The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) commission the report titled, "Independent Study of the Roles of Commercial Remote Sensing in the future National System for Geospatial-Intelligence" early last year. It explores four possible business cases for how the government and private companies might work together to provide needed imagery for those agencies and their government clients. The suggested path is not the status quo and may have implications for the two current U.S. commercial satellite providers DigtialGlobe and GeoEye. Our editors try to tease out what the report means and its implications.