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National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a combat support agency within the United States Department of Defense whose primary mission is collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of national security. Initially known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) from 1996 to 2003, it is a member of the United States Intelligence Community.[7]

Agency overview

October 1, 1996 (1996-10-01) (as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency)

  • Defense Mapping Agency, Central Imagery Office, and Defense Dissemination Program Office

Fort Belvoir, Virginia, U.S.[1]
38°45′12″N 77°11′49″W / 38.7532°N 77.1969°W / 38.7532; -77.1969

"Know the Earth, Show the Way... from Seabed to Space"

About 14,500[2]

Classified (at least $4.9 billion, as of 2013)[3]

Department of Defense

nga.mil

NGA headquarters, also known as NGA Campus East or NCE, is located at Fort Belvoir North Area in Springfield, Virginia. The agency also operates major facilities in the St. Louis, Missouri area (referred to as NGA Campus West or NCW), as well as support and liaison offices worldwide. The NGA headquarters, at 2,300,000 square feet (210,000 m2), is the third-largest government building in the Washington metropolitan area after The Pentagon and the Ronald Reagan Building.[8]


In addition to using GEOINT for U.S. military and intelligence efforts, NGA provides assistance during natural and artificial disasters, aids in security planning for major events such as the Olympic Games,[9] disseminates maritime safety information,[10] and gathers data on climate change.[11]


The eighth and current director of the agency is Vice Admiral Frank D. Whitworth III.[5]

DMA Hydrographic Center (DMAHC)

Analysis Directorate, containing the Director of Analytic Operations (D/AO) and Associate Deputy Director for Operational Engagement (ADD/AE) and led by a director,[27][28] currently Director of Analysis Susan "Sue" Kalweit[29][30]

[26]

Source Operations & Management Directorate (S or "Source" Directorate), led by the Director of the Source Operations & Management Directorate[32] or Director of Source Operations[33]

[31]

Enterprise Operations Directorate (E or "Enterprise" Directorate), led by the Director of the Enterprise Operations Directorate

[31]

Services Directorate[34]

IT

Plans and Programs Directorate

[27]

Research Directorate

[35]

Security and Installation Operations Directorate (SI)[36]

[28]

Human Development Directorate (HD)

[37]

Financial Management Directorate (FM)

[38]

Unnamed "NGA contracting directorate"

[39]

Acquisitions Directorate

[40]

Unnamed "A Directorate" (possibly Acquisitions or Analysis)

[40]

Unnamed "P Directorate" (possibly Plans and Programs or former Analysis and Production Directorate (see below))

[40]

: NGA was integral in helping the Department of Defense and the U.S. Intelligence Community pinpoint the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan where Osama bin Laden hid for several years and to plan the raid that killed him.[52][53]

Osama bin Laden compound raid

9/11 aftermath: After the , NIMA partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey to survey the World Trade Center site and determine the extent of the destruction.[14]

September 11, 2001 attacks

Keyhole investment: NGA contributed approximately 25% of 's funding of Keyhole Inc, whose Earth-viewing software became Google Earth.[54]

In-Q-Tel

Hurricane Katrina: NGA supported relief efforts by "providing geospatial information about the affected areas based on imagery from commercial and U.S. government satellites, and from airborne platforms, to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other government agencies.[55] NGA's Earth website is a central source of these efforts.

Hurricane Katrina

Microsoft partnership: and NGA have signed a letter of understanding to advance the design and delivery of geospatial information applications to customers.[56] NGA will continue to use the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform (as it did for Katrina relief) to provide geospatial support for humanitarian, peacekeeping, and national-security efforts. Virtual Earth is a set of online mapping and search services that deliver imagery through an API.

Microsoft Corp.

Google and GeoEye: In 2008 NGA partnered with and GeoEye. Google would be allowed to use GeoEye spy satellite imagery with reduced resolution for Google Earth.[54]

Google

Open source software on GitHub: April 2014 NGA became the first intelligence agency to open-source software on .[57] NGA Director Letitia Long talks about NGA's GitHub initiative and the first offering, GeoQ, at the GEOINT Symposium. Her comments start at 40 minutes and 40 seconds from her GEOINT 2014 conference speech.[58] NGA open sources software packages under their GitHub organizational account.[59]

GitHub

After the 2019 creation of the , NGA began working with the USSF "to provide geospatial intelligence to support and identify future needs of the service," establishing a new support team (NST) embedded at USSF headquarters.[60]

United States Space Force

In 2022, NGA aided rescue and recovery from in Florida.[61]

Hurricane Ian

Since 2022, NGA has provided unclassified imagery capabilities to the to capture and analyze evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.[62]

Conflict Observatory

that reportedly took the United States by surprise. Due to budget cuts in defense spending after the end of the Cold War (see Peace dividend), the intelligence community was forced to reevaluate the allocation of its limited resources.[63]

India tested a nuclear weapon in 1998

In 1999, NIMA reportedly provided NATO war-planners with incorrect maps which did not reflect that the Chinese Embassy in had moved locations, which some have argued was the cause of the accidental NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The Central Intelligence Agency countered this criticism by saying this overstates the importance of the map itself in the analytic process. Maps of urban areas will be out-of-date the day after they are published, but what is important is having accurate databases.[64]

Belgrade

On Jan. 17, 2013, , a mine countermeasures ship, was grounded on the Tubbataha Reef in the southern Philippines. While it was determined that the NGA had provided an inaccurate chart that was off by as much as 8 nautical miles (15 km; 9.2 mi), the Navy primarily faulted the ship's crew, specifically the commanding officer, the executive officer and two junior officers that were standing watch at the time of the grounding, as they had failed to adhere to prudent, safe, and sound navigation principles. The crew relied solely on the inaccurate Digital Nautical Chart (DNC) during the planning and execution of the navigation plan and failed to appropriately cross-reference additional charts and utilize visual cues.[65]

USS Guardian

From 2013 to 2018, NGA designated the latitude and longitude coordinates of a private residence as a default location for , South Africa, causing the digital-mapping website MaxMind to set it as the location of over one million IP addresses, which in turn caused people searching for missing phones and other electronics (as well as other people trying to track down IP addresses in Pretoria and police officers attempting to track criminals) to show up at the residence. The issue was eventually resolved following a private investigation and a request to both NGA and MaxMind that the default location be changed.[66]

Pretoria

NIMA / NGA has been involved in several controversies.

NGA headquarters

NGA headquarters

NGA headquarters' atrium

NGA headquarters' atrium

Cartography

(GIS)

Geographic Information System

GEOnet Names Server

Geospatial engineering

GIS use in NGA

(IMINT)

Imagery intelligence

(GEOINT)

Geospatial intelligence

Orthophoto

Remote sensing

Satellite imagery

Small Sats

TransApps

Australian counterpart

Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation

(REMA), supported by NGA.[67]

Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica

Ambinder, Marc (May 5, 2011). . The Atlantic. Explains NGA's capabilities.

"The Little-Known Agency That Helped Kill Bin Laden"

Online repository of issues of NGA's magazine NGA Pathfinder:

[1]

Media related to National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at Wikimedia Commons

Official website

: University of Missouri – Columbia research center focused on GeoINT

Center for Geospatial Intelligence

JP 2-03, Geospatial Intelligence Support to Joint Operations, 31 October 2012

Archived April 12, 2016, at the Wayback Machine

Commission Report on the National Imagery and Mapping Agency

: A trade publication covering the uses of spatial technologies for national defense and homeland security by organizations such as NGA

GeoIntelligence

Ensor, David (December 13, 2002). . CNN.

"Secretive map agency opens its doors"

DMA Receives Hammer Award, 26 January 1996

Agency Provides More Than Just Maps

The trains new analysts in Intelligence Analysis

Center for Intelligence and Security Studies