{"id":87506,"date":"2010-02-09T18:16:05","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T10:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/geoeye-vice-president-mark-brender-satellite-imagerys-role-in-afghanistan\/"},"modified":"2010-02-09T18:16:05","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T10:16:05","slug":"geoeye-vice-president-mark-brender-satellite-imagerys-role-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/geoeye-vice-president-mark-brender-satellite-imagerys-role-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"GeoEye Vice President Mark Brender: Satellite Imagery\u2019s Role in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"GeoEye<\/strong> has a long history of providing the U.S. military and its allies with imagery of Afghanistan. In 2009, GeoEye\u2019s single largest customer, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency<\/strong> (NGA), upgraded its business relationship with GeoEye to a service-level agreement, which Vice President Mark Brender considers a milestone for the company. \u201cThe service-level agreement is good for NGA because they can rely on a predictable and constant supply of imagery and it is good for us because we can count on a predictable revenue stream,\u201d said Brender.
\n    Brender discussed the history behind military-commercial imagery partnerships in Afghanistan, and emphasized that despite what the public sees in Hollywood movies, the military\u2019s mapping intelligence for fighting terrorism was not always state-of-the-art.<\/p>\n

\nVia Satellite: How is GeoEye currently equipped to provide its services, and what role does GeoEye-1 play in your network?<\/h2>\n

Bender:<\/strong> We commissioned GeoEye-1 in February of 2009, and it is the world\u2019s highest resolution commercial Earth imaging satellite. From a 423-mile high orbit, the satellite is able to look down on Earth and see objects the size of home plate on a baseball diamond. It\u2019s best ground resolution is 0.41 of a meter, or about 16 inches. The satellite can also map an image that size to within about 11 feet of its true location on the surface of the globe.<\/p>\n

\nVia Satellite: How has the military\u2019s use battlefield imagery intelligence developed through eight years of operations in Afghanistan?<\/h2>\n


\nBrender: <\/strong>When U.S. forces were first deployed to Afghanistan in the October after the 9\/11 terrorist attacks, the military\u2019s initial mapping intelligence consisted of physical Russian maps from the 1980s. They did not have a broad-scale overhead mapping asset. They immediately tasked both the national system and GeoEye over a period of three months to collect imagery over Afghanistan. But that didn\u2019t help the first troops entering Afghanistan. It seems strange to say, but you have to ask: \u201cWhy would the U.S. have up-to-date maps of Afghanistan prior to 9\/11? Now, the U.S. Department of Defense recognizes that the war on terror could come at us from any angle.
\n    Now, our defense and intelligence community has a tremendous appetite for unclassified, high-resolution, map-accurate satellite imagery because it can easily be shared with allies and coalition partners. It can easily be used in disaster preparedness and disaster relief and in mission planning and contingency operations. Whereas imagery from intelligence satellites is highly classified and difficult to share with allies and coalition partners because of its security.<\/p>\n

\nVia Satellite: What unclassified commercial imagery applications does the military need today?<\/h2>\n


\nBrender: <\/strong>The U.S. military and its allies mostly use commercially provided satellite imagery to keep its mapping databases up to date. The use our digital smart maps to cover areas of the world. This covers a wide range of uses and applications. 3-D visual representation for pilots of airports and the environment in which they exist, for example, assists pilots in mission planning. Military commanders have access to a wide range of overhead collection from unmanned aerial vehicles with cameras that beam back virtual real-time images and provide persistent intelligence.<\/p>\n

\nVia Satellite: How accessible is this intelligence in an environment, such as Afghanistan, that relies on mobile connectivity?<\/h2>\n

Brender:<\/strong> The digital smart map is accessible via the Web to forward-deployed units in that part of the world. It is especially important to have easily and readily available intelligence for today\u2019s military. Young people in the military today expect to have access to high-resolution imagery because they\u2019ve grown up in a Google Earth environment. Almost everyone who has had a cell phone or has had any multimedia device can acquire and operate mapping intelligence. The applications are literally ingrained into our culture.<\/p>\n

\nVia Satellite: Do you mean that any military unit with a laptop and a Web connection has access to the unclassified imagery?<\/h2>\n


\nBrender<\/strong>: It is not quite that Hollywood yet. The perceptions of the capabilities of overhead imaging systems have been heavily influenced by Hollywood. The very first mention of the term \u201cSpy satellite\u201d was in the 1968 Gregory Peck movie, \u201cIce Station Zebra.\u201d Ever since then, Hollywood has had a love affair and has increasingly exaggerated the use and capability of overhead imaging systems. In reality, a sergeant in the field with a Web browser is not yet able to go back and look through imagery time of a particular area of interest, but it is moving in that direction.<\/p>\n

\nVia Satellite: How do you keep the imagery intelligence secure and within the hands of U.S. military and allied forces?<\/h2>\n


\nBrender:<\/strong> There are many levers for our government to regulate our industry. Under the terms of our operating license, there is a provision that if there is a threat to national security or a foreign policy concern, then the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is under the U.S. Department of Commerce, can impose a so-called shutter control over our imaging systems, which basically shuts it down. However, to this day, they have yet to impose shutter control or interrupt commercial service. That\u2019s a real testament to our governments understanding of transparency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GeoEye has a long history of providing the U.S. military and its allies with imagery of Afghanistan. In 2009, GeoEye\u2019s single largest customer, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), upgraded its business relationship with GeoEye to a service-level agreement, which Vice President Mark Brender considers a milestone for the company. \u201cThe service-level agreement is good for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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-87506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87506"}],"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=87506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}