NGA field testing new processor to speed imagery to US regional commands

USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) steams in formation with 7th Fleet ships, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ships, as U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and Japan Air Self-Defense Force aircraft fly over in support of Valiant Shield 2024. (US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Timothy Dimal)

WASHINGTON — The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is working with US Combatant Commands (COCOMS) to operationally test an early version of its Joint Regional Edge Node (J-REN) system designed to speed satellite-based intelligence to the battlefield, according to NGA officials.

NGA began development of J-REN — a modernization of NGA’s current information technology “pipe” to more rapidly fulfil commanders’ requests for urgent access to remote sensing imagery and analysis — just last year. The initial program includes hardware and software for four data processing systems that can be placed “at the edge” of a battlefield

“That’s why I’m really happy to tell you it’s already in its initial operating capability. It’s already out there,” Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth, the agency’s director, told Breaking Defense April 8 at the annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.

J-REN was deployed during exercises last year by US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) and US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), with more to come “this summer,” an NGA spokesperson told Breaking Defense on April 14.

The ever-increasing calls from COCOMS for more timely imagery and analysis from remote sensing satellites has been the subject of a tug-of-war between NGA and the Space Force — an issue the two agencies have been struggling to work out for more than a year. 

J-REN is designed to move away from a hub-and-spoke method of collecting and answering requests for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) to a design based on integrating mesh networks capable of avoiding communications roadblocks, Whitworth said.

The concept is to avoid clogging up limited communications bandwidth with overly-dense data packages, while still ensuring that military operators have good enough information to work with, he explained.  “Everybody’s taken a picture accidentally in hi-res [high resolution] and then you get frustrated when you can’t even send a text with it.”

In particular, Whitworth noted, J-REN focuses on the needs of commanders in “austere” information environments where communications can be spotty — “maybe somebody at sea, maybe somebody in a tent.”

J-REN also includes a new software application, called SlimGIMS, that streamlines the call and response process for analysis and targeting data tailored to a commander’s needs, he said.

SlimGIMS is a play on NGA’s traditional GEOINT Information Management Systems (GIMS) that gather and process sensor data from a wide variety of government and commercial ISR sensors and disseminate products, such as 3D maps, back out to users across the US government.

The NGA spokesperson said that the “two successful tests” of J-REN “in the 2024 Valiant Shield and Tradewinds exercises” included “a test of the SlimGIMS tasking application.”

Valiant Shield, INDOPACOM’s massive joint force exercise held every two years, was held “June 7-18, on Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, and at sea around the Mariana Island Range Complex,” according to a June 4 press release from US Pacific Fleet.

That exercise for the first time included allied and partner forces. “With the involvement of U.S. Space Command, VS24 is expanding the multi-domain collaboration that is incumbent on any large-scale exercise or operation,” the release said.

Tradewinds is an annual SOUTHCOM exercise that involves multinational partners in “collective response to counter transnational criminal organizations and natural disasters,” according to a SOUTHCOM press release. The 2024 iteration was held in Barbados May 4-16, 2024.

“COCOMs reported after these tests that J-REN and SlimGIMS not only met the capability gap, but also reduced the time to create a collection request from an hour to 5 minutes,” the NGA spokesperson said.