Cultivating Critical Thinking

Supporting Customers in 

Their Mission Space

Mastering Languages 

and Cultural Understanding
pathfinder@nga.mil

NatlGEOINTAgency

@NGA_GEOINT

In a professional field driven by high-tech 

satellites, big data and computer algorithms, it 

is sometimes easy to forget that it is actually 

human behavior that matters most when 

protecting national security. Our safety depends 

on how well we understand information and 

events, how effectively we form decisions and 

take action when it is needed.

We think, decide and perform best when we 

are prepared. It sounds simple, but it is not. 

What does it actually mean to be prepared? How do we plan? What 

training and learning experiences are needed in order to achieve the 

outcomes we desire? How do we know what to do?

This issue of Pathfinder focuses on how we develop ourselves 

to be good stewards of national security – and to remain so as 

circumstances, technologies and adversaries change over time. 

We humans, regardless of the tools we use, must constantly learn 

and grow our expertise so that we can perform our best whenever, 

wherever and however necessary. 

It starts with learning to think differently [page 22]. In our lead story 

about advanced analytic training, you will read how NGA is working 

to evolve problem-solving techniques. An increasingly complex 

national security environment requires challenging the status quo and 

exploring new ways of approaching key intelligence questions. 

NGA also uses new techniques, commercial geospatial data and 

cutting-edge technologies to support its customers within their 

mission space [page 24]. NGA builds full-time situational awareness 

for its military customers by embedding subject matter experts in 

each service branch and at all major combatant command locations. 

The agency also supports military readiness through training and 

demonstration exercises, such as Red Flag and Green Flag.

The last in our trio of features gets to the heart of the NGA vision: 

understanding the world [page 28]. To accurately interpret global 

situations, intelligence officers must first understand the languages 

and cultures of our nation’s adversaries. Formal responsibility for that 

resides within the National Geospatial Intelligence College, located at 

NGA. Perhaps most critical for the geospatial intelligence discipline is 

mastering accurate nomenclature for locations around the world. 

Additional stories inside this issue provide inside looks at, among 

other things, how bomb-sniffing dogs are trained and certified, how 

volunteer deployers are prepared for action and how the agency 

partners with academia to develop the workforce of the future.

In the words of retired Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, who addressed the 

NGA workforce earlier this fall, it boils down to one thing: “It’s about 

talent, making sure you have the best talent in the room.” 

NGA is making that investment.

V/r,

Jeanne Chircop

Editor

We strengthen the nation 

through our command of 

geospatial intelligence

The Pathfinder promotes awareness and 

understanding of geospatial intelligence, 

and is published by National GeospatialIntelligence Agency’s Office of Corporate 

Communications.

The Pathfinder is an authorized Department 

of Defense publication for members of the 

DOD. Contents of this publication are not 

necessarily the official view of, or endorsed 

by, the U.S. government, DOD or NGA. 

Articles in the Pathfinder may be reproduced 

in whole or in part without permission, 

unless stated otherwise. If reproduced, credit 

the author and the “National GeospatialIntelligence Agency, the Pathfinder 

magazine.” Reproduction of graphics, 

photographs and imagery is subject to 

the original copyright.

NGA Leadership

Director: Robert Cardillo

Deputy Director: Sue Gordon

OCC Leadership

Director: William M. Caniano

Acting Chief News & Information: Don Kerr

Editor: Jeanne Chircop

Designer: Craig Thoburn

Photography: Anthony Boone, Rob Cox

Contact us

Send letters to the editor to 

Pathfinder@nga.mil

Telephone: 571-557-5400

DSN 547-5400

Approved for Public Release, 16-080.

| editor's message |
FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

22 Teaching Analyst

to Think Different

24 Red Fl

Training Assists 

Military Readiness

28 Understandi

the Wor

4 Team 

8 Viewpoint

12 Understand the World

14 Insig

18 Telling Our Sto

20 Collaborati

32 Show the W

34 Know the Ea

| FALL 2015 PATHFINDER | VOL. 1

24

34 32
NGA Salu

Senior Airman Deborah Parsr

By Carling Uhler, Ctr., Office of Corporate Communications

| TEAM NGA |

4 Pathfinder | FALL 20
I

t is all about family for Air Force Senior 

Airman Deborah Parsram. A kid following in 

her parents’ footsteps is nothing new, but for 

Parsram, the influence wasn’t based on blood ties. 

 “My stepdad is a retired [Air Force] senior 

master sergeant, and he recommended the military 

route,” said Parsram. “That’s when I went and 

joined the Air Force.” 

The family ties don’t end 

there. Parsram’s husband also 

serves in the Air Force, and the 

two joined National GeospatialIntelligence Agency at the same 

time, she said.

Parsram enlisted in the Air Force 

in July 2010. She sought out a 

job in the intelligence field on the 

recommendation of her stepfather.

“They needed imagery analysts 

at the time, so that’s how I got 

that slot,” said Parsram.

The senior airman was first 

stationed at Beale Air Force 

Base in her home state of 

California. She came to NGA 

as an imagery analyst in 2014. 

Parsram currently conducts 

national-level GEOINT analysis 

in support of NGA and Defense Intelligence 

Agency integrated operations as a member of 

the NGA Support Team at Rivanna Station in 

Charlottesville, Virginia. 

Parsram and her husband received orders to 

Rivanna Station at the same time and were excited to 

be stationed together. But that isn’t the only perk she 

has working for NGA, she said.

“I really enjoy my team a lot,” she said. “I have 

really good leadership, my teammates are always 

teaching me something new about my job, and I’m 

always learning something new here. I think that’s 

probably my favorite part.” 

Strong senior leadership has helped her succeed 

in her work and encouraged training and mentoring 

opportunities, she said. 

“Having good leadership allows the team to 

work together and be more successful in the 

workplace, and that’s absolutely what I see here 

with my team,” she said. 

According to colleagues and supervisors, her level 

of mental focus, clarity of analytical thought and 

constant learning with effective application enable 

Parsram to stand out in the workplace. Parsram's 

colleagues say she has a ‘natural gift’ for intelligence, 

and is able to produce double the amount of analysis 

typically expected from a standard analyst – without 

any slippage in work quality. 

Her efforts earned her 

recognition as ‘NGA Junior 

Enlisted Member of the Quarter’ 

for first quarter 2015.

“Senior Airman Parsram has 

done a phenomenal job since she 

arrived here in September 2014,” 

said her Air Force supervisor, 

Master Sgt. Michael Phelps, who 

nominated her for the honor. 

“Additionally, Senior Airman 

Parsram is involved in both the 

local Junior Enlisted Council 

and her community, all while 

pursuing additional leadership 

courses and her associate’s 

degree in intelligence studies 

from the Community College of 

the Air Force.”

Parsram will wrap up classes 

for her degree and receive her diploma next year. She 

said that finishing her studies will give her more time 

to volunteer with ‘Loaves and Fishes,’ a food pantry 

that packages and distributes food to those in need. 

Parsram said she can also continue to coordinate 

fundraising efforts and support for the joint enlisted 

council, of which she is currently a member. 

After just returning from a vacation in Hawaii, 

Parsram also looks forward to having more time to 

foster her love of traveling with her husband. Most 

important to both of them, they continue to plan trips 

with family. 

| TEAM NGA |

Pathfinder | FALL 2015

Know a service member worthy of an NGA Salute? 

Send your suggestion to Pathfinder@nga.mil.
I Am NGA:

Gio

Rosado-Si

By Paul Frommelt, Ctr., Office of Corporate Communications 

| TEAM NGA |

6 Pathfinder | FALL 20
In another life, Giovanna Rosado-Sill 

could have been an architect, sketching 

complex designs for skyscrapers, 

hospitals or schools. The University 

of Maryland graduate with a degree 

in architecture could even have had 

a hand in creating NGA’s intricately 

designed East Coast headquarters in 

Springfield, Virginia, spending late 

nights sketching out cubicle spaces to 

maximize collaboration. 

Rosado-Sill, who goes by Gigi, 

ended up going a different way with 

her career, but that didn’t stop her from 

helping NGA build for the future. 

As a senior workforce analyst in 

NGA’s Human Development key 

component and member of the HD 

Strategies Office workforce planning 

team, she supports efforts that provide 

leadership recommendations to help 

shape the agency’s workforce to reflect 

Director Robert Cardillo’s vision. 

Working in collaboration with 

leadership, subject matter experts 

and other stakeholders, she and her 

team “I need to know the skill sets 

that we [NGA] currently have and 

those we'll need to have in the future 

- drawing a path, in other words, 

taking us from point A to point B – in 

terms of competencies and readiness, 

demographics, aligning the workforce 

with the NGA strategy, goals and vision 

and priorities for the director,” she said.

A lifelong resident of the Washington, 

D.C. metropolitan area, Rosado-Sill 

started her career with the federal 

government as a consultant involved in 

building the Department of Homeland 

Security workforce from the ground up, 

following the Sept. 11 attacks. 

Her experience working on such 

a large and complex project was 

extremely enjoyable, particularly for a 

self-described numbers enthusiast. 

“It’s very exciting. I love numbers. 

I love logic. [I love] workforce 

demographics and understanding 

what we need in terms of the future,” 

said Rosado-Sill, who also earned an 

undergraduate degree in information 

and computer science from 

Maryland. “Through schooling, you 

develop certain skills for precision 

and structure. For that, you need 

to have a logical mind; you need 

to understand math and the various 

concepts. I think that helped me.... 

Numbers don’t lie.” 

After her experience at DHS, 

Rosado-Sill knew she wanted to 

continue working for the federal 

government. When she heard about 

NGA from a colleague, she jumped at 

the chance to apply. 

“I always wanted to come back to the 

Department of Defense,” she said. 

Rosado-Sill began working at 

NGA full time in 2013. That year was 

particularly transformative for the 

agency. Letitia Long, NGA director at 

the time, had released her “Future State 

Vision,” which focused on building 

an agile and adaptive workforce to 

meet the unique demands required 

in a complex world. This presented 

an opportunity for Rosado-Sill, a 

workforce analyst. 

She saw the vision as “making sure 

that we have the right people [with the 

appropriate skills and expertise] to steer 

the ship,” she said. 

This year, Director Robert Cardillo 

refined Long’s vision, putting heavy 

emphasis on aligning talent to mission 

and working transparently in an opensource environment. As in the past, 

a change in focus requires a shift in 

workforce alignment. This is no easy 

task, akin to rearranging support beams 

without letting a building collapse. 

Luckily, it’s something that RosadoSill has excelled at. 

“It’s a big challenge, Historically, 

NGA has been working in classified 

environments," she said. To move 

us to open source, Gigi surmises, "it 

might require different skill sets, a 

different mindset, a different type of 

leadership, and a constantly evolving 

cadre of employees.”

Rosado-Sill believes shifting to a 

more open environment is challenging 

but also doable. 

“I am very passionate about the 

workforce. I am very passionate that we 

can do it. We can succeed at anything 

we put our minds too,” she said. “We 

are going through a very exciting 

time. I truly believe that we are going 

through a very exciting time.” 

| TEAM NGA |

Pathfinder | FALL 2015
Editor's note: The views expressed 

in this article are those of the author 

and do not reflect the official policy or 

position of the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency, the intelligence 

community, the Department of Defense 

or the United States Government. 

Many discussions involving 

geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, 

focus on the collection of geospatial 

data or tools that analyze geospatial 

data or, possibly, on systems that 

provide a medium for visualizing this 

information. In this light, geospatial 

intelligence provides decision 

makers with key information that 

shapes foreign policy and is used in 

conjunction with other intelligence 

sources to determine whether our 

nation sends its servicemen and 

women to war. 

GEOINT is actually far more 

multi-dimensional. Fundamentally, 

it is crucial that the foundation 

of GEOINT involves an in-depth 

understanding of both physical 

geography and human geography. 

This understanding should drive 

how we develop GEOINT tools 

and methodologies that analyze and 

visualize spatial and temporal humanenvironmental interactions as well as 

how we train GEOINT professionals. 

U.S. Code Title 10 § 467 defines 

GEOINT as the “exploitation and 

analysis of imagery and geospatial 

information to describe, assess, and 

By Lt. Col. Chris Oxendine and Col. (R) Steven Fleming

| VIEWPOINT |

8 Pathfinder | FALL 20
visually depict physical features and 

geographically referenced activities on 

the earth. Geospatial intelligence consists 

of imagery, imagery intelligence, and 

geospatial information.” 

Before GEOINT officers can do this 

exploitation and analysis, however, they 

must first understand exactly what the 

‘activities on the earth’ are. From this 

standpoint, and in preparing students 

for service in the GEOINT community, 

it is imperative that GEOINT officers 

understand the physical, spatial, 

historical, cultural and political contexts 

of the regions where they are or will be 

supporting operations. 

Medina and Hepner stated in their 

Winter 2015 Pathfinder article, “A 

Note on the State of Geography and 

Geospatial Intelligence Research,” that 

the “need for geographic knowledge 

is greater than ever and ignoring that 

need will eventually lead to extreme 

failures in policy.”

We agree. It is imperative that 

academic curriculums (both education 

and training) properly prepare 

students to evaluate and understand 

the geographic concepts of a region, 

while understanding bias that may be 

present in data they are analyzing. We 

present a recommended solution to 

prepare geospatial information science 

graduates to face the world’s dynamic 

and varied environments. Students 

who major in GISc should be educated 

and/or trained on multiple fronts, 

providing them a solid foundation 

in understanding the impacts of both 

physical and human geography and 

how geospatial information systems 

and image analysis tools can be 

utilized to support decision making in 

complex environments. 

Strengthening the ‘geo’ in 

‘geospatial’ intelligence begins with 

an academic curriculum that has a 

solid foundation in geography. This 

foundation provides students with 

an understanding of physical and 

human geography. The physical 

geography focus includes discussing 

the impacts of terrain, weather, water 

and vegetation on operations and 

intelligence. The human geography 

focus includes impacts of humans in 

different environments and, in turn, 

how the Earth affects human activity.

After establishing a baseline 

understanding of physical and 

human geography, academic 

programs can build upon these 

foundational experiences with 

enhanced understanding in 

geospatial information science, 

imagery analysis and cultural 

geography. This provides an 

integrative experience that 

includes courses in both basic 

and advanced geospatial 

information systems, cartography, 

basic and advanced remote sensing, 

photogrammetry, surveying and 

cultural geography. This integrative 

experience provides students with a 

thorough understanding of how to 

synthesize the aspects of physical and 

human geography within a geospatial 

information system. 

The GEOINT community needs 

GIS professionals who are trained 

to analyze the physical, cultural and 

human aspects of a region while 

synthesizing this with information 

gathered from numerous sensors (e.g. 

satellites, mobile phones, social media, 

etc.). We believe that ensuring from the 

outset that ‘GEO is part of GEOINT’ 

is critical to the success of the students 

studying the discipline. 

Army Lt. Col. Chris Oxendine, Ph.D., is 

assistant professor in the Department of

Geography and Environmental Engineering at 

the United States Military Academy. Contact

him at christopher.oxendine@usma.edu 

Retired Army Col. Steven Fleming, Ph.D., is

a professor of Practice of Spatial Sciences 

in the Spatial Sciences Institute at the

University of Southern California. Contact

him at s.fleming@usc.edu 

| VIEWPOINT |

Pathfinder | FALL 2015

Have an idea for a GEOINT or National Security Viewpoint 

contribution? Send your query to Pathfinder@nga.mil. 

” 

Fundamentally, it 

is crucial that the 

foundation of GEOINT 

involves an in-depth 

understanding of both 

physical geography 

and human geography.

“
Editor's note: The views expressed in this article are 

those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or 

position of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the 

intelligence community, the Department of Defense or the 

United States Government.

I taught Geospatial Intelligence and the Geospatial 

Revolution, a free massive open online course, during 

January and February 2015. My intent in teaching the 

subject matter as a MOOC was to broaden the GEOINT 

discipline. MOOCs offer open access via the Web, and so 

participation is unlimited. 

As I began preparing the course, I asked several in the 

community what the focus of the course should be. The 

common reply was, “Teach the principles.” 

I then asked, “What are the principles?” 

More often than not I met with a ‘deer in the headlights’ 

stare or a ‘you know what they are, you’ve been in the 

discipline for years’ answer. I began to contemplate what the 

real answer might be. What are GEOINT’s principles and 

why do we need them? My journey to find the answers has 

inspired me to suggest five core principles as a foundation 

for the GEOINT body of knowledge and markers that define 

the professional domain. (See "Suggested First Principles.")

Fundamental 

The Greeks used the term ‘principles’ both to express their 

fundamental laws and to explain their ultimate objectives. 

Science begins with obvious truths referred to as ‘first 

principles.’ These principles form the foundations upon 

which all practice rests and conclusions are based. They 

are thought of as both the underlying and the governing 

principles of a worldview. First principles are not defined; 

they are discovered. 

First principles are critical to the practice of geospatial 

intelligence, because they: 

• Provide professionals with an understanding of how and 

why things happen, or might happen, in the domain. 

• Expose the tiered scaffolding of critical geospatial thinking 

skills to guide learning. 

• Guide analysts to high-order thinking when encountering 

unfamiliar problems, uncertainties, questions or dilemmas 

typical of geospatial analysis.

• Allow the analyst to cope with rapid changes of new 

intelligence topics.

• Prevent a mechanistic only, box-ticking, or buttonology 

approach to geospatial analysis.

• Encourage responsibility and the exercise of judgment, 

which are key elements of professions.

Professions and Professionals

It is generally accepted that the essence of a profession 

is its work. It is also generally accepted that professions 

fight for turf, especially as the work changes with new 

technologies or organizational restructuring. It is generally 

assumed, but not always the case, that changes in the work 

enhance the professional’s role, responsibility and reward 

(some may say compensation, but there is usually more to 

consider). The forces of change can arise internally from 

client differentiation or externally with the creation of a 

new organization. NGA’s development is an example of the 

impact organizational restructuring has had on a profession 

and the professional. 

Control is a key aspect of professions. Many things affect 

the content and control of GEOINT, since it exists in an 

interrelated system of professional jurisdictions. Academic 

literature suggests that jurisdictional reach can be thought 

of as having the elements of a problem, a method to reason 

about the problem and ways to act on the results. In the case 

of GEOINT, these jurisdictions encompass the variety of 

NGA work roles and applications of public safety, homeland 

security, disaster management and business. 

Professions maintain their jurisdiction by either 

controlling their practice or knowledge. Licensure 

and certification of the professional is a technique of 

controlling the jurisdiction. In a sense, certification 

limits an individual’s access to the discipline by defining 

practical techniques that are specific competencies 

for which standards are demanded. Licensure restricts 

entry into professions, such as in surveying. The other 

form of occupational control involves controlling the 

abstract knowledge articulated as first principles. Here, 

control lies in the principles that are at the root of the 

practical techniques. The techniques themselves are often 

delegated to others, but the principles clearly identify the 

professional jurisdiction. In professions controlled by 

principles, the application of an individual’s knowledge 

requires extensive education and cannot be applied in a 

purely routine fashion. In other words, application of the 

knowledge is case-by-case, as in GEOINT. Medicine is a 

common example of this. 

We all appreciate that licensure or certification has 

the intent of ensuring quality. As typically implemented, 

certification follows a ‘know-how’ paradigm that assumes 

requirements can be identified, taught and observed in 

evaluation. This know-how paradigm contrasts with the 

‘knowledge paradigm,’ which is governed by first principles. 

The knowledge-based paradigm allows the profession to 

redefine its work, defend its jurisdiction from interlopers, 

have the agility to seize new opportunities and recognize the 

A Call to Identify First P

By Todd S. Bacastow, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University

| VIEWPOINT |

10 Pathfinder | FALL 20
continued advancement of an individual’s expert knowledge. 

Importantly, principles in the form of abstractions enable 

survival in the competitive system of professions and 

the continually changing world of technologies and 

organizational structures. A profession’s base of knowledge 

represents its value to others and the currency of exchange in 

the world of competition. This value and currency extends to 

the individual within the profession.

GEOINT’s Chal

GEOINT is said to have been born in the U.S. intelligence 

establishment. Most in the community appreciate that 

GEOINT has broader international applications and also 

important uses in the business, academic, and federal, state 

and local government sectors. This broad application has 

resulted in universal certification for sectors and GEOINT 

professionals based upon a body of knowledge. Yet, while 

pursuing universal standards of competency, we have not 

yet articulated GEOINT’s first principles. Such principles 

are an essential guide for productive teaching and learning. 

Moreover, these principles are also essential for the growth 

of the discipline and work of the professional. To date, 

there has been a tremendous cooperative effort within the 

GEOINT community to define a body of knowledge. A base 

of first principles is necessary, however, for the advancement 

of the profession and individual as technologies and 

organizations continue to evolve. My goal is to establish a 

base of principles for the growth of the discipline to which 

I owe so much. I hope that what I have proposed serves as a 

point of departure for further discussion. 

Todd S. Bacastow, Ph.D., is a professor of Practice for Geospatia

Intelligence in Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences,

and the founder and lead faculty of the university’s Geospatial 

Intelligence program. He welcomes your thoughts and comments

Contact him at tsb4@psu.edu.

Suggested First Principl

Process Principles – those representing a sequence of events under the influence of human nature; those tendencies 

independent of the influence of culture: 

• Geospatial intelligence, rooted in the geospatial sciences, geospatial technologies and critical geospatial 

thinking, seeks knowledge to achieve a decision advantage. Implication: GEOINT education and training should 

ultimately address how science, tools and techniques help the analyst to outthink a potential challenger. This 

includes speaking to the possibility of denied and deceptive information. 

• Analysis occurs as a natural human-scientific/technical-human sequence. Implication: Build and teach methods 

and systems that place the human at the critical beginning and end of the sequence.

Causal Principles – those representing a cause-effect relationship (e.g., “water expands when it freezes”):

• Geospatial intelligence reveals how human behavior is constrained by the physical landscape and human 

perceptions of the Earth. Implication: The analyst must have the mental agility to simultaneously work in three 

spaces: (1) human behavioral (often represented as patterns of life), (2) physical (i.e., landscape), and (3) cognitive 

(memory, attention, perception, reasoning and decision making of the opponent).

• Geospatial intelligence seeks to anticipate patterns of life through time. Implication: It is essential to teach the 

models and tools that address the organization of human activity on Earth and how patterns changes over time.

• Data and technical systems used by the analyst are a human creation. Implication: We need to teach that all data 

contain both technical and human biases that influence the results of an analysis. 

| VIEWPOINT |

Pathfinder | FALL 2015 

Have an idea for a GEOINT or National Security Viewpoint 

contribution? Send your query to Pathfinder@nga.mil. 
1. The United States Africa Command is responsible for U.S. military relations with 53 countries, the most of all the 

combatant commands. 

2. As the second-largest continent, Africa covers roughly 30.2 million square km or 20 percent of Earth’s total land area. 

It has more land area than China, India and the United States combined. 

3. With more than 1 billion inhabitants, Africa accounts for approximately 14 percent of the world’s population. Half of 

these inhabitants were born after 1990, making Africa’s collective population the youngest among the seven continents.

4. Eastern Africa is widely considered to be the place of origin for modern humans, with evidence of occupation 

estimated to be as early as 7 million years ago.

5. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 45 percent of Africans are Christians, 40 percent are Muslims and 10 

percent follow traditional religions. The majority of Christians live in Sub-Saharan Africa, while most Muslims reside 

in North Africa. 

6. Continental Africa holds valuable natural resources, including 98 percent of the world’s chromium, 90 percent of its 

cobalt and platinum, and 50 percent of its gold. The Democratic Republic of the Congo alone contains 70 percent of 

the world’s coltan, an important mineral used in the production of electronic devices such as cell phones.

7. Despite its abundant resources, Africa remains the world’s poorest and most underdeveloped continent. According to 

the World Bank, in 2014, 22 of the 25 poorest nations in the world (as measured by GDP per capita) were in Africa. 

8. Although much of the continent is still rural and undeveloped, parts of Africa are highly urbanized. As of 2015, 47 

cities in Africa have populations greater than 1 million people. This includes Lagos, Nigeria, a megacity with more 

than 17 million residents.

9. The current political boundaries in Africa reflect the division of the continent by European colonial powers in the 19th 

century, a history that continues to influence modern Africa. Only two countries on the continent avoided European 

colonization: Ethiopia and Liberia. 

10. It is estimated that more than 1,200 different languages are spoken natively throughout Africa. Nigeria alone has 

over 500 languages. Languages from the colonial period, such as French, English and Portuguese, are often used in 

official settings. 

Information and map provided by NGA Office of Geography. 

Human Geography Facts abo

AFRIcomResp

AREA O

| UNDERSTAND THE WORLD |

12 Pathfinder | FALL 20
| UNDERSTAND THE WORLD |

Pathfinder | FALL 2015 

” 

We will keep working with 

partners to reduce deaths from 

Ebola, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and 

tuberculosis across Africa....

“

– National Security Strategy, 2015
The National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency is committed to hiring, training 

and retaining the best-qualified 

employees to accomplish its mission – 

even when those employees have four 

legs instead of two. 

The NGA Explosives Detection 

K-9 teams make up the front line 

of defense when ensuring delivery 

vehicles are thoroughly inspected – 

inside, outside, around and under. The 

teams inspect the agency’s campuses 

with the same precision – conference 

rooms, mailrooms and parking lots, 

as well as random inspections of 

employee cars. They must operate 

at 100 percent accuracy when doing 

their jobs, as anything less could 

lead to dire consequences. There is 

no room for error; training is key, 

and there are no days off.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, 

Firearms and Explosives is the primary 

source for NGA’s canines. Dogs 

identified as program candidates undergo 

six weeks of training at the bureau’s 

Front Royal, Virginia, site before being 

assigned to a permanent partner. 

Basic smell

Phase 1 training focuses on 

imprintation, which is a classic 

conditioning training model. The dogs 

are offered an explosive compound 

to smell, then given a food reward. 

Repetition is important; the smell-eat 

process may be repeated up to 200 

times a day. Once imprinted, the dogs 

are then taught to sit, or alert, when the 

odor is smelled. The cycle of detection 

is complete – smell, sit, eat. 

Continuous Training Keeps NGA’s 

4-legged Employees Up to Snuff

By Dale Lehner, Office of Corporate Communications

The second 10-week training phase 

introduces the dog to its handler, and 

the two begin working together to refine 

their search techniques in a variety of 

environments – cars, buses, structures 

and open areas. This phase is as 

important for the handler as it is for the 

dog – it’s not just about walking around 

and waiting for the canine partner to 

alert on an explosive. It involves the 

handler learning to recognize those 

subtle, nuanced clues the canine partner 

cannot voice – clues that may lead to 

finding a hidden explosive or weapon. 

ATF estimates there are 19,000 

explosive formulations, which are 

based off a finite group of explosive 

components. The K-9 dogs can find all 

of them, no matter which of the 19,000 

combinations is being used. Here’s 

why: the dogs can break down complex 

odors into their basic components.

It works like this. A person will walk 

into a kitchen and smell spaghetti sauce 

cooking on the stove. A dog walks into the 

kitchen, sniffs the air but does not identify 

the smell as spaghetti sauce. Instead, the 

dog smells each individual ingredient in 

the sauce – the tomatoes, onion, garlic, 

beef, basil and pepper, as well as any 

ingredients the chef hopes to keep secret.

So, the canine nose does not smell 

the explosive formulations, just the 

base explosive. No matter how a 

bomb is assembled, the dog will 

always know it is a bomb.

A serious relation

NGA’s K-9s live with their handlers,

and training continues at home. 

Officers have ‘odor’ canisters and set 

up various search scenarios for the 

dogs to work – seek, alert, eat – to 

keep the training interesting and to 

prevent boredom. 

“I have a good relationship with my 

neighbors,” said Officer Herb, the K-9 

unit’s commanding officer. “They have 

no problem with [K-9] Frisco searching 

their cars – as long as I remove the 

odor after the search.”

The units also train daily at work. 

Quarterly testing at NGA ensures 

the teams are working at peak 

performance, ascertains whether there 

are deficiencies that may need remedial 

training and preps both K-9 and partner 

for their yearly ATF certification test. 

The only passing score is 100 percent.

Ofc. Chris, a 13-year K-9 program 

veteran who began his career with 

a German Shepherd named Reno, 

is no stranger to the process. He 

understands from experience why 

living and working together cements 

the partnership. By cultivating a strong 

bond, the human and canine learn each 

other’s mannerisms – what is normal 

behavior – and when one or the other is 

having an ‘off’ day. 

During their time together, Chris 

and Reno were deployed to an 

overseas facility, where they were 

responsible for inspecting incoming 

vehicles. A local repairman once 

arrived at the gate for a day of work. 

His flatbed truck had two storage 

boxes attached underneath the bed in 

front of the rear wheels. The first was 

open; the second closed and locked. 

“We started searching the truck, 

working around and down the side 

| insight |

14 Pathfinder | FALL 20
with the containers,” said Chris. “Reno 

searched routinely along the first unit 

and on toward the second. At the 

second box, the only thing I noticed 

from Reno was a very slight change in 

behavior, something out of the ordinary 

for him, before 

he continued on 

around the truck.”

Even though 

Reno did not 

alert, the slight 

abnormality in 

his behavior caused Chris to instruct 

the driver to pull the truck across the 

street, where the driver unlocked and 

opened the door to the storage unit. 

In the second search, the now-open 

second box revealed two ammunition 

cans filled with extra parts and tools. 

The workman had picked the cans off 

a trash pile and had been using them 

for storage for over a year. Even still, 

Reno had obviously smelled residual 

odor through the locked container.

Chris came to NGA with his second 

partner, K-9 Andy. Andy retired August 

1, 2015, after a seven-year career as an 

explosives detection officer. He had 

reached the maximum working age of 8.

The cycle of training is beginning 

again for Ofc. Chris, this time with 

K-9 Margie, a 19-month-old black 

Labrador. Chris and Margie will train 

every day to perfect their tradecraft 

– to prevent unwanted consequences – 

since anything less than 100 percent 

accuracy is simply not good enough.

See NGA’s K-9s in action at 

https://youtu.be/jtktOAzA

| Insigh|

Pathfide| FALL 2015 15

” 

The only 

passing score 

is 100 percent. “
NGA’s unmatched geospatialintelligence capabilities and ability to 

quickly integrate alongside its customers 

has, quite literally, put the agency on 

the map in recent years; and not just 

among its intelligence community and 

government partners.

NGA is recognized as the global 

leader in GEOINT, having backed the 

U.S. military through numerous highprofile successes, and is increasingly 

in demand for support of international 

humanitarian efforts. While the 

agency’s hard-earned recognition is 

a testament to its carefully crafted 

mission and relationships, infrastructure 

in place within its Expeditionary 

Operations Office also plays a vital 

role in the organization’s ability to 

train, advise and assist its customers in 

producing top-notch GEOINT.

By cultivating key talent, the NGA 

Volunteer Deployment Team creates a 

framework for the agency’s best and 

brightest government civil service 

employees, government-sponsored 

contractors and military personnel to join 

mission partners on the front lines of their 

operations, whether in the United States 

or abroad. The NVDT team handles 

every aspect of deployer engagement, 

guiding each candidate through pre-, 

during- and post-deployment processes. 

“The backend of deployment 

involves a lot more coordination 

and preparation than it seems at first 

glance,” said Chad Dennis, deputy 

division chief of the program. 

“We’re structured as a one-stop shop, 

with the goal of making transitions 

seamless from start to finish for several 

hundred deployers annually,” he said. 

“We manage everything from medical 

clearances to passport and visa 

acquisition, as well as completing 

travel orders, submitting theater/

country clearances, handling timesheets 

during deployment, helping [deployers] 

submit travel vouchers on return and 

organizing training.”

Once prospective deployers have 

worked with NVDT recruiters to 

locate a suitable role, whether in 

leadership, technical, logistics, analytic 

or management areas, they undergo 

a stringent preparation process 

typically beginning six months prior 

to deployment, or sooner, depending 

on the urgency of the requirement. The 

program is designed to ensure their safety 

and readiness to operate successfully 

within a variety of environments. After 

passing a series of medical, dental and 

psychological exams, cleared deployers 

are guided through specialized training, 

which is one of the most challenging and 

important elements of preparation. 

“There really is no ‘safe’ place to 

deploy,” said Diana Schwartz, whose 

| insight |

16 Pathfinder | FALL 20
Current Operations Branch handles all 

aspects of the training. “The last thing 

we want to do is send an ill-prepared 

deployer downrange where they could 

become a risk to themselves or those 

they’re serving with, so we make sure all 

deployers receive the same robust core 

training regardless of their destination.” 

Every deployer must complete 

designated computer-based training 

and then qualification-preparedness 

training specific to the mission partner 

he or she will serve. Survival, Evasion, 

Resistance and Escape training is 

another crucial prerequisite. Designed 

as a role-playing exercise, this online 

training simulates enemy evasion 

techniques, as well as capture and 

rescue scenarios. 

NGA also utilizes the Defense 

Intelligence Agency Deployer 

Qualification Course. DDQC includes 

an Active Shooter exercise and training, 

plus Tactical Combat Casualty Care 

and Care under Fire. A Mass Casualty 

capstone exercise graphically instructs 

hands-on trauma skills in a simulated 

group environment. 

“One of our greatest enemies in 

this program is time,” said Chris 

Jarvis, director of NGA Expeditionary 

Operations. “It can take weeks, 

sometimes months, to get deployers 

medically cleared, or to get an official 

passport and visa. And, often, we’re 

working with deployers who have less 

than two months' notice to go out.”

Changing requirements are another 

challenge, according to Jarvis. 

“For example, DIA revises their 

DDQC course every six months, 

and we update our mandatory predeployment seminar bimonthly as 

requirements dictate. Weapons training 

and authorization to carry weapons 

in-country change periodically, and 

deployer medical requirements shift,” 

he said. “Flexibility is just part of our 

standard operating procedure.” 

Don Dereberry, who deployed 

multiple times during his military career, 

said, “I can tell you there are a lot of 

questions, plans and new pieces of 

information to contend with prior to a 

deployment, and the focus is on getting 

to the assignment and gaining traction.”

Now with the NVDT team, Dereberry 

said, “As stewards for the agency’s 

deployers, the NVDT tops the IC in 

keeping all the moving parts oiled, 

so, as subject matter experts, we’re 

free to concentrate with a high degree 

of confidence on problem-solving 

alongside the warfighter.”

Bob Upton, NVDT deployment adviso

Expeditionary Operations Office

contributed subject matter expertise to 

this article.

By Anne Helms, Ctr., Expeditionary Operations Office

| Insight 

Pathfinder | FALL 2015 
Navigators who rely on mapping 

accuracy might find themselves off 

track by as much as 13 miles if they 

erroneously use the web-Mercator 

map projection. NGA’s Office of 

Geomatics is committed to warning 

navigators and military personnel 

about possible serious consequences of 

using the popular projection, which the 

Department of Defense has declared 

unsuitable for military use. 

Flemish cartographer and geographer 

Geradus Mercator invented his 

eponymously named map projection 

in the 1500s. Map projections attempt 

to present the earth on a flat surface, as 

if a globe were cut apart and presented 

flat. Distortions of distance, scale, 

conformality and area often occur in map 

projections, because the earth obviously 

is not flat, and distances can either shrink 

or stretch in the flattening process. 

The Mercator map projection applies 

a mathematical formula to compensate 

for changes that occur when portraying 

the curved earth in a flat medium. As 

a result, the popularity of the Mercator 

map projection has transcended through 

the years, and the projection is still 

used today by sailors and navigators. 

With rapid spread of Internet usage 

in the 1990s, a modification of the 

400-year-old map projection was 

created for use on Internet-based 

maps. Today, almost all online maps 

use the so-called web-Mercator map 

projection. Unfortunately, webMercator is not simply ‘Mercator on 

the web,’ and for GEOINT analysts, 

it is a poor choice for making maps or 

analyzing geographic information.

The problem is that the inventors of 

web-Mercator took the correct formula 

for Mercator and removed part of it. 

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in mathematics 

to know that dropping part of a math 

formula will give you a different answer.

The issue stems from the state 

of technology at the time the tool 

was made. Developers took a 

mathematical shortcut because the 

Accuracy in mapping projection has obvious 

relevance to navigation pertaining to national 

security, but implications can also extend to personal 

navigation. Consider the example at left. If you

arranged to meet a friend at a certain spot, and he 

or she uses a mobile navigational device based on 

web-Mercator, the two of you will end up miles apart. 

In this example, you will be in Washington, D.C., a

your friend will be in Maryland.

Popular Mapping Projecti

Can Miss by Miles By Michael Paniccia and Craig Rollins, Office of Geomatic

| TELLING OUR STORY |

18 Pathfinder | FALL 20

Tell us your personal, unclassified version of the work 

you or your office does for NGA for possible inclusion in 

the next Pathfinder. Send your 600 word or less account 

to Pathfinder@nga.mil. Submissions may be edited for 

clarity and length.

What’s your s
On top you see a conformal map and

on the bottom a non-conformal map. 

The conformal map has three important

properties that make it suitable for 

navigation, targeting, or mission 

planning. First, the shapes are correct. 

The shape of Pennsylvania is true on the

conformal map, but heavily distorted on 

the non-conformal projection. Second, 

angles are true. If two roads intersect at

a certain angle then they interest at that 

angle on a conformal map.

Third is the existence of a scale bar. A

conformal map will display the same 

distance North/South as East/West 

with the same size line. Here we show 

two equally sized line segments cover 350 miles in all directions. On the non-conformal map, 350 miles will be represented by a

smaller line segment. This means a scale bar (to indicate x inches = y miles) can’t be used since it is dependent on direction. For

these reasons a conformal map is wanted for use in navigation, targeting, or mission planning, and Mercator is the best choice for a 

worldwide conformal map. Web-Mercator on the other hand is NOT conforma

hardware of the day had limited 

computing power, and the equation 

modification produced a map that was 

considered close enough at the time.

Today, the correct Mercator 

mathematical equations are well 

within the processing power of 

even tiny handheld devices, such as 

personal smartphones. Technological 

advancement has flattened monitors, 

replaced floppy disks with external 

terabyte hard drives, and even 

abolished the need for a mouse 

pad. Yet, no one has fixed the map 

equations. Continued use of webMercator, as it was developed, equates 

to continued use of 1990s technology 

with all its limitations.

The web-Mercator projection 

appears identical to Mercator at a 

global scale. A mix-up of the two 

map projections, though, can result 

in navigation or targeting errors of up 

to 11 minutes of latitude (about 13 

miles), depending on the latitude. The 

mismatch can happen if the device is 

programmed one way and the data it 

ingests are produced the other way. 

The only way to tell the projections 

apart is through metadata, but metadata 

can go missing. How many times have 

you seen map users cut off all the 

margin notes to piece together sheets 

for a nice wall display? The same thing 

can happen in an electronic version.

When the metadata is removed 

or altered, it is almost impossible 

to determine if the map is webMercator or Mercator, creating a 

nightmare scenario for Department 

of Defense usage. 

Another downside to the alteration 

of the mathematics is that webMercator is not conformal, which 

means it lacks three very important 

mapping properties. The first is that 

local shapes, including irregularly 

shaped features such as county 

boundaries, are preserved at the large 

scale. The second is that intersection 

angles are true, and the third is that 

distances shown on a scale bar are 

true for North, South, East, West and 

every direction in between.

This is a problem for NGA analysts 

or anyone who relies on precision 

targeting, such as military warfighters, 

or on pinpoint navigation, such as 

sailors and airmen. The three missing 

properties are important for DOD 

work. The fact that web-Mercator 

lacks them makes it unsuitable for use 

within DOD, which includes combat 

support agencies such as NGA.

So the next time you find yourself 

lost and consulting an Internet map for 

help, know that it can help you find 

your way back to your hotel or to the 

nearest restaurant, but it is not ‘good 

enough for government work.’ 

Geodetic earth scientists Michael Paniccia 

and Craig Rollins spend their days working 

with coordinate systems to help NGA 

ensure accuracy of navigation. They are

waging an educational campaign about 

web-Mercator on multiple fronts within the 

geospatial intelligence community.

| TELLING OUR STORY |

Pathfinder | FALL 2015 
It is a two-way street when it comes to 

benefiting from strategic partnerships 

between the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency and nearly 20 

academic institutions designated as 

NGA Centers of Academic Excellence 

in Geospatial Sciences. In moving 

forward together, both parties are 

driving toward a future in which 

geospatial data are at the center of 

national well-being.

NGA Strategy 2015 outlines 

goals that drive NGA’s commitment 

to developing effective academic 

partnerships. It calls for the agency 

to embrace the open geospatial 

community and break down barriers to 

academic and commercial innovation 

that will help the agency succeed 

in the open. NGA Director Robert 

Cardillo demonstrated his commitment 

by personally handing each of the 

academic institutions the certificate that 

designates them a CAE.

The CAE partners benefit from 

exchanging academic innovation 

for real-world experience. The NGA 

Vision – Know the Earth...Show the 

Way...Understand the World – holds 

appeal for the CAE designees. The 

relationship between NGA and the 

designees establishes a foundation 

for a host of fruitful interactions 

that advance science and technology 

while pushing for applications that 

are novel, yet practical. 

The partnerships also raise the stakes 

for academia, making their work “more 

than just a book drill, but an opportunity 

to do something for a customer that 

cares about the same work while 

being of service to their country,” said 

Ann Freelander of NGA’s Analysis 

directorate. “NGA helps the universities’ 

curriculums sync up with what’s 

happening in the field and gives them 

something real to look at.” 

John Brockhaus, Ph.D., of West 

Point believes that his institution’s 

designation as a CAE “elevates our 

academic credibility and demonstrates 

our commitment to a rigorous highquality geospatial academic experience 

for our cadets.” 

The experience ensures that students 

will be better prepared to address realworld concerns across a broad range 

of relevant disciplines. Geospatial 

intelligence relates to information 

technology, environmental science and 

policy, global health, and public and 

international affairs. It is far more than 

simply reading a map; it is interwoven 

into issues of vast social complexity. 

“It’s important to know how to find 

something – not just the coordinates 

and where it sits in the world – but 

to understand a particular place and 

a particular time requires a lot of 

background and knowledge,” said 

John Wilson, Ph.D., professor at the 

University of Southern California. 

“Intelligence is about acquiring, 

synthesizing and utilizing knowledge. 

Knowing how the world works should 

not come as a surprise.”

Beyond the potential for 

recruitment, a relationship with NGA 

offers the students at designated 

schools a great advantage. “The 

faculty will be better engaged and 

connected with those who are situated 

in that domain, so that we can better 

understand the opportunities and 

challenges,” said Wilson. “We would 

like our students to leave here capable of 

contributing right from the get-go.” 

Most of all, NGA’s academic partners 

offer to spend their time working on 

the hard problems, those things that 

aren’t easy to explore in the busy, taskoriented environment of a government 

workplace. One of academia’s great 

strengths is that its members aren’t 

bound to doing things the way they’ve 

always been done. 

By partnering with the academic 

community, NGA gets to focus on the 

work in front of them, while also serving 

as what Anthony Stefanidis, Ph.D., of 

Virginia’s George Mason University 

called “an articulator of the needs of the 

IC [intelligence community].” 

In turn, Stefanidis said, academia 

uses its ingenuity and resources – 

including millions of dollars in grant 

and research funding – to pursue 

innovative efforts that meet the IC’s 

projected needs.

Wilson anticipates that the 

partnership between NGA and 

academia will facilitate solutions to 

today’s crises, such as those relating 

to environmental science and everincreasing populations – issues that 

are great challenges to the global 

community. Academia uses geospatial 

sciences to understand climate change, 

disease spread, and situations related to 

crop rotations and human migrations. 

For its part, NGA has made valuable 

contributions to fighting the West 

African Ebola outbreak of 2014 and 

to rescue efforts in New Orleans after 

Hurricane Katrina and in Nepal after 

the devastating earthquake of 2015.

“There is a different tradecraft that 

is emerging,” said Stefanidis. “This 

is a way that we can collaborate 

so that we can grow our academic 

programs and help grow NGA as well. 

It’s particularly appropriate to NGA 

because the “G” is what’s evolving 

right now. We will help each other 

move to the future.” 

Academic Partnerships Chart F

Track to Tomor

By Amelia Cohen-Levy, Ctr., Human Development Directorate

| COLLABORATION |

20 Pathfinder | FALL 20
Teaching Analysts to

Think Differently

22 24 Red Flag 28 Understanding the Wor

Training Assists

Military Readiness

Features

Pathfinder | FALL 2015 
National GeospatialIntelligence Agency is “in the 

midst of a professional revolution,” 

according to Director Robert Cardillo. 

In an open letter introducing NGA 

Strategy 2015, he assured customers and 

the workforce that the agency will remain 

a key defender of national security in the 

future, but he stressed, “what got us here 

won’t get us there.”

Too much has changed.

For starters, the nation’s adversaries are less 

recognizable than ever. Non-state actors can 

turn up anywhere in the world. They mingle with civilian 

populations, even within friendly nations. To keep 

up, the NGA workforce cannot rely on the traditional 

approach of analyzing targets or images or data but rather 

must work to make sense of activities and trends within 

those targets, images and data. What do the activities 

and trends likely mean? What are the implications and 

opportunities for NGA’s customers? How do the puzzle 

pieces fit together?

Information sources have also changed. The skydarkening small-satellite “revolution” is already bringing 

a deluge of geo-tagged open-source data. Analysts are 

no longer limited to using highly specialized classified 

assets; they now have a wealth of commercial GEOINT 

in the open environment that can help them solve key 

intelligence questions. As we move forward, geospatial 

data will come from all directions, and it will come fast — 

faster even than it does today.

“The rapid innovation in the commercial remote sensing 

industry provides NGA new opportunities to deliver 

consequence to our customers,” said John Charles, who leads 

the NGA Commercial GEOINT Accelerator Team.

“We need to invest and prepare the analytic workforce 

to operate in a data-centric, information rich, multistream environment supporting emergent capabilities,” 

said Ruth Thomas, director of the NGA Talent 

Management Office. The TMO guides the agency in 

developing workforce expertise to ensure it has the right 

talent for every mission.

Maintaining an analytic 

NGA’s support to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa 

and the catastrophic earthquake in Nepal prove the agency 

can provide customers with the power of GEOINT openly, 

innovatively and agilely; but the future requires that those 

attributes become the norm. The agency must evolve its 

analytic training to keep on that path of transformation.

And that isn’t simply a matter of pushing new buttons; it’s 

a matter of teaching analysts to think differently.

The shift in analytic thinking is perhaps most evident 

in Activity Based Intelligence, or ABI, which provides an 

alternative, non-linear methodology designed to mitigate gaps 

and exploit sparse datasets. NGA analysts have employed 

ABI since 2005, especially in the areas of counterterrorism 

and irregular warfare, but now the demand signal calls for 

training and employment of ABI principles across the agency.

“I continue to say ‘ABI is a mindset’ because, to me, 

mindset is analytic methodology,” said Cardillo, who has 

made ABI one of the agency’s top priorities. “It’s how you 

think about unpeeling, unraveling, understanding an enigma. 

In many ways, it’s an architecture to enable analysts to more 

freely attack a problem.” 

The agency’s more robust ABI training is an instructorled course that incorporates a mix of lecture, interactive 

Teachi

Analys

to Thi

Differ

By Mike Ochse, Ctr., NGA Denver, Strategic Communications

22 Pathfinder | FALL 20
discussions and guest speakers into a problem-based learning 

approach. The course targets imagery analysts, geospatial 

analysts and source strategies analysts, engaging them with 

an ill-structured, authentic problem and challenging them to 

employ ABI tradecraft to develop a solution.

In November 2015 the agency piloted a new ABI 

training course, “Leading the ABI Tradecraft.” The new 

course will provide managers, technical executives, staff 

officers, analytic supervisors and decision-makers across 

the NGA enterprise a working knowledge of the ABI 

tradecraft and how to effectively and efficiently manage 

resources, officers and personnel.

Non-traditional tra

Not all current and future ABI training is instructor led.

The agency has available a variety of training videos for the 

workforce. Additionally, the NGC is assessing a National 

System for Geospatial Intelligence, or NSG, training request 

for an “Introduction to ABI” computer-based training course.

There is also an informal element to ABI training that is 

nevertheless crucial, according to Mike Foster, who leads 

the agency’s ABI initiatives. Many of the agency’s ABI 

tools and tradecraft are homegrown within different analytic 

pockets across the enterprise, he contends, and bringing 

these best practices to light, indoctrinating them and 

spreading them across the agency is critical.

“That analyst who has worked an account for 20 years 

...how do we leverage and expose the knowledge that is 

often tacit and that manifests itself in their reporting? I think 

we can do more to expose and report that information to 

create dialogue among communities of interest [that] work 

common mission threads,” said Foster.

It’s not just about information, though, said Foster.

“When you talk about transforming, you have to start with the 

people,” he said.

Teaching the technical knowledge and analytic skills 

of the future is only one of many components necessary 

for advancing analytic training. Holistically speaking, it 

begins by having and hiring the right people with the right 

attitude and the right skills.

“We need to focus on the core GEOINT analytic skills, 

such as critical thinking and problem solving; data science; 

advanced analytic techniques; communication — oral, written 

and visual; and phenomenology,” said Gary Dunow, director of 

Analysis. “We need to make sure the environment supports the 

desired behaviors by providing the right tools, technology and 

support for risk taking.”

The analytic training team is targeting these competencies 

in their current training plan, looking to strengthen them 

across the analytic workforce through defined and to-bedetermined training offerings over the next five years. 

Elements of the approach include surging course 

offerings related to advanced thinking and problem 

solving, increasing student throughput to a recently 

revamped analytic writing course and instituting a 

certificate-based data-sciences program with entry-level 

through advanced coursework.

The approach includes a mix of internally developed 

courses, in close partnership with the National Geospatial 

Intelligence College, as well as the possibility of leveraging 

external training where applicable, affordable and appropriate. 

It also features initiatives and forums to advance peer-to-peer 

tradecraft knowledge-sharing — echoing Foster’s and others’ 

belief that sometimes the best source of training can be the very 

experts within the workforce.

Challenge

Despite plans and strong partnerships, NGA’s analytic 

training faces a familiar foe: time. Training development, 

when done properly, is rigorous and time-consuming. 

Finding the right experts to support development and 

delivery of training is hard. Often the true experts are 

analysts whose full-time roles preclude them from 

supporting development efforts or delivering training to the 

masses. Sometimes, when a course is finally piloted, the 

original requirement has gone stale. It’s a challenge that 

training teams commonly face, and NGA is not immune.

And there is the distance challenge as well. How do you 

reach a global workforce, especially when many courses 

are designed for in-classroom instruction? The NGC 

already has mobile training teams that deploy certified 

instructors to customer sites to deliver specific training 

courses. Some MTT-enabled course offerings come 

equipped with their own laptops, allowing for training 

delivery anywhere in the world.

Not all courses are mobile, however; some, including 

many leadership courses, still require analysts to travel 

to NGA’s east or west campuses or to one of the NGC’s 

five extended learning sites in Denver, Tampa, Dayton, 

Hawaii, or Molesworth, U.K. The agency is hoping its 

investment in video-enabled classrooms, called Enhanced 

Video Instructional Capabilities, or EVICs, will improve 

distance learning by allowing more analysts to virtually 

attend instructor-led courses.

Despite the challenges, those responsible for training 

NGA’s analytic workforce of tomorrow know they have 

support from the agency’s highest offices. For proof, they 

need look only to the same NGA strategy that lays out the 

agency’s goals for the road ahead. In it are the director’s 

own words: “We will invest in our people to develop in 

them the skills and perspectives that will carry us forward. 

We will get better at our craft.” 

Pathfinder | FALL 2015 
The Department of Defense touts it 

as ‘the most realistic combat exercise 

ever developed.’ To understand the 

full significance of Red Flag aviation 

training, now in its 40th year, requires a 

look further back in history and beyond 

its Air Force sponsor.

Picture this: World War II is raging 

in Europe. The United States, though 

not yet formally involved, decides to 

ship cargo and fuel to England. Far 

from the front, and within sight of 

our own ports, there seems little to 

fear for our merchant ships and their 

military escorts as they embark on their 

transatlantic supply mission.

The Germans think differently. 

They decide to send U-boats to 

attack the U.S. convoy by night. 

They find the U.S. ships silhouetted 

against the brightly lit Mid-Atlantic 

coast. The ships are also running 

lights themselves. 

Easy pickings....

America’s lack of accurate situational 

awareness would prove one of the 

most costly missteps in its military 

history. It took days for U.S. 

officials to fully understand what 

had happened and weeks before they 

were able to take corrective action. 

It would also take a second and more 

devastating attack at Pearl Harbor 

before the United States would 

officially enter the war.

Full-time awaren

Among lessons learned during 

WWII, this one in particular is linked 

directly to the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency mission: decision 

makers and military forces must 

know at all times the locations and 

movements of their adversaries, and 

must work to anticipate their strategy 

and likely tactics. 

NGA builds full-time situational 

awareness for its military customers 

in large part through its support team 

system. NGA personnel are embedded 

with each service branch and at all 

major combatant command locations, 

serving as ready sources for analytic 

products and services that provide 

spatiotemporal context for what is 

happening in the world. 

“We coach, train and mentor our mission 

partners on NGA tools and applications,” 

said Army Col. Joseph Patterson, director of 

the NGA Readiness Office. 

The NGA Support Teams comprise 

liaison officers and geospatial analysts 

who work together across service 

boundaries to support state-of-the-art 

geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, 

according to Patterson. He said team 

members engage pre-deployment to set 

the stage for success in theater as well 

as in reach-back support to operations. 

Training exercises

NGA also supports its military 

customers during training and readiness 

exercises and demonstrations. In 

addition to the annual Enterprise 

Challenge, which focuses on 

demonstrating interoperability among 

all branches of the U.S. military and 

key allied partners, NGA supports 

specialized training, such as the 

aviation-focused Red Flag exercises that 

are conducted several times each year. 

Red Flag involves a series of 

simulated combat exercises conducted 

on the bombing and gunnery ranges of 

the Nevada Test and Training Range. 

Red Flag is one of a series of advanced 

Training Assists 

By Muridith Winder, Office of Corporate Communications

Red Fla

24 Pathfinder | FALL 20
training programs administered by the 

U.S. Air Force Warfare Center and 

Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. It is 

executed through the 414th Combat 

Training Squadron. The squadron’s 

mission is to maximize the combat 

readiness, capability and survivability 

of participating units by providing 

realistic training in a combined air, 

ground, space and electronic threat 

environment while providing for a 

free exchange of ideas between forces. 

(Also see “Green Flag” box.)

Red Flag is not limited to the Air 

Force. Each Red Flag exercise also 

includes naval, marine and army 

aviators; sailors posted to aircraft 

carriers; search and rescue personnel; 

and the air forces of a host of U.S. 

allied nations. Over its history, Red 

Flag has helped train personnel from 

more than 29 allied nations.

GEOINT is a key component of Red 

Flag training, and NGA products and 

services figure prominently.

“Every exercise begins with an NGA 

mission brief,” said John Gray, NGA’s 

liaison officer to Nellis and Creech 

Air Force Bases. “This presentation 

provides the overview, capabilities and 

location of NGA resources.”

Among key resources is NGA’s Map 

of the World visualization tool, which 

provides access to rich geospatial content 

and data by location. Red Flag’s naval 

participants rely on NGA’s integrated 

Web-based services while onboard ship. 

Pilots access MoW and other NGA 

products and services during flight by 

using iPads and other mobile devices. 

“We get all of the flight pubs, 

approaches, etc., through NGA,” said 

Air Force Col. Jeffrey Weed, 414th 

Combat Training Squadron commander. 

“I don’t want to underappreciate that, 

but that really pales in comparison to the 

other products that we get from [NGA].”

Included in the broader set of services 

NGA provides are imagery, GEOINT 

products and navigational charts that are 

regularly updated and made available on 

all of the Red Flag mission-planning and 

flight-planning computers.

Because foreign air forces also 

participate in Red Flag, NGA must 

supply products, including imagery, 

that are releasable to non-U.S. 

participants, added Weed. Just as with 

the U.S. participants, it is important 

for allied forces to be familiar 

with and able to maximize use of 

the GEOINT products available to 

support joint missions.

NGA’s commitment to use commercial 

imagery to a larger extent than before has 

proved a boon to operations at Red Flag, 

in large part because of the releasability 

issue, said Weed.

“That’s probably been the most 

successful NGA partnership that we 

have,” said Weed. “For the last 18 

months, NGA has had a commercial 

imagery program in which they can 

provide unclassified imagery to all of 

our participants.”

Photo by Air Force

Staff Sgt. Jackie L. Sa

Pathfinder | FALL 2015 
Making it re

Preparing for an exercise of Red Flag’s 

magnitude takes a lot of planning and

coordination, according to planners. One 

of the key elements to mission planning 

is providing realistic intelligence.

“We have a team of nearly 20 

personnel who work closely with 

the corporate [main Red Flag] team 

to make sure scenario products 

are available to participants,” said 

Air Force Capt. Kathryn Leach, 

flight commander with the 547th 

Intelligence Squadron.

“We support the 414th with intel 

scenarios and target assignments 

for Red Flag,” she said. “[NGA] 

provides several Web-based 

services, where participants can 

look up imagery. They also have a 

couple that they’ve pushed out for 

our coalition sites, where we have 

foreign participants.”

Planners work to make the 

training itself as realistic as possible, 

according to Leach. This means 

assigning some participants to act as 

aggressors. The aggressors are trained 

to replicate the tactics and techniques 

of potential adversaries. 

Both friendly and adversarial teams 

are provided with intelligence and 

products, which simulates a realworld scenario as much as possible, 

according to Leach. Participants also 

must work through all of the same 

mission-planning processes that they 

would in a live event.

Weed also said that NGA’s 

commercial imagery program has 

allowed Red Flag participants to 

access imagery in a timelier manner. 

He explained that Red Flag’s imagery 

requests typically were at the bottom 

of the priority list before NGA started 

incorporating commercial imagery, 

because real-world situations always 

take precedence over training exercises.

“Whether surveillance imagery on 

potential landing zones for helicopters 

or updated target photos, we have 

been able to use that imagery request 

process — specifically the unclassified 

commercial imagery — to get products 

into the hands of exercise participants 

in less than 24 hours,” said Weed. “That 

never happened before in Red Flag.”

26 Pathfinder | FALL 20
The effort to simulate a realistic 

experience also includes having rescue 

personnel on hand.

“Our role is the same as 

downrange,” said Air Force Capt. 

Andrew Bergeris, intelligence officer 

for the 66th Rescue Squadron.

That downrange mission is to 

provide combat flight rescues 

and recovery of downed pilots. 

Using the HH-60G Pave Hawk 

helicopter, members of the rescue 

squadron also provide and assist 

in peacetime search and rescue 

operations. They rely heavily on 

NGA products to accomplish their 

missions, said Bergeris.

“We use NGA products to look at 

terrain features on different routes,” he 

said. “Since we fly so low, we look at 

the vertical terrain to see what might 

possibly be in our way.” 

Having accurate terrain details 

is critical to the rescue pilots, said 

Bergeris, and NGA’s digital products 

usually provide the most up-todate information because they are 

constantly updated.

“Terrain can change from year to 

year,” he said. “With paper products we 

have to wonder if power lines are where 

we think they are, or did they take them 

down? Or, did they add a new vertical 

obstruction to this area? There are so 

many different reasons why we look 

at more updated imagery when we’re 

actually going out the door.”

Paper products are still the preferred 

format for fighters, according to Weed.

“Hard-copy charts can survive an 

ejection and be useful on the ground 

with the pilots,” he said.

Describing NGA’s contribution to 

Red Flag and military readiness, Weed 

had nothing but praise. 

“This has been a great partnership. I 

think it’s been one of the most successful 

parts of my command,” he said. 

The U.S. Air Force Warfare C

and Nellis Air Force Base cond

related training in conjunction 

with U.S. Army National Trai

Center Exercises at Fort Irwi

California. Administered throug

the 549th Combat Trainin

Squadron, Green Flag exercise

prepare joint and coalition 

warfighters to support surface 

forces through air, space and 

cyber operations. Green Fla

exercises typically involve 

unmanned and electronic aircraft 

in addition to fighter and bomber 

squadrons. U.S. Army Com

Brigade teams, and U.S. Navy 

and sea forces also participate.

As it does to Red Flag

NGA provid

products, services 

and expertise to

Green Flag

U.

S. Ai

Force

Green

Fla

Pathfinder | FALL 2015 
Understand

the Wor

By Jeanne Chircop, Office of Corporate Communic

28 Pathfinder | FALL 20
At NGA we say, “Know the Earth . . . Show the Way. . . 

Understand the World.” 

To grasp the full meaning of the National 

Geospatial-Intelligence Agency vision, however, one must 

look deeper than the agency’s traditional imagery, mapping 

and navigational services.

Understanding the world means understanding the world’s 

people. At its core, intelligence is about knowing what 

adversaries are saying and doing, and where, when and why 

they are doing whatever it is they are doing. 

Geospatial intelligence has long answered the ‘where’ 

and ‘when’ parts of the equation. The growing practice of 

integrating GEOINT with other intelligences, in particular 

human intelligence and signal intelligence, helps to better 

uncover the ‘what’ and ‘why’ aspects.

“GEOINT looks at places, but we need to understand 

what’s going on in those places,” said Karen Finn, chief of 

NGA’s Foreign Language and Culture program office. “We 

especially need to be able to provide the cultural context that 

helps put activities into perspective.”

Doing that becomes possible only by understanding 

the languages, cultures and accurate place names of the 

adversaries under study.

Cultural context can have a big impact on understanding, 

according to Monique Yates, NGA’s senior language 

authority and head of the National Geospatial Intelligence 

College, or NGC, which houses the FLC program office. 

An obvious example, she said, is the need to understand the 

traditions of local tribes or religious sects. People of different 

heritage may engage in vastly different behaviors within the 

same geographical area.

Language differences can sometimes have an unexpected 

impact, said Yates. She harkened to her own experience living 

in Germany to illustrate her point. 

“I shared with my friend that my baby was ‘cranky’ 

one day, and she gasped and was very concerned,” said 

Yates. “I finally realized she thought I was referring to the 

German word ‘Krankenhaus,’ which means hospital. I had 

to explain that my child was simply out of sorts and not 

seriously ill in the hospital.”

Yates also cited an example of how language differences 

and cultural savvy can inadvertently cause potential harm if 

they are not properly understood. 

“As an American, I should not assume the word ‘gift’ means a 

good thing,” she said. “The German word ‘Gift’ means poison.”

Instead of using ‘gift,’ an American speaker would choose 

‘present’ or even the German word for present, ‘Geschenke,’ 

she said, in order to avoid confusion.

“Understanding foreign language and culture helps us 

communicate and understand each other precisely,” said Yates.

An evolving language cap

In many ways it was easier in NGA’s early days. Cold War 

adversaries were fairly well defined. A degree in Russian 

studies was a ticket to the top of the hiring pool, and Russian 

language experts were in high demand. 

These days, NGA’s FLC program office arranges 

instruction for employees in more than 50 languages and 

world cultures, and even more when regional dialects are 

considered. Among them are Uighur, Kyrgyz and Azeri, as 

well as rare African dialects that most people outside of the 

intelligence and diplomatic communities are less likely to 

have heard of, much less studied.

Mastery of foreign languages and cultures has always been 

critical to the IC. Recorded history is sprinkled with examples 

of people traveling to other lands to 

gather intelligence. Globalization 

of the modern world has made the 

study of languages and cultures 

even more necessary. Factors 

such as the global reach of the 

Internet, closer collaboration with 

coalition forces and the sharing 

of international documents, and 

the need to communicate with 

work locations around the world make bi- and multi-lingual 

employees valuable assets to the IC and our nation’s security.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, 

speaking at a conference in White Sulfur Springs, West 

Virginia, in October 2015, cited the 9/11 terrorist attacks 

as the impetus for increasing foreign language training 

across the IC.

“And so after 9/11, we found that we lacked and needed 

people with unique skills in areas like terrorism analysis, 

critical languages [emphasis added] and cyber,” said Clapper. 

The Foreign Service Institute under the U.S. Department 

of State is the leader in foreign language studies for 

government employees. FSI provides more than 600 courses 

in 70 languages to as many as 100,000 enrollees each year 

from State and 40 other government agencies and military 

service branches.

Foreign language and culture studies at NGA are based 

in the NGC, which offers services to members of the 

entire National System for Geospatial Intelligence and not 

just to NGA employees. The NSG includes NGA partner 

organizations, military services and fellow members of the 

intelligence and defense communities.

The FLC program office within the NGC conducts language 

proficiency testing and provides some basic language and 

culture instruction, but mostly it arranges – and pays for – 

proficient linguists to take part in external training to maintain 

their proficiency, even if it means traveling abroad to do 

so. Several NGA employees have taken part in immersion 

programs in other countries to attain a level of language and 

culture proficiency that is beyond the potential of traditional 

classroom instruction.

“We do less in-house training than we used to, because 

we’ve taken the emphasis of the program deeper,” said Finn. 

“We pay for different types of training, including programs at 

the State Department, theater-level training for deployers 

and focused learning at other government agencies and 

even some universities.”

”

Globalization of the 

modern world has 

made the study of 

languages and 

cultures even 

more necessary

“

Pathfinder | FALL 2015 
This strategy is consistent with the U.S. Intelligence 

Community Foreign Language Strategic Plan (2012-2016) 

developed under DNI Clapper. The strategy states, “A renewed 

awareness now exists that mastery of a foreign language alone 

often does not meet intelligence needs. Regional knowledge, 

cultural awareness, and specialized domain expertise must be 

integrated into foreign language training and daily work for 

the IC to understand, track and thwart our enemies.”

Broader applica

The FLC program office has evolved as NGA’s focus and 

work have become broader and more sophisticated. Prior 

to the current program, NGA offered the Language Area 

Studies in Training for Analysts, or LASTRA. Obviously 

intended for a specific segment of the NGA workforce, 

LASTRA was a contracted two-week course and was 

replaced by a year-round FLC program in 2004. The FLC 

program office still provides training, tools, opportunities 

and incentives that optimize analysis, but its offerings are 

much broader and are offered on a continual basis. 

“At NGA, we want to preserve, maintain and bolster the 

foreign language capability that we have,” said Finn.

There are programs for employees interested in 

becoming interpreters or translators, as well as support 

for sign language interpreters to be able to interpret 

foreign language speech for employees who are deaf or 

hard of hearing. NGA also administers oral proficiency 

interviews and Defense Language Proficiency tests. 

NGA employees who obtain a high enough score on 

the DLP test, receive Foreign Language Incentive Pay, 

regardless of whether their full-time responsibilities 

involve foreign languages.

“Some employees work in totally unrelated fields, but 

they are resources when needed,” said Finn. “In light of 

the terrorist attacks in Paris, for instance, we have a list of 

employees around the agency who are proficient in French, 

and we called upon them as needed to help translate news 

articles, documents, etc., to better understand the situation.”

The agency also calls on language-proficient employees 

to step in and help with NGA leadership outreach and 

meetings with international partners as needed. For instance, 

NGA Director Robert Cardillo has had NGA Strategy 2015 

translated into 35 languages to date for overseas visits and 

strategic meetings with foreign dignitaries.

Sometimes reaching proficiency in a foreign language leads 

to a new opportunity within NGA, especially if the employee 

desires the change.

“I became aware of a gentleman who worked in our 

financial management directorate who could speak up to seven 

languages,” said Yates. “He told me that he liked the financial 

area but that languages were his real passion. After he tested 

as proficient in three of those languages, I worked within the 

career service construct to move him into a position involving 

language translation on a full-time basis.”

In addition to helping that employee transition into a 

position he wanted, Yates said the example illustrates how 

NGA is working to match talent to mission. 

“It’s a great example of how our career services framework 

works, especially as we implement our Mission-Talent 

Alignment strategy,” said Yates.

Future dev

The National Geospatial-Intelligence College is 

working to enhance its FLC offerings in 2016 and beyond,

according to Yates.

“We’ve started by blending together the list of top languages 

needed in the DOD and IC to come up with new NGA priority 

languages,” said Yates.

Other plans include initiating the use of the Blackboard 

virtual learning environment for language training on the 

World Wide Web. Through this medium, she said NGA 

employees will have online access to education and training 

wherever they are. The service will also be available to IC and 

DOD partners within the GEOINT community.

In fiscal year 2016, employees will also be able to take 

advantage of online culture courses offered by major 

universities, such as the University of Montana, that can be 

streamed directly to their desktops. Online courses will help 

employees refresh their language skills in Korean, Japanese, 

Iraqi Arabic and Italian, to name a few.

“We are also working to finalize funding to complete a 

Foreign Language and Culture Resource Center at NGA 

Campus East,” said Yates. “This center will serve as a hub for 

foreign language and culture training, events, activities and 

language roundtable meetings.”

Yates also cited plans to collaborate with partners to share 

college space and training expertise around the world, and to 

examine the software licenses needed to provide computerbased language and culture training across the NSG community.

“It’s exciting for me to see the benefit of foreign language 

proficiency in the agency,” said Yates. “It’s all about ensuring 

that NGA has the foreign language capabilities and the 

regional and cultural expertise to support our mission both 

now and in the future.” 

30 Pathfinder | FALL 20
National Geospatial-Intelligence Age

provides the executive secretary and lead 

staff supporting the U.S. governmen

in maintaining uniform usage of place 

names outside of the United States

maintains the foreign names portion of 

the GEOnet Names Server, often ca

GEONames for short.The GNS

official repository of more than 10 million 

place names. The geographical database

lists all names in various languages, as 

well as provides variant names.

GNS is governed by the U.S. 

on Geographical Names, which wa

established in 1890. Its current structure,

which provides for a separate database of 

foreign names, dates to 1947. In addition

to the Foreign Names Committee, th

BGN includes the Domestic N

Committee. The U.S. Geological S

provides staff support for the D

By providing staff support to the

BGN Foreign Names Committee, w

oversees the foreign names portion of 

the GN, NGA ensures that ma

navigational charts are accurate and 

Sometimes it’s all

about a name

reflect the correct names – and correct 

spelling of names – for cities, towns and 

even countries, in whatever language 

needed. Because city and country names

can change, some even frequently, the 

continuously updated NS helps ens

that analysts, policymakers, warfighters 

and first responders always have access 

to the most current information regarding 

place names.

NGA’s Foreign Language and Cul

program office provides key training to the 

agency’s NS staff. Employees who 

proficient in foreign languages contribute 

to the NS through their ability to rea

write and discern place names in a variety 

of languages. Their understanding of

cultural nuances, including the intricacies 

of local politics, often helps to discern 

which name and spelling to use when a 

place is called by multiple names. —JC

Pathfinder | FALL 2015 
NGA EXPERTISE

marks history...

| SHOW THE WAY |

32 Pathfinder | FALL 20
Dear Colleagues,

It is important to not leave anyone 

behind. That’s why I volunteered with 

NGA to go to a remote island in the 

central Pacific to help the Defense 

POW/MIA Accounting Agency locate 

the graves of missing Marines from 

World War II.

There are many still left behind 

on this tiny island of Betio within 

the Republic of Kiribati. Most are 

nameless fighters buried here for over 

70 years – unidentified and largely 

forgotten in their makeshift graves 

that each year fade farther into the 

jungle or sink deeper under the ocean 

tides. They are the graves of U.S. 

Marines, Japanese Special Naval 

Landing Forces (marines) and Korean 

slave-laborers, who fought the Battle 

of Tarawa in November 1943. Tarawa 

was the first American offensive in 

the central Pacific, as well as the first 

time the United States faced fierce 

resistance to an amphibious landing. 

It was a brutal battle that resulted in 

more than 6,000 deaths. 

The Marines were given proper 

burials, but records of many grave 

locations were lost. Some graves 

on the cramped island have been 

built upon in the years since the war. 

My task was to establish geodetic 

control, survey imagery tie points for 

georeferencing historic and modern 

imagery, and to stake out likely grave 

sites. If my efforts ultimately result in 

identifying just one missing Marine, 

or hundreds, I know that volunteering 

with this NGA effort meant I helped 

pay back something to those who 

sacrificed their lives for our country.

Steven “Rick” Bradshaw

Geodetic Surveyor, NGA

| SHOW THE WAY|

Pathfide| FALL 2015 33
Never underestimate the power of correspondence to 

capture history. Simple inquiries often present some unique 

opportunities to capture the best historical sources.

During this past summer, sheer chance and modern 

correspondence — a series of emails — presented NGA’s 

history staff with an opportunity to get a first-hand glimpse 

of the past. We now have a selection of, among other items, 

captured German World War II maps, briefing maps from 

Vietnam, extensive maps of Asia and the Pacific islands, and 

pre-World War II maps of the United States. We now have 

original work with which we can visually demonstrate NGA’s 

deep roots in the cartographic world. 

Just weeks before preparation of this issue of Pathfinder 

began, 18,500 maps arrived at the NGA Campus East 

loading dock to become part of the collection held by our 

Historical Research Center. For the first time, we have 

original classic maps produced by the Engineer Production 

Plant, the Army Map Service and the Defense Mapping 

Agency between 1939 and 1996. 

We discovered the maps completely by accident. The 

public inquiry e-mailbox monitored by the NGA Office of 

Corporate Communications began receiving inquiries over 

the summer from university libraries around the country. The 

libraries once belonged to a map depository program initiated 

by AMS after World War II. The Army intended to place the 

best maps produced by their cartographers and printers at 

research institutions nationwide, and not only for educational 

purposes. Living in the long shadow of a nuclear Cold War, 

the possibility of attack led planners to place critical maps 

produced by leading government cartographers in multiple 

locations, for both accessibility and preservation.

The Army redesignated AMS as the U.S. Army 

Topographic Command in 1968, and it continued as an 

independent organization until 1972, when it merged into 

DMA. DMA continued the map depository program, which 

by then boasted 250 member institutions.

The map depository program operated under a set of strict 

rules. AMS, and later DMA, would send the latest and best 

maps to each institution on the program list. If a library no 

longer wished to receive maps it could be replaced with another 

institution on the program list, but it had to ship all of the 

products received to date to the replacement institution. The 

collections at each site would thus remain intact, and the crosscountry array of depository libraries would always make the 

maps available to students, faculty and national authorities. 

Times and technologies changed. In the emails sent to 

OCC over the summer, several libraries asked if they might 

dispose of the maps they held. They explained that students 

rarely used them any longer and that those frequently 

consulted now existed in a scanned format. 

Our history staff consulted with corporate counsel and 

discovered that NGA could not enforce the rules set down 

by our predecessor agencies, AMS and DMA. As the NGA 

historian, I began to give permission to dispose of the maps. 

In the process, we realized that each of the libraries in 

the program had a better historical map collection than 

we did in the Historical Research Center. The retention 

of classic maps fell to a low priority at NGA over the 

years, and consequently, the history staff has found very 

little available to collect. If we acquired the holdings 

from just one of these libraries, we reasoned, we could 

immediately have one of the best classic map collections 

in the National Capital area. 

Opportunities like this rarely come along, and we knew 

we must act quickly. We wrote to one of the inquiring 

institutions, Bowdoin College Library in Brunswick, 

Maine. We asked if the college might consider shipping 

its depository collection to NGA rather than destroying 

it. We worried, because we knew our request represented 

considerable cost, both to prepare the collection for shipping 

and then to actually transport it to NCE from Maine.

Barbara Levergood, Research and Instruction librarian 

at Bowdoin College Library, was open to the idea and 

said she would present the request to Marjorie Hassen, the 

library’s director. After some discussion, Hassen agreed to 

the donation. She generously offered for Bowdoin to absorb 

the cost of preparing the maps for shipment if NGA would 

arrange for transport. Judy Montgomery, associate librarian, 

supervised the logistics involved with the shipment at the 

College, and the maps arrived at NCE Sept. 30. 

As of press time, the NGA archivist has processed 

more than 8,000 of the maps in our new Bowdoin College 

Collection and discovered true treasure. Some of our 

precious acquisitions illustrate this article. We cannot wait 

to see what the other 10,500 maps have to offer!

Our long-term plan is to digitize some of the best samples 

from the collection and post them for our customers to 

examine. We also plan to place a sampling on the NGA 

public website in the future to demonstrate the agency’s rich 

tradecraft heritage. These historic maps represent work by 

our predecessor agencies and some of the best cartographers 

in the federal government. Thanks to our collaborators at 

Bowdoin College, and the correspondence that brought us 

together, we captured this history just in time. 

Capturing Our H

Newly Acquired Map Collection C

Original Classics

By Gary E. Weir, Ph.D., NGA Historian

| KNOW THE EARTH |

34 Pathfinder | FALL 20
| KNOW THE EARTH |

Pathfinder | FALL 2015 

An

wer: In 1958 French President Charles DeGaulle began to redefine the role played by colonies in France’s plans for the futur

Between 1956 and 1960 the French increasingly permitted their African possessions to hold elections and seek autonomy, if not 

outright independence. This was also the era in which the French experimented with the French Community in the spirit of the

modern British Commonwealth, formalized in 1949. These events would have geopolitical importance for the United State

kNOW T

T
how well 

you know t

Eart

The Army Map Service, 

one of our legacy 

commands, acquired 

this map of the French 

Sudan from our allies in 

the United Kingdom and 

made adjustments to it 

in 1943 and 1944. During 

this period the French 

Sudan formed part of 

their imperial holding in 

West Africa.

The most recent 

adjustments made to 

this map by AMS, which 

the NGA History Program 

acquired as part of the 

recent arrangement with 

Bowdoin College in Maine, 

took place in 1958. 

Wha

circumstance

in northw

Africa mig

have rene

American

interest in th

region unde

French control

Answer: pg. 35