KISSIMMEE, Fla.—The White House is holding discussions with the Defense Department, intelligence community, and U.S. combatant commands (COCOMS) to understand existing gaps and requirements in tactical surveillance and targeting capabilities for warfighters to resolve concerns about roles and responsibilities for providing this support on the battlefield, the senior White House space adviser said on Wednesday.
Concerns being raised by the COCOMs and U.S. Space Force about tactical surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (TacSRT) support to warfighters have not been fully vetted but demonstrate there is likely a problem, Chirag Parikh, deputy assistant to the president and executive secretary of the National Space Council, said at the GEOINT 2024 Symposium.
“We still need to better quantify the anecdotes and the challenges that we’re hearing from COCOMs and from Space Force, and…as an analytically driven policy process and organization, we are really looking forward to engaging with them to be able to best understand this because if we’re hearing this from multiple angles, there’s probably truth to this and we need to be able to figure it out and helps us solve some of these things.”
Differences between the Space Force and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the combat support agency that provides geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) products and services to decision makers and warfighters, were on full display on Monday at the conference.
In separate, but what looked like dueling keynote addresses, Space Force and NGA leaders staked out their positions. Space Force Lt. Gen. David Miller, commander of U.S. Space Operations Command, addressed the audience first, saying there can be no delays in getting targeting data to Joint Force Commanders and shooters, adding that this information cannot “go through a headquarters in the rear.”
NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth, who went next, said that “For anyone who suggest we’re not moving as rapidly as possible in our actions and our products, let me be clear. That’s a complete myth.”
Based on what he has been hearing and reading in speeches and testimonies, Parikh believes changes are coming, but exactly what is unknown.
“So, in the end, what we’re really going to have to figure out here is what needs to change,” he asked. “Is it policies? Is it authorities? Is it processes? Is it funding? Is it purely just advocacy and communication?
Parikh did put his support behind new initiatives, highlighting the Space Force’s fledgling efforts to leverage commercial vendors for TacSRT, adding that modern systems need to be built that “get the data to whoever and wherever they need that information along the way.”
Parikh also argued against redundancy and said the Space Force and NGA agree.
However, Miller told reporters on Monday afternoon that the Space Force’s network to disseminate TacSRT is still in the early stages, indicating that the service is looking to create a network of some type to speed the sensor to shooter kill chain.
The Space Force is part of the Department of the Air Force, which has a legacy of providing warfighters with information and data to quickly react to dynamic events on the battlefield.
In World War II, the Army Air Corps, predecessor to the Air Force, flew Piper Cubs over the Normandy battlefield to direct Allied artillery against German targets. In the Persian Gulf War, the Air Force for the first time flew its E-8 JSTARS aircraft, equipped with sensors to detect moving targets in real-time, to alert commanders who in turn unleashed tactical bombers to strike Iraqi armored columns.
Parikh highlighted NGA’s role as a “global leader in GEOINT” and its expertise, but said the agency has new challenges to meet.
“But,” he said, “NGA is going to have to rise to the ever-evolving GEOINT in warfighting environments along the way. And this means we need to satisfy even more requirements coming in with new capabilities coming in. And so, we’re trying to understand what are the requirements and how much of them are being satisfied.”
As part of Parikh’s dive into the TacSRT gaps and related roles and responsibilities, he thanked Whitworth and NGA’s leadership for giving him the “details” and the “numbers” to help make sense of the grapevine.
Parikh also said that “NGA doesn’t need to know everything” but must “strengthen some of its roles” such as functional management-related help to the COCOMs, Space Force, and other stakeholders. Training, tradecraft, validation of data sources, cybersecurity protocols, and standards are examples, he said.
“And I think NGA serves as a great organization to be able to help bring some of those efforts together from across different components,” he said.