The Military Engineer L No. 66371 NGA Support Teams By Laura L. Lundin Embedded teams of NGA experts are supporting Combatant Commands and helping standardize processes throughout the nations geospatial intelligence community. Geospatial Intelligence T he future of geospatial intelli- gence support to the war?ghter will not depend on a single prod- uct or suite of technologies; instead it will rely on the people—analysts, scientists and engineers with the Na- tional Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)—who provide military com- manders and policymakers with critical analysis and products using an inte- grated, standards-based strategy. NGA support teams (NST) are vital to the geospatial intelligence products the agency provides. Some of these teams of experts serve as direct, embedded sup- port to the 10 regional and functional Combatant Commands (COCOM) on a global scale, providing the nations mili- tary commanders with the analysis and tools that help shape decisions on the battlefront. In mid-2009, NGA stood up the Mili- tary Operations Group (MOG) within the agencys Analysis and Production Directorate to address the evolution of the NST component to better align with the strategic vision of the National Sys- tem for Geospatial Intelligence (NSG). According to the 2007 NSG Statement of Strategic Intent, The NSG mission is to create an integrated, collaborative com- munity of common practice promoting the geospatial intelligence discipline across a diverse group of producers and consumers. The mission of the MOG is both to live up to the historical mission of the NSTs and also evolve to become the NSG enabler—to bring the full capa- bilities of the NSG vision and geospatial intelligence analysis to the COCOMs, said Joel N. Maloney, MOG Director. Because geospatial intelligence en- compasses a broad spectrum of imag- ery, imagery analysis and geospatial information, the agency recognizes the importance of standardization and in- tegration to provide the best support to all mission partners. Its important for us to realize the concept of uni?ed geospatial intel- ligence operations and how that ab- solutely relates to our continued suc- cess as we move into the future, said Maloney. Our goal is to lead geospatial intelligence at those COCOMs across the board. Because NGA serves as the functional manager of NSG, the NSTs provide the perfect forum to carry out that strategic vision. A History of Support The MOG transformation will result in an NSG component that is integrated and collaborative in nature. Working alongside operational partners, NSG will focus on utilizing multi-source technologies, policies, capabilities and The NGA InnoVision Directorates Persistent Surveillance Lab researches innovative methods and technologies to provide NGA support teams with future tools and capabilities that meet the geospatial intelligence needs of the war?ghter. Photo courtesy National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
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