The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) had said that firms provide NGA and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) 50,000 electro-optical (EO) business images weekly.
NGA is now further delineating that figure. The 50,000 EO business images provided weekly through the NRO Electro-Optical Business Layer (EOCL) program are raw files/raw data, and of that number 10,000 are “operationally relevant” images that NGA analysts use.
In May last 12 months, NRO awarded EOCL contracts that the agency said it values at $4 billion over the subsequent decade to BlackSky Technology [BKSY], Maxar Technologies, and Planet Labs PBC [PL] (, May 22).
has not obtained a percentage breakdown between the business imagery and National Technical Means (NTM) imagery utilized by NRO or NGA.
The NGA said that 90 percent of its “foundational data,” corresponding to baseline maps used for navigation and maritime safety, comes from business firms and that business imagery is increasingly used for “tipping and cueing” NTM satellites with higher resolution cameras to take a better look.
In November, 2021, Pete Muend, the NRO’s business systems program director, said that the agency was procuring about 50,000 business images weekly and that he expected to see a big increase in that number (, Nov. 3, 2021). NRO Director Christopher Scolese told the Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Symposium in St. Louis a month earlier that business contracts “are providing about 100 million square kilometers of economic imagery each week.”
In a speech to the GEOINT symposium in May this 12 months, NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth quoted a figure of greater than 50,000 EO business images per week, but in a Nov. 1 interview at NGA’s headquarters in Springfield, Va., Whitworth said that business firms provide the NRO and the NGO with a complete of 10,000 such images per week.
After the interview, NGA provided the clarification on the ten,000 figure–namely, that the ten,000 referred to “operationally relevant” images.
A photograph caption to an article by National Public Radio in March, 2020 suggested that NGA was receiving multiple million images from all sources per day.
“We’re making every effort to include business imagery–mainly since it’s the suitable thing to do–at every turn,” Whitworth said within the Nov. 1 interview. “I actually have a saying: ‘I just want all of it.’ In terms of collection, it’s good for America, if we just get all of it, provided it’s inside the ethical and legal boundaries that we’ve been given. To provide you an idea, the EOCL contract delivers to us 10,000 business images per week between NGA and NRO. Now we have operational access to 230-plus business imaging satellites that include over 50 taskable imagers and 180 Planet Doves.”
The latter are 10x10x30 centimeter nanosatellites by Planet Labs that deliver three meter resolution multispectral imagery.
“Now we have over 20 business analytic services on contract,” Whitworth said. “That is something that’s very vital to Congress. We take that seriously, as they’re our board of directors. I have the desire to make them comfortable, and I need to do the suitable thing also because I need good evaluation. For example, we get greater than 4,000 automated detections per day from considered one of those business services.”
“As to the proportion of the general [split of DoD-used imagery between National Technical Means imagery and commercial imagery], I don’t have that,” Whitworth said. “Frankly, the numbers are too big. I’m not going to let you know that it [commercial imagery] is almost all, nevertheless it’s significant. It’s all interwoven with the importance of [NGA] being the gathering orchestrator because if the request is available in, and we don’t have something from an NTM [National Technical Means] perspective that’s available, if you happen to’re willing and aware and capable of drive the business availability, you may still answer the mail without sacrificing an NTM asset that is likely to be on a unique task.”