| National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency | |
|---|---|
| "Know the Earth, Show the Way." | |
| NGA seal | |
| Agency overview | |
| Formed | 1 October 1996 |
| Preceding agency | National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) |
| Headquarters | Springfield, Virginia |
| Employees | Classified |
| Annual budget | Classified |
| Minister responsible | Michael G. Vickers, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence |
| Agency executives | Letitia Long, Director Lloyd Rowland, Deputy Director |
| Parent agency | Department of Defense |
| Website | |
| www.nga.mil | |
| Footnotes | |
| [1] | |
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is an agency of the federal government of the United States with the primary mission of collecting, analyzing and distributing geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of national security. NGA was formerly known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) and is part of the Department of Defense (DoD). In addition, NGA is a key component of the United States Intelligence Community.
NGA headquarters is located in Springfield, Virginia and operates major facilities in the St. Louis, Missouri area as well as support and liaison offices worldwide. The NGA was headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland until 2011, when NGA consolidated many of its regional activities as part of the BRAC into a new campus near Ft. Belvoir in Fairfax County, Virginia. The NGA campus, at 2.3 million square feet (214,000 m²), is the third-largest government building in the Washington Metropolitan Area, and its atrium is spacious enough to hold the Statue of Liberty.[2][3] Its budget and number of employees are classified.[4]
The NGA was credited by White House and military officials with providing critical information in support of Operation Neptune's Spear on 2 May 2011, in which the United States Military raided a secret compound housing Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, at which time he was killed-in-action.
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US mapping and charting efforts remained relatively unchanged until World War I, when aerial photography became a major contributor to battlefield intelligence. Using stereo viewers, photointerpreters reviewed thousands of images. Many of these were of the same target at different angles and times, giving rise to what became modern imagery analysis and mapmaking.
The Engineer Reproduction Plant was the Army Corps of Engineers' first attempt to centralize mapping production, printing and distribution. It was located on the grounds of the Army War College in Washington, D.C. Prior to this time, topographic mapping was largely a function of individual field engineer units using field surveying techniques or copying existing or captured products. In addition, ERP assumed the "supervision and maintenance" of the War Department Map Collection effective 1 April 1939.
With the advent of the Second World War aviation, field surveys began giving way to photogrammetry, photo interpretation and geodesy. During wartime it became increasingly possible to compile maps with minimal field work. Out of this emerged AMS, which absorbed the existing ERP in May 1942. It was located at the Dalecarlia Site (including buildings now named for John C. Frémont and Charles Ruth) on MacArthur Blvd., just outside Washington D.C. in Montgomery County, Maryland, and adjacent to the Dalecarlia Reservoir. AMS was designated as an Engineer field activity, effective 1 July 1942, by General Order 22, OCE, 19 June 1942. AMS also combined many of the Army's remaining geographic intelligence organizations and the Engineer Technical Intelligence Division. AMS was redesignated the U.S. Army Topographic Command (USATC) on 1 September 1968 and continued as an independent organization until 1972, when it was merged into the new Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) and redesignated as the DMA Topographic Center (DMATC) (see below).
After the war, as airplane capacity and range improved, the need for charts grew. The Army Air Corps established its Map Unit, which was renamed ACP in 1943 and was located in St. Louis, Missouri. ACP was known as the U.S. Air Force Aeronautical Chart and Information Center (ACIC) from 1952 to 1972 (See DMAAC below).
The Defense Mapping Agency was created on 1 January 1972 to consolidate all United States military mapping activities. DMA's "birth certificate", DoD Directive 5105.40, resulted from a (formerly) classified Presidential directive, "Organization and Management of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Community" (5 November 1971) which directed the consolidation of mapping functions previously dispersed among the military services.[5] DMA became operational on 1 July 1972, pursuant to General Order 3, DMA (16 June 1972).
DMA' was first headquartered at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C, then at Falls Church, Virginia. Its mostly civilian workforce was concentrated at production sites in Bethesda, Maryland, Northern Virginia, and St. Louis, Missouri. DMA was formed from the Mapping, Charting, and Geodesy Division, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and from various mapping-related organizations of the military services.[6]
DMAHC was formed in 1972 when the Navy's Hydrographic Office split its two components: the charting component was attached to DMAHC, and the survey component moved to the Naval Oceanographic Office, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, on the grounds of what is now the NASA Stennis Space Center. DMAHC was responsible for creating terrestrial maps of coastal areas worldwide and hydrographic charts for DoD. DMAHC was initially located in Suitland, Maryland, but later relocated to Brookmont (Bethesda), Maryland.
DMATC was located in Brookmont (Bethesda), Maryland. It was responsible for creating Topographic maps worldwide for DoD. DMATC's location in Bethesda, Maryland is the former site of NGA's headquarters.
DMAHC and DMATC eventually merged to form DMAHTC, with offices in Brookmont (Bethesda), Maryland.
DMAAC originated with the U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Chart and Information Center (ACIC) and was located in St. Louis, Missouri.
Shortly before leaving office in January 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the creation of the National Photographic Interpretation Center, headed by Arthur C. Lundahl, combining Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Army, Navy, and Air Force assets to solve national intelligence problems. NPIC was a component of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology (DDS&T) and its primary function was imagery analysis.[7]
NPIC first identified the Soviet Union’s basing of missiles in Cuba in 1962. By exploiting images from U-2 overflights and film from canisters ejected by orbiting Corona satellites,[8] NPIC analysts developed the information necessary to inform US policymakers and influence operations during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Their analysis garnered worldwide attention when the Kennedy Administration declassified and made public a portion of the images depicting the Soviet missiles on Cuban soil; Adlai Stevenson presented the images to the United Nations Security Council on 25 October 1962.
NIMA was established on 1 October 1996, by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997.[9] The creation of NIMA followed more than a year of study, debate and planning by the defense, intelligence and policy-making communities (as well as the Congress) and continuing consultations with customer organizations. The creation of NIMA centralized responsibility for imagery and mapping.
NIMA combined the DMA, the Central Imagery Office (CIO), and the Defense Dissemination Program Office (DDPO) in their entirety, and the mission and functions of the NPIC. Also merged into NIMA were the imagery exploitation, dissemination and processing elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office and the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office.
NIMA's creation was clouded by the natural reluctance of cultures to merge and the fear that their respective missions – mapping in support of defense activities versus intelligence production, principally in support of national policymakers—would be subordinated, each to the other.[10]
With the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004[11] on 24 November 2003, NIMA was renamed NGA, to better reflect its primary mission in the area of GEOINT.[12] As a part of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, all major Washington, DC-area NGA facilities, including those in Bethesda, MD; Reston, VA; and Washington, DC will eventually be consolidated at a new facility to be constructed at the Fort Belvoir, VA proving grounds. This new facility, called the NGA Campus East at this stage, will be massive, housing several thousand people and will be situated on the former Engineer Proving Ground site near Fort Belvoir. NGA facilities in St. Louis were not affected by the 2005 BRAC process.[13]
The cost of the new center, as of March 2009, was expected to be $2.4 billion. The center's campus is 2,400,000 square feet (220,000 m2) and was completed in September 2011.[14]
Former director Lt Gen James R. Clapper Jr., USAF, Retired* changed NGA's mission to a focus on surveillance instead of reconnaissance, and moved away from government-produced imagery (like that produced by the National Reconnaissance Office) to commercial imagery such as DigitalGlobe[15] and GeoEye.[16]
NGA employs professionals in aeronautical analysis, cartography, geospatial analysis, imagery analysis, marine analysis, the physical sciences, geodesy, computer and telecommunication engineering, photogrammetry, as well as those in the national security and law enforcement fields.
This table lists all Directors of the NIMA and NGA and their term of office.
| Term of Office | Director |
|---|---|
| 1996–1998 | Rear Admiral (RADM) Joseph J. (Jack) Dantone, Jr., USN, Acting Director |
| 1998–2001 | Lieutenant General (LTG) James C. King, US Army |
| 2001–2006 | Lieutenant General (Lt Gen) James R. Clapper Jr., USAF, Retired* |
| 2006–2010 | Vice Admiral (VADM) Robert B. Murrett, USN |
| 2010–present | Letitia Long |
* Although General Clapper preferred the use of his military rank, he was in fact a member of the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service (DISES) during his term as Director of NIMA / NGA, as he had retired from active duty as the director of DIA in 1995. Clapper was the first civilian to head NIMA / NGA.
On 22 February 2010, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that Letitia Long would become director later that year, becoming the first woman to head one of the 16 Intelligence Community component agencies. Long was at the time deputy director of the DIA.[17] Long was sworn in on 9 August 2010 as head of the NGA.[18]
NIMA / NGA has been involved in some controversies:
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