"[T]he IC Commercial Space Council is discussing commercial protection right now. We had a meeting on Tuesday, and it came up," said NGA's David Gauthier, who chairs the council.
US firms won "gold" in only three of the nine categories — the same number as China — in the NGA's "Commercial Imaging Olympics."
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NRO, NGA, CIA, DIA and NSA are the "standing members" of the new council, says its chairman David Gauthier of NGA.
NGA's 2020 Technology Focus Areas are "what we're looking for;" whereas the upcoming technology strategy outlines "how we'd like to change," explains Mark Munsell, NGA chief technology officer.
"I think the big change that you'll see is that some of those things are going to become the new norm for us, the new way of doing business," Sharp said of NGA's telework practices forced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"[T]he trend is that a larger percentage of our work will be able to be accomplished using commercial systems than in the past," says Gauthier.
Defending a country the size of the US from threats requires advanced sensing, communications and interception capabilities.
NGA and NRO "have significantly overlapping Venn diagrams," one industry source said, and they are still trying to "sort that through." He added, "It's not a nice clean line."