The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is focused on developing responsible, but agile artificial intelligence standards, as NGA’s director says AI will be needed to help manage a fast-growing body of space-based sensor data.
NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth spoke about the opportunities and challenges for NGA and the broader GEOINT community at the Intelligence and National Security Summit in National Harbor, Md., on Thursday. Whitworth has served as NGA director since 2022. President Donald Trump earlier this month nominated Army Lt. Gen. Michele Bredenkamp to serve as the agency’s next director.
Whitworth said a major issue for NGA is the growing availability of space-based sensors and the corresponding data deluge that those sensors bring to NGA.
“While I won’t detail exactly what the percent increase in terabytes from space will be, it is substantial over the next decade,” he said. “We don’t want all of that data, all those images, all those files – and they’re very dense files, by the way – we don’t want them falling on a cutting room floor.”
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The National Reconnaissance Office has long managed highly classified satellite constellations that supply NGA with imagery and other data, while the Space Force is deploying a “proliferated architecture” of low earth orbit satellites.
Meanwhile, NGA is increasingly consuming imagery and other data supplied directly by the burgeoning commercial space industry.
NGA has long used computer vision and machine learning to manage decades of growth in GEOINT data. But with yet another data spike on the horizon, Whitworth declared 2025 “the year of AI” for NGA. The agency has since established new positions to focus on the issue, including a director for AI mission, a director for AI programs and a director for AI standards.
The AI standards official “will ensure that all of the development that is going on out there is not so unbridled that it veers away from the standards that we as Americans hold true, that which we have in the rules of engagement from the commander in chief and the secretary of defense that have been delegated to the engagement authority of that combatant command,” Whitworth said.
NGA last year established an initiative called the Accreditation of GEOINT AI Models, or AGAIM. The initiative will provide a standard evaluation and risk management process for AI models that can be applied to GEOINT.
“We just need to make sure that there are no hobby shops going on here,” Whitworth said.
“We would just want to make sure that we don’t have something get into a COCOM or into a service or into the inner agency that is either irresponsible, not fully tested, uses training data that hasn’t been evaluated, processes that haven’t been evaluated, or moves away from the principles, like the laws of armed conflict, that we hold very dear,” he added.
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At the same time, Whitworth said NGA wants to avoid establishing a lengthy accreditation process that slows down the deployment of responsible AI models.
“We do not want to move in the direction of an [authority-to-operate] process, where everyone sits and waits,” he said. “We want to enable this process to be self governing, so that COCOMs and services, we train the trainers, we train the accreditors, and then they too can accredit the right way.”
The AI standards work will be particularly important as NGA and other agencies explore the adoption of industry models to manage, analyze and share data.
Several years ago, NGA adopted the Pentagon’s “Project Maven” program. Maven uses machine learning to process data from multiple sources and identify potential military targets.
Whitworth said NGA is moving beyond the “targeting cycle” with the Maven program.
“We want to ensure that it brings goodness to the rest of what we do, like warning, like safety of navigation,” he said.
NGA has established a new program executive office for advanced analytics to cut across all of NGA’s mission areas.
“That is starting to bear some fruit,” Whitworth said.
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