The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is making a concerted effort to accelerate its artificial intelligence efforts over the next year, creating new AI leadership roles and pushing more resources toward its computing infrastructure.
NGA’s mission is to turn data from satellites, radars and other sources into usable intelligence for military decision makers and operators. Given that mission and its lead role in the Defense Department’s high-profile Maven data and image processing system, AI has long been a part of the NGA’s focus.
But NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth said this week he wants NGA to commit more funding toward AI efforts and establish new standards and leadership roles that allow it to better leverage the technology.
One of NGA’s biggest needs in this area, Whitworth said Monday at the Satellite Conference in Washington, is funding for the computing power that’s required to run large-scale AI models.
“We need to ensure that as we get additional models and we run inference on those models that we have the compute needed to do that,” he said, noting without that supporting infrastructure, NGA’s data processing rates could start to lag.
The agency also needs to invest more in data labeling, which is the process of describing or cataloging raw data to teach and improve the performance of AI models.
Whitworth said he’s having good discussions with the Defense Department and the Director of National Intelligence about funding and he’s “confident” NGA will get the resources it needs.
Also at the top of Whitworth’s list of goals for this year is establishing stronger AI leadership within NGA. Along those lines, the agency has created two new director positions to oversee AI standards and programs and an executive director who will lead AI operations.
Whitworth also wants NGA to make progress on establishing a standardized government framework for evaluating risk within AI models, building trust between analysts and the AI systems they’re working within and improving its ability to monitor adversary activity.
Courtney Albon is C4ISRNET’s space and emerging technology reporter. She has covered the U.S. military since 2012, with a focus on the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported on some of the Defense Department’s most significant acquisition, budget and policy challenges.
