Thursday, May 7. 2009

Situational Awareness on a Surface

DRS Technologies offers a Global Situational Awareness solution that includes all the buzzwords: multiple data overlays including "UAV videos, schematics, photos, SAR, IR" and a touch screen built into the table display. But, it has some twists I've not seen in similar devices.

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Tuesday, October 28. 2008

Podcast: Clapper Elaborates on Collapse of BASIC

During the Q&A session at the GEOINT Symposium, Under Secretary of Defense, Lt. General (ret.) Jim Clapper, elaborated on the recently canceled BASIC (Broad Area Space-Based Imagery Collection) program, an effort by the National Reconnaisance Office (NRO) to obtain two earth observing remote sensing satellites. "Depending on your point of view, what happened to BASIC is either a strength or weakness of our form of government. There are many constituencies from which you must derive consensus. When we finally got consensus, we finally got signed for the purchase of two 1.1 meter satellites. But Congress decided that the sense of urgency no longer exists. It’s now over to the DNI (Director of National Intelligence) to decide the way ahead. The DNI has referred back to the NGA andi it will be up to Admiral Murrett, Director of the NGA to study. Clapper said in closing that "but this has been studied to death."

Listen to more of his remarks during his press briefing. (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

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USGIF Launches a Blog

I have mixed feelings about this announcement. I do agree that having a "place" for GEOINT discussions is a good thing and to date to my knowledge, there is no such place. For a time there was a GEOINT focussed publication (not from USGIF, but from the folks behind Geospatial Solutions; I think it still exists in e-mail form) but on the whole that side of the industry tends to be rather close-lipped. Perhaps that's why the publication didn't last too long?

Will a blog do better? Will the blog called "got geoint?" meet the high minded goals noted in the press release?

Hosted and managed by USGIF, got geoint? provides unfiltered access to the views and opinions of intelligence and defense community leaders from government, industry, and academia. In addition, commentary on the latest developments in defense and intelligence will be mixed in with fun, hip and breaking news the about the broad range of topics related to geospatial intelligence.

Unfiltered? Fun? Hip? Breaking news?

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Tuesday, April 8. 2008

Podcast: BI and Web 2.0 and the Latest in Location Privacy Lawsuits

This week our editors revisit two themes that continue to pop up as geospatial technology, ideas, visualization and data move into the mainstream IT world and popular culture. First we look at two announcements regarding the integration of Business Intelligence or BI, with online mapping. Then, we'll pick apart the latest data capture privacy lawsuit - where a couple is suing Google over StreetView images of their house.

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Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Read the show notes

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Monday, August 27. 2007

Podcast: Interview with Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, Director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

Last week, Editor-in-chief, Joe Francica had the opportunity to interview Vice Admiral Robert B. Murrett, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Adm. Murrett was appointed director of the NGA on July 7, 2006 and leads one of the largest military organizations dedicated to geospatial information gathering and intelligence analysis. Murrett discusses the organization's current mission and the use of geospatial standards within his organization.

His staff of highly trained geospatial technologists are deployed in domestic operations to support natural disasters as well as being deployed in combat zones to support the warfighter. Prior to his appointment, Murrett served as the Director of Naval Intelligence Murrett received his bachelor's degree in history from the University of Buffalo and master’s degrees in government and strategic intelligence from Georgetown University and the Defense Intelligence College, respectively.
The interview was recorded on August 21, 2007 and is 28 minutes in length (10Mb).

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Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as") Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here's the index with all the info.

Tuesday, November 14. 2006

GEOINT - Opening Session Focuses on Mom, Apple Pie and Training

The GEIONT conference is focused on the applications of geospatial technology for military and civilian intelligence gathering and interpretation. Much of the opening sessions at this year's GEOINT conference in Orlando, Florida focussed on reviewing the mission of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency now headed by Vice Admiral Robert Murrett. Murrett delivered the keynote that presented the mission of the NGA and the fine shape in which he found the organization vacated by General James Clapper (ret.). However, a recurring theme that transcended Murrett's presentation, his subsequent press conference and another general session during the morning was the challenge of finding and keeping talented and experienced geospatial analysts. Murrett addressed the issue of retaining personnel over the long term in a job in which the workforce finds satisfaction. Robert Cardillo, deputy director for analysis of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) said that over 50% if his workforce was not employed before 9-11. He has a daily challenge of training staff.He worries about his middle management which have not had the training of managing the analytical teams and sees no progress in training middle management. Dr. John Stopher, Budget Director for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence commented that, "There are not many people on the hill (referring to Congress) that have the time and energy to devote to this," referring to personnel policy.