Information Edge: Imagery Intelligence and Geospatial Information in an Evolving National Security Environment

摘要

Late in the fall of 1999, Congress requested the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) to form a Commission to review the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), a new agency perceived by some to be struggling toward coherency as the national security environment and US doctrine -- e.g., Joint Vision 2010 -- evolved mercilessly around it. A proximal event was the disappointing realization that design and acquisition of the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) had sorely neglected the value-adding systems and processes known collectively as 'TPED' -- the tasking, processing, exploitation and dissemination of the imagery collected by reconnaissance satellites. The Commission, formed early in 2000 to review key dimensions of strategy and performance of NIMA, has completed its work and offers a number of conclusions and a few recommendations. Several supporting studies were performed by RAND and will be made available in their entirety to the Director of NIMA. The Commission also had the benefit of a number of prior studies, including one recently published by the Defense Science Board. Few of the issues that arose in the course of the investigation were unexpected; most had been previewed by the earlier reports. The Commission validates the charge that the Intelligence Community is 'collection centric' thinking first of developing and operating sophisticated technical collection systems such as reconnaissance satellites, and only as an after-thought preparing to properly task the systems and to process, exploit, and disseminate the collected products.