A boom in space-based intelligence is coming. Can ground networks keep up?
Companies that used to sell pictures and pixels are selling analysis—and looking for ways to move faster.
Patrick Tucker | July 25, 2024
ASPEN, Colorado—A flood of space-based intelligence is heading toward U.S. networks as satellite constellations grow and new sensors come online—not just photos, but radar, thermal, and radio data. But to properly exploit it will take new tools, new tech, and even new ways of working with contractors, the head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency says.
“As I look to the future, as we now move in a situation where you're gonna have a constellation that's even larger—yeah, I think exponential is too strong—but where you have a rapid increase in the number of terabytes coming from space over the next eight to 10 years,” Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth, the head of NGA, told Defense One at the Aspen Security Forum in July. “I don't anticipate the number of eyes, the number of brains will increase. I will need something that provides an advantage, and that will be AI … And if you don't have a good enough compute, it's gonna slow down.”
NGA now runs Project Maven, the Pentagon’s seven-year-old effort to use artificial intelligence to filter oceans of data for things the military needs to see and sense. But Whitworth said NGA will lean more and more on the satellite companies that gather the data to help make sense of it.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2024/07/boom-space-based-intelligence-coming-can-ground-networks-keep/398356/
