News

NIMA and Commercial Imagery

Q&A with Robert D. Steele,
President of OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS Inc.

What's good about NIMA's approach?

The good news here is that NIMA is finally making a real effort to completely recast its system to receive and process commercial imagery, which is today the *primary* source of geospatial data despite the fact that NIMA's legacy architecture is totally dependent on national imagery sources that are extremely expensive and largely unreliable for mapping and wide area surveillance needs.

What's bad about it?

The bad news here is that NIMA is still not getting the support it needs from the CINCS or SecDef for a hard-dollar commitment to out-year procurements of commercial imagery. NIMA is telling the one meter people they have to come up with a system for delivering their stuff into an archaic legacy process, without giving them a firm commitment to buy their offerings. Doug Smith, Deputy Director of NIMA and a good man, has publicly stated that NIMA needs to spend at least $250M a year, and closer to $500M a year, buying commercial imagery. But OSD, NIMA and the CINCs are all unwilling to make this happen now. Until DoD budgets for this level of out-year procurement, NIMA must be seen as still going through the motions and paying lip service to commercial imagery sourcing while being financially unable to actually buy commercial imagery.

The other bad thing about this is that NIMA is assuming that U.S. one meter will be commercially viable, and is also assuming that the armed forces can do without maps until the year 2003 and beyond. I have real doubts about the viability of the U.S. one meter industry in the absence of firm out-year funding commitment from Congress. At the same time I am still very upset with NIMA and OSD for their continued refusal to buy French 10 meter imagery in bulk, so as to resolve quickly all of the urgent deficiencies for 1:50,000 (ten meter) maps with contour lines for the Third World. NIMA has told both the White House and the Secretary of State (EARTHMAP Report, October 1995) that it is not going to address White House and "rest of government" needs for 1:50,000 maps urgently needed to support the Administration in its sustainable development policy initiatives world-wide--and at the same time, OSD is misleading the CINCs into thinking NIMA can meet their needs for contingency maps, which is out and out not true. It takes 60-90 days to create maps under optimal conditions. Thus, OSD continues to leave both our armed forces and our diplomats out on a limb.

Is this too late or right on time?

Way too late. This should have been part of the original Congressional mandate to put one meter into the private sector. I support the one meter U.S. space capability but the one meter industry is being asked to do the impossible: to create an incredibly expensive commercial space system which in the past was only affordable by the U.S. Intelligence Community using tax payer dollars--and to do so with absolutely no assured marketplace or even the real prospect of selling their product.

Could NIMA go farther? Is NIMA still too timid when it comes to getting imagery from commercial sources?

To give NIMA its due, NIMA is not the problem. Inside NIMA, the leadership understands the value of French 10 meter (which is the ONLY industrial-strength commercial imagery system in place, and likely to not only remain so, but become even more dominant with the forthcoming launches of the five meter satellites). The problem is at the OSD level, where bureaucrats are deliberately telling the Hill that we do not need money for commercial imagery (limiting us to $10 million this year, when NIMA knows it needs $250M), and with the CINCs, who are literally oblivious of the fact that virtually all of their contingency plans are completely unsupportable from the mapping side of the house--and in the absence of maps, policy options are severely constained in the early days of the crisis. I would say NIMA is being much too timid about speaking truth to power and giving our mapping shortfalls, and the utility of non-U.S. sources, a fair hearing in public forums.

What are the drawbacks from relying too much on federal sources for imagery?

National imagery was designed to look at great detail--in fact, it was NOT designed to do maps (wide area surveillance) but was jury- rigged after the fact when we cancelled the originally planned mapping satellites. National imagery for maps is like taking tens of thousands of photographs through a straw, and then trying to paste them together to create a mosaic of a larger area that one French snap-shot would cover at a cost of $6-10 per square kilometer (probably about a 1000X cheaper than national approach). Then add to this the fact that these little postage stamps are taken over years and seasons, so that you have multiple seasons, mutliple times of day, multiple angles of look, and you can imagine what kind of monster process we have put in place.

The other drawback is that national imagery is responsive to national needs for strategic intelligence, and secondarily to CINC needs for targeting intelligence. Mapping is a poor third--during the Gulf War the head of DMA, Phil Nuber, had to appeal personally to Stormin' Norman to get time for collecting to meet mapping needs.

Why would anyone need one-meter imagery anyway?

One meter is useful in meeting perhaps 10% of the requirements, but like the Air Force with its golf courses (the enlisted folks have to play or the officers can't justify a golf course at every air force base), OSD is saying that one meter will meet all of our needs because they can't afford it otherwise. One meter is important in looking at details--aircraft types, nuclear facilities, terrorist training camps. It is not only inappropriate for wide area surveillance, but largely unaffordable--one meter requires 10X to 100X more computer storage, more communications bandwidth, more TIME to transmit and process, and more dollars than 10M, and this is the "fact of life" that OSD continues to obscure and the CINCs still do not understand.

I think one meter should not be in the private sector. It should be a government system bid under competitive contract, and it should be used to trade with the French, the Indians, the Canadian, the Russians and others who have built superior wide area surveillance systems.

Who in the commercial sector is selling such imagery?

Other than a few local companies that use Cessna's to take one meter from an airplane, no one. A few companies that want to create one meter satellites are having funding problems (one major player is $600M short in capitalization), launch problems, and future processing problems--one meter will not be "industrial- strength" before the year 2010 and perhaps not even before the year 2015.

As far as we know, how much one-meter imagery does the government generate on its own?

Quite a lot in terms of collection, but where the government falls apart is in processing. There is a hugh collection funnel, and we only process about 10 per cent of what we collect.

What else is significant or relevant to NIMA's plans as stated in the following CBD announcement?

It is a good and necessary announcement, but it flies in the face of political and fiscal and operational reality. Politically, we have to make a commitment to buying $250M (if 10 meter/1 meter mix) to $500M (if only 1 meter) a year in the out-years beginning with next year. Fiscally, it continues to overlook the cost to the taxpayer of fore-going the savings and the efficiencies from using 10 meter, which is more than adequate for 90% of our mapping needs. Operationally, it continues to gloss over the fact that our armed forces and diplomats and business world need the world at 1:50,000, that 90% of the world is NOT available at 1:50,000 (ten meter), and that French commerical imagery can easily solve 30-50% of our needs in the next TWO YEARS, if OSD would simply wake up and smell the coffee that's already on the burner.