The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is considering different contract strategies to acquire and disseminate commercial satellite imagery from non-domestic commercial data providers, according to an announcement posted at Federal Business Opportunities.
Known as Future International Sensors Program Strategies (FISPS), NGA is specifically requesting information from industry to assist in the formulation of contract strategies that may be significantly different from the types of contracts it has used to acquire imagery from domestic and international vendors in the past. NGA says its primary interest is in Commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar (COMSAR) imagery, but future strategies may also include other international sensors which support NGA’s mission.
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| National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Director Letitia Long. Photo: NGA. |
In a question and answer response dated July 17, NGA said its expectation was that any contract to which NGA commits, whether an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ), Service Life Agreement (SLA) or some other format, would provide improved value to its end-customers.
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems take advantage of long-range propagation characteristics of radar signals and the complex information processing capability of modern digital electronics to provide high resolution imagery. SAR complements photographic and other optical imaging capabilities because of the minimum constraints on time-of-day and atmospheric conditions and because of the unique responses of terrain and cultural targets to radar frequencies.
NGA encourages web-based solutions that do not require investments in architectures, minimizes impacts on existing NGA systems and, to the extent practicable, leverages current systems. NGA says its vision is to put geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in the “hands of the user” by encompassing a capability to produce a variety of underlying data types and delivering imagery, products and information online.
NGA says it has purchased imagery under various licenses, including the NextView License, a broad license that enables the imagery to be accessible and easy to handle in NGA’s distribution systems. Other licenses restrict imagery use to entities such as “agencies of the U.S. government,” “state and local governments,” “foreign governments,” “international government agencies” and “non-government organizations.” NGA said acquiring imagery that is readily sharable is critical to future commercial imagery contracts.
NGA recently employed commercial imagery contract strategies that utilized a SLA structure under its NextView and EnhancedView contracts. EnhancedView is a program with commercial imagery provider DigitalGlobe [DGI] to supply NGA with commercial imagery.