NGA executive provides insight into agency Published March 10, 2009 By Carl Bergquist Air University Public Affairs MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. -- While at Maxwell-Gunter the week of March 2, the director of the Office of Corporate Communications for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency took time to discuss his organization. Paul Weise described the NGA as "an exciting mission to talk about." He was at the base for his third consecutive presentation to the bi-annual Joint Flag Officer Wargaming Course and said the NGA was one of the newest organizations in the government. It was established in 1996 as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which changed its name to the NGA in 2003. Mr. Weise said the NGA is a combat support and intelligence agency that supports the Department of Defense and other government policy makers. He said those policy makers include the Director of National Intelligence, the State Department, the National Security Council, Homeland Security and the White House. "We provide all our partners with visual and locational situation awareness," he said. "For combat troops, that encompasses battlefields; for the State Department, boundary disputes are involved; and for Homeland security, our focus is the U.S. borders to the north and south, which are critical and vulnerable areas." Mr. Weise said the NGA furnishes images and derived intelligence from photographs that are interpreted and analyzed by agency experts for the purpose of mapping and charting. "This effort provides valuable information to [U.S. Central Command] commanders when evaluating areas of the battlefield. The information gives the commanders a detailed trend analysis of battles and other events so they can respond in kind," he said. "Geospatial intelligence is foundational. It provides the framework for commanders to overlay human intelligence and signals intelligence upon. They get a more realistic picture of situations when they see the spatial relationship of intelligence." Mr. Weise said one of the products the NGA provides is three-dimensional renderings of operational areas through image collection and analysis to determine whether activity has occurred in those areas. The results are reported to combatant commanders, and the high-resolution images the NGA offers can even identify vehicles in an operational area. "A good example of our 3-D models is something we call line-of-sight analysis. These are visual interpretations of what an operator will be able to see from a specific location such as a tall building," he said. "From these, commanders know how to place their assets or anticipate placement of an adversary. This technology is also very beneficial to Homeland Security. The FBI and the U.S. Secret Service don't leave home without us because of our ability to apply this analysis to operations and events they are involved in, such as the inauguaration." Mr. Weise said Afghanistan and Iraq are examples of how the NGA assists other countries. "The Afghans have no ability to build maps and charts, and we are helping them with that so they can get supplies and goods to their people," he said. "As a result of what has happened to Afghanistan over the past few decades, the country's once fairly sophisticated chart and map capability is gone, and the same is somewhat true of Iraq since Desert Storm." Mr. Weise said the NGA has a workforce of about 16,000 government and contractor individuals and operates at more than 150 locations worldwide. He said more than 25 percent of the agency's workforce is expeditionary in nature, deployed in locations now owned by NGA. "We have an expeditionary status because our products are best put to use when we can send someone along to explain how to use them," he said. "When that can happen, clients get the greatest benefit from our products." Mr. Weise noted operation of the NGA has required a significant investment in the government's computer infrastructure. He said high-resolution image files are large, and to move them quickly takes a lot of bandwidth. The capability to move the files quickly is important because commanders often have to have the information quickly. "Ours is a hard mission to describe in words," he said. "There are a large number of organizations collecting imagery, and our job is to serve as a functional manager to facilitate the sharing of image-derived intel using a common standard." To achieve maximum efficiency for the nation, this burden-sharing is critical. He said years ago many agencies developed their own imagery systems, and in the interest of greater efficiency, as those systems are being replaced, the NGA is trying to direct the organizations toward using the standardized method that the agency calls for through the National System for Geospatial Intelligence. Mr. Weise said concerning the private sector, the NGA has a key role with the Global Positioning System that makes travel quicker and more convenient by providing accurate data on a traveler's location and destination. "Along with the Air Force, we invented GPS," he said. "It was initially intended strictly for military use, but is now available to anyone with a GPS receiver. Commercial GPS systems that are available at many electronics stores are a direct derivation of our system." He said another example is the Google Maps service available to internet users. That technology, which was initially developed under an NGA contract, was also originally designed only for military use, but is now a commercial product. The agency publishes a bi-monthly magazine called "Pathfinder," and the non-classified version is available on the NGA Web site. He said 8,500 copies of each edition are published to provide information about the NGA mission to interested parties. Mr. Weise began his government career at the Defense Mapping Agency in 1980 after graduating from Pennsylvania's Edinboro State College in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in geography. He was appointed to the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service in 1997, and earned the Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1998. He has also attended the Federal Executive Institute's "Leadership in a Democratic Society" program and the intelligence community's Fellows Program, and Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. For more information on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, visit their Web site at www.nga.mil.