{"id":53407,"date":"2023-05-23T22:59:13","date_gmt":"2023-05-23T14:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nga-director-whitworth-the-space-domain-is-increasingly-important-to-assess-behavior\/"},"modified":"2023-05-23T22:59:13","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T14:59:13","slug":"nga-director-whitworth-the-space-domain-is-increasingly-important-to-assess-behavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nga-director-whitworth-the-space-domain-is-increasingly-important-to-assess-behavior\/","title":{"rendered":"NGA Director Whitworth: The Space Domain is Increasingly Important to Assess Behavior"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

ST. LOUIS<\/em>\u2014As space becomes increasingly competitive, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency<\/strong> (NGA) is helping its Defense Department partners keep tabs on the space domain, the agency\u2019s director said on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd make no mistake, distinguishing friendly from unfriendly behavior in space has become particularly important to us,\u201d Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth said at the annual GEOINT 2023 Symposium here in St. Louis.<\/p>\n

After assuming leadership NGA in June 2022, Whitworth changed the agency\u2019s motto to \u201cKnow the World, Show the Way\u2026from Seabed to Space.\u201d The reason for the change corresponds to the agency\u2019s \u201cexpanding responsibilities\u201d that go beyond mapping and sensing Earth\u2019s surface, he told attendees, adding that it also sends a message to Congress, the American people and the international community that space is one of NGA\u2019s chief responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Whitworth said he spoke with the heads of the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM) about his proposed changes to the motto to ensure it mirrored their vision and it did.<\/p>\n

Later, during a media roundtable, Whitworth said that NGA\u2019s work with USSPACECOM is similar to the support the agency provides any Combatant Command.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so, for us, it really kind of begins with them in terms of informing that combatant commander of what\u2019s going on and how to distinguish objects, behaviors, etcetera,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

U.S. Space Force is training and equipping personnel to \u201caffect a constellation\u201d in space and NGA\u2019s work focuses on \u201ccollection orchestration,\u201d which Whitworth defines as tasking the collection of data to meet national needs.<\/p>\n

NGA is reviewing whether it has the right number of billets in the agency for Space Force personnel and if the right number of agency personnel are focused on Space Force\u2019s needs, Whitworth said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sense that this year will be a year of definition as to our official relationship with U.S. Space Force,\u201d he said. \u201cI want to be a place where this team is effective from the get-go. Not something that we kind of lapse into two or three years from now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whitworth was asked if NGA gets its space-related data from the Space Surveillance Network, which the U.S. Space Force uses to detect and track objects orbiting Earth.<\/p>\n

James Griffith, director of Source and Operations Management within NGA, answered that this isn\u2019t new work for NGA but the agency\u2019s help is becoming increasingly important for the U.S. Space Force and USSPACECOM.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so, it\u2019s really about how do we ensure that the enterprise maintains the quality and expertise necessary to do the work at the scale that\u2019s going to be necessary to meet U.S. government priorities,\u201d Griffith said.<\/p>\n

Chris Scolese, director of the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that acquires satellites and imagery that senses the Earth, told attendees on Tuesday that NRO makes the commercial imagery as broadly available as possible, including for the U.S. Space Force.<\/p>\n

This story was first published by Via Satellite sister publication Defense Daily.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ST. LOUIS\u2014As space becomes increasingly competitive, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is helping its Defense Department partners keep tabs on the space domain, the agency\u2019s director said on Monday. \u201cAnd make no mistake, distinguishing friendly from unfriendly behavior in space has become particularly important to us,\u201d Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth said at the annual GEOINT […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}