversary’s ability to do the same.

JV 2010 has since been updated. Joint Vision 2020, published in the Spring of 2000, reaffirmed the core aspects of JV 2010, which provided a template for how our Armed Forces will achieve new levels of effectiveness in joint warfighting. This vision of future warfighting embodies the improved intelligence and command and control available in the information age and describes four operational concepts for our future military forces: dominant maneuver, precision engagement, full dimensional protection, and focused logistics.

What is the relationship between these four operational concepts and information superiority? In JV 2010, information superiority was defined as the single enabler for all four. The synergy of these four concepts will enable us to dominate the full range of military operations from humanitarian assistance, through peace operations, up to and into the highest intensity conflict.

Before continuing I should mention another key document, the Director of Central Intelligence’s (DCI’s) Strategic Intent. This document, which highlights many aspects of NIMA’s role in guaranteeing the information edge, identifies information visualization as a key capability for future national security decision making.

The DCI’s Strategic Intent states that information must be presented in a way that can best be used for trend analysis, current operations, scenario testing or making estimates. The document continues by identifying geospatial information as the basis for this visualization capability. What is needed is a distributed, enterprise-like capability to create an operating space that combines intelligence and other data to present decision makers with something called a “common operating picture.”

Success in achieving U.S. national security objectives in the 21st century’s dynamic and chaotic operating environment will depend, in no small degree, upon our ability to  achieve information superiority. Our nation’s leaders require more accurate, up-to-the-minute imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information to provide the foundation for the common operating picture, which is critical to non-military as well as military decision makers. What the common operating picture is really about is information visualization.

Visualization

Throughout history, information visualization has been the cornerstone of military success and the foundation for superior decision making. Visualization is not merely the ability to see – it is the ability to comprehend, to predict, to shape options in ones mind, and to choose among options in a way that maximizes potential gains. Visualizing actions and decisions is a necessary step in affecting the unfolding of history.

Imagine if weather data could have been fused with terrain maps at Agincourt on 25 October 1415? The French outnumbered the British more than 5 to 1, yet the French suffered approximately twenty times more casualties. What happened? French heavy cavalry became mired in the mud, lost their mobility, and were bogged-down in an open kill zone – losing their shock capability.

Or, imagine if Napoleon would have had elevation data on his maps prior to Waterloo? At a critical moment in the battle, his fateful attempt to divide and turn his enemy’s flank failed because his artillery could neither see nor hit the enemy, whose position, just on the other side of the hill, protected them. It seems that Bonaparte forgot one of his own dictums: “strategy is the art of using time and space.”

Like Napoleon, Clausewitz considered the visualization of forces moving through both time and space to be critical for success. Indeed, the great Prussian commented that decision makers must submit their work to a partner, space. Inherent in this partnership is an age-old problem: the commander can never completely fully reconnoiter and know everything about his operational area. Because of constant movement and change, he can never really come to know the full dimensions of his problem space.

To master space, according to Clausewitz, a special gift is needed: the ability to quickly and accurately grasp the topography of any area. For him, this special ability was “imagination,” which he defined in terms that we would today refer to as visualization.

Information visualization provides us with a new way of seeing problems, thereby increasing our chances of arriving at a successful solution. Because visualization is the link between reality and a decision maker’s internal cognitive processes, it is a crucial element of information superiority.

Researchers have long known that we have trouble remembering more than seven pieces of information in our short-term memory. That’s a low bit rate. On the other hand, we can absorb billions of bits of information instantly if they are arrayed in recognizable patterns, with relationships and layers of information oriented in an intuitive manner.

In Napoleon’s time, planners thought primarily in terms of two dimensions – really in terms of longitude and latitude. Napoleon also thought in terms of time, which was one factor that distinguished him from his contemporaries. But rarely did planners think in three or four dimensions at once. We now think of warfare as occurring in four dimensions: three geospatial references and time.

This greatly complicates the process, because it means we have to think about more pieces of information, how these pieces are related, and which pieces are static versus those that must be continually updated as we try to grasp the big picture of what is happening. It takes a very sophisticated visualization capability to provide today’s decision makers with the ability to fully understand their decision space and to choose among numerous courses of action.

This is one area where NIMA and ASPRS can strengthen our partnership – working collaboratively to solve visualization challenges to help enable the power of information technology to support U.S. national interests at home and abroad. Indeed, the need for an increasingly sophisticated visualization capability is one of the reasons why the United States created the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

Five of the crucial components of visualization provided by NIMA are: controlled imagery; elevation data (e.g., DTED); feature data; layering and fusing technologies; and, user-defined visualizing technology. In the case of the last element, the user must be able to adapt and tailor information to reflect the relevant operating picture based on his or her unique information requirements.

We are on the right track to provide such a sophisticated visualization capability, and emerging technology will enable us to achieve and maintain information superiority for military and non-military decision makers alike.

The Clash of Information  Cultures

One of the reasons why we can claim to be on the right track to provide information superiority – indeed a reason why we can talk about information superiority at all – is due to the advent of digital technology and communications. The proliferation of geographic information systems, including increased applications for geographic positioning, is just one of the outcomes of what has been termed the digital revolution.

Indeed, as we cross the threshold into the 21st, our past – the 20th century world of hardcopy imagery, maps and analog data – is quickly giving way to a world being remade by the power of digital information. As we move further into the digital age, we are crossing a threshold that accentuates differences between existing and emerging generations of information technologies. What we are witnessing is the rise of a “clash of information cultures.”

Of course, scholars and other observers, including the futurist Alvin Toffler, predicted the coming of such a clash. But as the Cold War ended, and as discussions of an information superhighway or a global information grid became more pronounced, this clash took on new meaning and exhibited new characteristics.

Few places illustrate the challenges and opportunities wrought from this clash of information centuries than NIMA, where the challenges of modernizing systems that enable information and knowledge services are exacerbated by our constant struggle to maintain readiness. NIMA cannot fail at either modernization or readiness. We cannot let current information and service consumers go hungry for information just because we need to modernize.

Among those who have tried to describe this clash of information cultures is Thomas Friedman. In his provocative book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman characterizes the clash of information cultures as a clash between the Cold War world and a world defined by globalization.

Arguably, the defining image of the Cold War system was “division,” manifested by the Berlin Wall and a global bipolar political-military struggle. In contrast, the defining perspective of globalization is “integration.” The symbol of the Cold War system was a wall, which divided everyone; the symbol of the globalization system is a World Wide Web, which unites everyone.

For Friedman, globalization is a product of the proliferation of technology, including computerization, miniaturization, digitization, satellite communications, fiber optics and the Internet. These technologies helped create the defining perspective of globalization, integration, and accelerated the compression of space and time which many have found central to the postmodern era.

A parallel to Friedman’s discussion is evident in the intelligence community. The Cold War parallel to his image of the Berlin Wall is the evolution of stovepipe collection systems, agencies, and databases. The post-Cold War parallel is collaborative collection and information sharing, integrated dynamic databases, and information that is fused and shared on a global network. In military science, the image of “command and connect” warfare is supplanting earlier images built on command and control.

Another way to characterize the difference between old and new information cultures is a sports analogy offered by Johns Hopkins University Professor Michael Mandelbaum. For him, the Cold War was similar to sumo wrestling. By contrast, if globalization were a sport, it would be the 100-meter dash, over and over and over. And no matter how many times you win, you have to race again the next day.

How does all of this relate to NIMA? I find it helpful to discuss the clash of information cultures, the elements of globalization, and the image of consecutive 100-meter dashes over and over again because they are analogous to challenges NIMA faces in its migration into the 21st century.

I especially like the image of 100-yard dashes over and over again — this is the operating pace that NIMA as an agency must adjust to. Anyone engaged in e-commerce or who has familiarity with the challenges of providing information or knowledge services to diverse customers is familiar with this image. For NIMA, customers increasingly demand accurate information in minutes and hours rather than days and weeks.

Much of the running of these dashes must be done through automation and the communication infrastructure that is included in the United States Imagery and Geospatial Information Service (USIGS).

USIGS Modernization

USIGS is an end-to-end imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information architecture. It is the extensive network of organizations, people, leadership, training, doctrine, standards, procedures, hardware, and software that provides our nation with the fused imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information needed to achieve information superiority.

NIMA’s first USIGS Modernization Plan, delivered to Congress on 1 June 1999, provided a path to exploit coming advances in national, commercial, and airborne collection systems by identifying initiatives that will help establish an integrated imagery and geospatial information environment. It addressed NIMA’s planning horizon out to 2005 and is a supporting document of the NIMA Strategic Plan.

NIMA modernization planning identifies the necessary ground infrastructure needed to complement programmed advances in collection capabilities and achieve balanced end-to-end performance. It tears down existing architectural stovepipes and builds a unified operating environment that integrates tasking and execution of all national, airborne, and commercial sensors.

By facilitating an interoperable, collaborative analytic community, the modernization of USIGS will respond to evolving customer needs for actionable information: information will be delivered within required operational timelines. It provides the underpinnings needed for information superiority and a sophisticated visualization capability.

Included in the 1999 and subsequent planning documents are recommendations that will yield a more robust and capable analytical workforce, one that is trained and equipped to respond to 21st century information challenges. In addition, modernization planning is preparing the imagery and geospatial community to integrate into a future environment where multiple intelligence sources and methods are fused together.

NIMA’s modernization planning focuses on four key areas. First, it provides for the fielding of an enhanced all digital infrastructure. Second, it facilitates the integration of imagery and geospatial production environment. Third, it establishes the framework and programs for a trained and ready workforce. Finally, it outlines how to leverage emerging technology in a timely and cost-effective manner. In keeping with the requirements of the digital age, an all digital infrastructure is needed to handle the programmed volumes of collected data and transform that data into useful information in a timely manner.

Technology insertions will prepare us to exploit new sensor capabilities such as multi/hyper-spectral and improved automation and integration of USIGS systems and processes. Specific modernization technology investment areas build on NIMA’s baseline technology programs. NIMA is currently collaborating with industry, federal labs, and other research centers in the following areas:

• Provide innovative concepts to solve NIMA's most pressing problems,
• Understand emerging technologies and how to use them effectively,
• Discover new knowledge in fields relevant to NIMA,
• Support and nurture technologies that are relevant to NIMA but insufficiently supported by others,
• Leverage external activities and funding sources,
• Formulate and execute Advanced Technology Demonstrations (ATDs),
• Educate, train and mentor the next generation of NIMA scientists and engineers.

NIMA will execute its technology program by leveraging and forming partnerships with industry, academia, and government for the highest return on technology investment. An indispensable activity that is often overlooked in a technology strategy is the planned transfer and insertion of cutting-edge, but matured, technologies into systems and operations.

Conclusion

Although there are significant technological, organizational, and fiscal challenges ahead of us, I’m optimistic about the future of the United States Imagery and Geospatial Information Community and our ability to provide national security decision makers with timely, relevant, and accurate information.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, the collaborative partnerships NIMA forms with industry, academia, and with professional associations like ASPRS, are vital for our ability to make the transition into the 21st century. In my view, strengthening these collaborative partnerships is a necessary and important adjunct to NIMA's ongoing efforts to improve intelligence community integration and to assume a leadership role in the fusion of data from across the intelligence disciplines.

The challenges faced by NIMA are in many ways not unique to NIMA, although some undoubtedly are. Almost all of the challenges, and potential solutions, in areas as diverse as databasing, streaming video, and visualization, are being worked by more than one agency, research center, firm, or lab. Wherever feasible and appropriate, we must continue to work together by strengthening existing relationships and by forging new ones.