National Geospatial Intelligence Agency

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency - NGA -
Emblem of the NGA
Lineup	November 24, 2003
Country	United States
Armed forces	United States Armed Forces
Armed forces	(comprehensive)
Subordinate troops	( see below )
Strength	(secret) approx. 14,500
Insinuation	United States Department of Defense (Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence)
Fort Belvoir	Springfield , Fairfax County , Virginia , United States
Director
Current commander	Robert Cardillo

The US-American National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency ( NGA ; German  National Agency for Geographical Reconnaissance ) with its headquarters in Bethesda , Maryland , is the central US authority for military , secret service and commercial cartographic evaluations and reconnaissance. Robert Cardillo has headed the agency since 2014.

The NGA headquarters is the third largest building in the Washington Metropolitan Area , larger than the CIA headquarters and the US Capitol .

Headquarters of the NGA in Springfield , Virginia

history

On November 24, 2003, the NGA got its current name and thus emerged from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency ( NIMA ) founded in 1996 . This was previously called the Defense Mapping Agency ( DMA ) and before that the Army Mapping Service ( AMS ).

On May 2, 2011, the NGA announced that the search for Osama bin Laden was also successful because GEOINT could determine his whereabouts.

assignment

The NGA provides reconnaissance knowledge in the areas of Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT, literally "spatial reconnaissance", i.e. merging of geographic information with object information from the military intelligence service), geographic information from maps and geodata to soil and climate analyzes, which are obtained by evaluating commercial, government and military sources , from local surveys to aerial and satellite images .

Free dates

• Digital Terrain Elevation Data (DTED): worldwide terrain model data that are freely available in level 0.
• Vector Map (VMAP): worldwide vector data that are freely available in level 0.
• Operational Navigation Charts (ONCs), series of over 200 small-scale maps (1: 1,000,000) of the earth.

US intelligence budget 2013

According to a Washington Post report , the combined budget of all US intelligence services is currently $ 52.6 billion. The following are the five largest agencies whose budgets the Washington Post has divided into four categories: maintenance , data collection , data processing and exploitation, and data analysis .

Name of the authority / program		Budget administration and maintenance (Management and support)	Budget data collection	Budget data processing and recycling (Data processing and exploitation)	Budget data analysis	Total budget
	Central Intelligence Agency	01.8	11.500	0.387	1.100	14.787
	National Security Agency	05.2	02.500	1.600	1.500	10.800
	National Reconnaissance Program	01.8	06.000	2.500	-	10.300
	National Geospatial Intelligence Program	02.0	00.537	1.400	0.973	04.910
	General Defense Intelligence Program	01.7	01.300	0.228	1.200	04,428
total		12.5	21,837	6.115	4,773	45.225

Figures in billions of US dollars

Comparable organizations

There is no agency in the German Bundeswehr that corresponds exactly to the tasks of the NGA . The tasks of geodesy , geography and cartography are the center of the Bundeswehr Geoinformation edited while for aeronautical data , the Authority for Air Navigation of the Bundeswehr is responsible.

The Bundeswehr Strategic Reconnaissance Command , which has only existed since 2002, can be described as the most suitable organization for the NGA in terms of geographic information acquisition and geo-referencing with intelligence .

Web links

Commons : National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://www1.nga.mil/About/FAQs/Pages/default.aspx ( Memento from October 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ NGA Leadership
3. ↑ JAMES BAMFORD: The Multibillion-Dollar US Spy Agency You Haven't Heard of - Foreign Policy , March 20, 2017
4. ^ NGA History. (PDF, 260 KB) Retrieved January 7, 2019 (English). 
5. ↑ Marc Ambinder: The Little-Known Agency That Helped Kill Bin Laden. The National Geospatial Agency mapped bin Laden's compound, analyzed drone data, and helped the SEALs simulate their mission. In: The Atlantic. May 5, 2011, accessed January 7, 2019 . 
6. ^ The Black Budget. Covert action. Surveillance. Counterintelligence. The US "black budget" spans over a dozen agencies that make up the National Intelligence Program. The Washington Post, August 30, 2013, accessed September 7, 2013 .