Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is indeed an honor to join you at this important conference. I will focus during my allotted time on the geospatial information needs of the Department of Defense -- in other words, the kinds of information our combatant commanders will require to operate successfully in the 21st Century. More importantly, I will also give you an idea of what we're doing today to ensure we can provide this information tomorrow.

Now, I'm a nuclear-trained naval aviator. And it's common knowledge in US Navy circles that the hardcore nuclear folks have 3-pounds heads, 50-pound bodies, and no hearts. They're not "mentors", they're "tor-mentors", everyone says. But to their credit, when they get absorbed, they can spend an awful lot of time focused on the details of problems they encounter.

Let me give you an example. One of the best comedians of our generation, Lilly Tomlin, had a pet phrase -- "The moon is nine time smaller than the earth, but it's farther away". I'd write that on a board, then stand back and watch the "nukes" file past and get interested. I kid you not, in short order, they would start doing the math.

I have come to appreciate Lilly's wit and humor even more since my appointment as Director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency a little over a year ago. This organisation is the newest Department of Defense combat support agency and also the first major US intelligence agency formed in the post-Cold War era. And as we go about the task of combining in this new agency the previously separate disciplines of imagery and mapping, Lilly's words hold extra-special meaning. Particularly that insightful Tomlin quip that, "Reality is the result of nothing more than a collective hunch".

I must tell you, NIMA is composed, from top to bottom, of some of the smartest people around. But none of us is any good at predicting the future. Yet, this is precisely the challenge we face - devising and implementing a strategy today to meet the imagery and geospatial information needs of policymakers and warfighters alike as they strive to achieve national and military objectives in the next century. Frankly, a lot of people are relying heavily on the correctness of NIMA's "collective hunches".

Let me tell you briefly why we created NIMA. Since the last 1980s, there has been a dramatic change in the nature of the national security threat facing the United States and the world. That threat has become increasingly diverse and less predictable, and its origins more multi-national in nature. As military conflict has continued to evolve, we see troops being deployed to regions of the world where we never would have expected them to be deployed. And we see them conducting operations - often as part of a coalition force - that a decade ago we would have considered uncharacteristic, at best. I'm referring here to things such as refugee control in Rwanda, famine relief in Somalia, and peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, and elsewhere. The prosecution of such a wide variety of operations has generated a virtually insatiable demand for information. And not only from military commanders in the field. Equally anxious are policymakers and senior decisionmakers at all levels.

Overall, their needs are similar - they want easy access to sufficient information to enable them to achieve a "dominant awareness" of the mission space in which they are operating. Besides imagery and imagery intelligence, an especially important ingredient in achieving this "dominant awareness" is highly-accurate, current geospatial information, which forms a clear and distinct reference point for much of what we do in the military today. Also, since areas of operation are potentially so diverse, the information being sought must be available on a global basis. And if it is not current, it must, as a minimum, be time-tagged to indicate just how old the information is.

Our challenge lies in meeting decisionmakers' demands for more precise information at a much faster rate than ever before. In addition, we are being challenged to provide this information in easily-understood formats that users' can adapt to satisfy unique operational requirements.

My organisation, NIMA, was established specifically to address these rapidly expanding requirements in the areas of imagery (satellite and airborne reconnaissance), imagery intelligence (the analysis of the imagery collected), and geospatial information (the basic building block of maps). How well we position ourselves today to provide this kind of information tomorrow - or put another way, how good our "collective hunches" are -- will directly impact the quality of mission planning, the sufficiency of data coverage of the earth's surface, and the effectiveness of precision-guided munitions in the 21st Century. Let me address each of these areas separately.

Mission Planning

From an aviator's perspective, mission planning has traditionally been a process that took at least 24 hours to accomplish prior to any mission. The process drew its reference geospatial data from hard-copy map and chart products. These were fixed-scale, combat charts that geospatially depicted an area of operations, as well as ingress and egress routes pilots were expected to follow. The pilot's view was derived essentially from a map compiled using "who-knows-what" cartographic sources. The map was only as accurate as its scale allowed.

Today's dynamic battlefields and mission spaces demand much more. For one thing, 24 hours is far too long to wait for mission-specific information. And when provided, this information must incorporate the most current data available about all significant features on the ground at the time of the operation.

The NIMA solution to this challenge is to establish a virtual "information service" - to make the Agency a "clearinghouse" for data in which geospatial information to support mission planning is accumulated in an easily-accessed, global, shared database. Customers can tap into this database prior to a specific mission, and retrieve data that will permit them to visualise an entire operational area, replete with layers of up-to-date information.

The geospatial information in such a database will consist of a framework data set made up of a global terrain elevation model, coupled with a recent, accurate, picture of the area of interest. It will also include a minimum set of feature data that will provide users references to attributes such as lines of communication.

This set would require a terrain model with 30 meter post spacing, a raster image at 5-meter resolution, and a minimal feature data layer. In addition, prior to the actual execution of a mission, operators could simulate a "fly-through" of the area using an electronic combination of imagery, terrain elevation data, and geospatial information in the form of a three-dimensional terrain visualisation.

With this ability to "see" an operational area without ever leaving the staging area, operators can make real-time corrections to the mission scenario, adjust aircraft routes to save time and fuel or to reduce vulnerability, and more effectively analyse approaches to an area to select the best route to the objective. Training could also be conducted using this same data set visualisation. And based on real-time updates to information about the operational area, the opportunity would exist for re-planning or modifying a mission at any time, even after forces have embarked.

Global Coverage

The nature of today's threat means that we can never predict where we'll be called upon to operate, or what mission US forces will be assigned when they get there. The need for mission-planning data on a global basis is, therefore, absolutely critical.

To address the requirement for global coverage, NIMA is principally reaching out to the commercial sector -- not only for assistance in developing efficient ways of storing, retrieving, and manipulating the imagery and geospatial data we collect, but also in helping us actually collect and generate the data in the first place.

Currently, the imagery data layer, which we refer to as the Controlled Image Base (CIB), is at a 5-meter resolution. It is being produced for NIMA customers by several commercial vendors. Under present procedures, we provide imagery collected by US Government systems, and commercial vendors process it into a model that has been corrected to reflect a true representation of the ground and its features.

We are also pursuing several techniques for gathering information to develop a global terrain elevation data set. Over the next several years NIMA will likely employ a variety of remote sensing platforms to collect digital terrain elevation data for a far greater percentage of the earth's surface than is presently available. We are also relying on international co-production agreements to play an important role in the feature data-generation process.

Precision Weapons

When the conversation turns to the precision weapons of today, I think back to my days of flying F-4s in Vietnam. Back then, we fighter pilots had simple knee boards with maps. We'd meet with the operations planners, circle some bridges on those maps with grease pencils, then fly out looking for them. When we thought we had located those bridges, we bombed them, using big, dumb bombs and rockets.

But today, targeting is not as simple as it was back then, and those broad-area weapons are no longer precise enough. Take Operation DESERT STORM as an example. We all marveled at the video clips that highlighted the capacity of coalition forces to deliver precision-guided munitions. It's hard to believe, but not long ago we would congratulate ourselves for putting a bomb within 50 meters of a target. Now, we're disappointed if we can't get it in the second window from the left on the third floor of a specific building.

What few people realise is that the level of precision required to aim a weapon in this manner is possible only through the use of highly-accurate imagery and geospatial information and is rooted in how well we are able to locate ground control points. All of the cruise missiles that fly get there by riding an extremely detailed and accurate stream of geospatial data.

The fact is, we're very good at guiding these so-called "smart" bombs - and we're getting better. It only stands to reason then that as the weapons themselves, become more sophisticated, the information that makes them tick must improve as well.

Besides the obvious military advantages of precisely delivering weapons, there is an important humanitarian dimension to consider. The changing nature of the threat has spawned adversaries who often seek shelter for military activities and personnel among purely civilian structures such as schools and hospitals. Destroying these targets with conventional weaponry would likely result in unacceptable levels of collateral damage and injuries. With the new generation of precision-guided munitions, we can now target discreet military facilities with the relative assurance of neutralising them while at the same time holding collateral damage to an absolute minumum.

Conclusion

As you can see, a solid base of current imagery and geospatial information goes to the core of much of what we do in today's military. It will become even more critical in the future. The magnitude of the task of supplying this data on a global scale has dictated that we focus on providing framework data consisting of terrain elevation information, 5-meter resolution imagery, and minimum feature data. We are also moving away from a product-based approach to supporting the warfighter's needs. Instead, we have opted to provide customers the capability to create their own products, such as dynamic visualisations of an area based on the most current data and information.

In so doing, we -- NIMA -- believe we can give our customers a significant "information edge" on their road to dominating whatever mission space they encounter in the next century. Our goal is to provide seamless access to tailorable imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information - and to make this information available on very short timelines and at the lowest possible classification level. Our strategy is to obtain and use the best available information, regardless of the source, and to use private-sector services and the best available commercial technology, whenever possible.

We envisage an environment in which imagery and imagery intelligence are linked to a common geospatial foundation. Within such a system, data will move in a totally digital, soft-copy format, and in near real-time, from the point of collection to the time of dissemination. The key to this environment, as alluded to earlier, will be a multi-tiered database that is accessible on demand and that interfaces with customer databases worldwide. Ideally, this database would also be capable of efficiently integrating information from all other intelligence disciplines.

NIMA's responsibility will be to identify information from national, international, military, and commercial sources to be included in what is most easily visualised as a huge data library. In addition, NIMA will assist in identifying technology solutions that will enable customers to most effectively access this data library and process the information they retrieve into products that satisfy their unique requirements.

Clearly, the strategy that NIMA is pursuing to achieve "dominant awareness" is closely aligned with your interests. Effective planning for future economic growth or for evaluating environmental trends, for instance, requires the same kinds and amounts of global imagery and geospatial information that the military needs for its planning purposes. And using this information as a foundation upon which to correlate and fuse regional and global economic and environmental data is essential to your successful planning as it is to ours in the military.

I appreciate the opportunity to meet with you today and look forward to your recommendations regarding the future of a global spatial data infrastructure. Thank you.