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The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is both a combat support agency, under the United States Department of Defense, and an intelligence agency of the United States Intelligence Community,[5] with the primary mission of collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of national security. NGA was known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) until 2003.
NGA headquarters is located at Fort Belvoir in Springfield, Virginia, and operates major facilities in the St. Louis, Missouri area, as well as support and liaison offices worldwide. 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.[6][7]
In addition to using GEOINT for U.S. military and intelligence efforts, the NGA provides assistance during natural and man-made disasters, and security planning for major events such as the Olympic Games.[8] The NGA was credited by White House and military officials with providing valuable information in support of Operation Neptune's Spear on May 2, 2011, in which the United States military raided a secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama Bin Laden.
U.S. mapping and charting efforts remained relatively unchanged until World War I, when aerial photography became a major contributor to battlefield intelligence. Using stereo viewers, photo-interpreters 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's first attempt to centralize mapping production, printing, and distribution. It was located on the grounds of the Army War College in Washington, D.C. Previously, topographic mapping had largely been 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 April 1, 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 H. 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 July 1, 1942, by General Order 22, OCE, June 19, 1942. The Army Map Service 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 September 1, 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).
The agency's credit union, Constellation Federal Credit Union, was chartered during the Army Map Service era, in 1944. It has continued to serve all successive legacy agencies' employees and their families.[9]
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).
A credit union was chartered for the ACP in 1948, called Aero Chart Credit Union. It was renamed Arsenal Credit Union in 1952,[10] a nod to the St. Louis site's Civil War-era use as an arsenal.[11]
The Defense Mapping Agency was created on January 1, 1972, to consolidate all U.S. 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" (November 5, 1971), which directed the consolidation of mapping functions previously dispersed among the military services.[12] DMA became operational on July 1, 1972, pursuant to General Order 3, DMA (June 16, 1972).
DMA was first headquartered at the
Letitia Long, currently the Defense Intelligence Agency's deputy director, will take over NGA this summer, Gates said.
New Headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
New NGA headquarters' atrium
Letitia Long, director of the NGA, 2010–2014
NIMA / NGA has been involved in several controversies.
On February 22, 2010, deputy director of the DIA.[22] Long was sworn in on August 9, 2010, as head of the NGA.[23]
* 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.
This table lists all Directors of the NIMA and NGA and their term of office.
NGA employs professionals in aeronautical analysis, cartography, geospatial analysis, imagery analysis, marine analysis, the physical sciences, geodesy, computer and telecommunication engineering, and photogrammetry, as well as those in the national security and law enforcement fields.
The cost of the new center, as of March 2009, was expected to be $2.4 billion. The center's campus is approximately 2,400,000 square feet (220,000 m2) and was completed in September 2011.[21]
With the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 on November 24, 2003,[18] NIMA was renamed NGA to better reflect its primary mission in the area of GEOINT.[19] As a part of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, all major Washington, D.C.-area NGA facilities, including those in Bethesda, Maryland; Reston, Virginia; and Washington, D.C., would be consolidated at a new facility at the Fort Belvoir proving grounds. This new facility, called the NGA Campus East houses several thousand people and is situated on the former Engineer Proving Ground site near Fort Belvoir. NGA facilities in St. Louis were not affected by the 2005 BRAC process.[20]
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.[17]
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 was established on October 1, 1996, by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997.[16] 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.
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,[15] NPIC analysts developed the information necessary to inform U.S. 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 October 25, 1962.
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.[14]
DMAAC originated with the U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Chart and Information Center (ACIC) and was located in St. Louis, Missouri.
DMAHC and DMATC eventually merged to form DMAHTC, with offices in 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 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.
[13]
United States Department of the Navy, United States Army, United States Air Force, Title 10 of the United States Code, Defense Intelligence Agency
Espionage, Canada, United Kingdom, Directorate-General for External Security, National security
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Public domain, Asia, United States, Antarctica
Tanzania, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, GEOnet Names Server, Lake Victoria, African Great Lakes