By Rosemary Heiss, Office of Corporate Communications
Amy Maj. Gen. Stephen Fogarty is the commander of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, which oversees the Army's use of geospatial and other intelligence disciplines. Before taking the lead at INSCOM, Fogarty also served as the senior intelligence officer for the International Security Assistance Force, Afghanistan, during which time he saw firsthand the value of using GEOINT in influencing international decisions favorable to ISAF forces.
Q. What has been your experience with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency?
I can't be more complimentary of the support that NGA has provided both for the two years I spent at CENTCOM (Central Command) and the year and a half I spent at the J2 (joint intelligence office) over in ISAF. When you start to look at challenges that we face, everything starts with a dot on a map. It's the ability to present that in an effective and accurate manner that's critically important. I don't think there was a time that I briefed Gen. [David] Petraeus or Gen. [John R.] Allen that we didn't sit down with a map—start with a description of the environment, what the situation was. It could be a political situation or a tactical situation, but it always started with, 'OK. Where are we talking about, and what are we talking about?' The multiple tools that your analysts use to depict the information really brings it to life. The old adage, 'A picture is worth a thousand words,' is absolutely true. There were multiple situations. It could run from a target that we had captured or killed. It might be an allegation of a civilian casualty incident. It might be something that the Afghans were reporting, and it was our ability to go into the boss and say, 'Look. This is really the ground truth.' And that always had a map or a GEOINT product—an image—to really explain what happened.
Q. Can you give an example of how you used GEOINT?
If you think back to the November border incident (Early reporting said 24 Pakistanis were killed by NATO fire. In the immediate aftermath, Pakistan closed the border to NATO.), the first thing we had to do—the first instinct—was to call the NGA team and say, 'Let's lay out a picture of the area.' And when I say picture I mean it's more than just a photo. It really is the whole product—to show the terrain, to show where the border was, to show where the [Pakistan] (PAK) positions were, to show our guys on the ground and walk step by step through this entire incident. The team was able to do that very, very quickly. What we were able to do was get a universal understanding on the friendly side of what happened, and it was very apparent after that what the facts were and where the friction occurred.
Q. You mentioned that NGA is uniquely capable of providing certain types of support. Why do you think that is?
You have people who are first of all technical experts and state of the art in their capabilities. They are completely networked and take an enterprise approach. They can reach back to the rear for help where needed. They can reach forward to confirm or deny a particular aspect of what we were trying to do. And then we could layer in all the other INTs (intelligence specialties)—I could layer in SIGINT (signals intelligence), I could layer in HUMINT (human intelligence) reporting. That enhanced their production and their products. Every time we [would] bring in a visitor, we'd sit down at the table, and I would walk them through the situation using the very effective tool the NGA analysts had produced to tell the story for the command. So they're technical experts. They are very comfortable using all the disciplines to enhance the products, so very good team players. And the last aspect is absolutely integrated at all levels. They are connected with each other and connected into the customer, so they end up being very flexible and very responsive. That's for me, the power of NGA. The power of the enterprise: the technical expertise, the ability to integrate with the other disciplines to tell a complete story and approach the practice exactly where they're needed. That really gives NGA a very responsive capability.
Q. What do you need from NGA?
What I think we need is to sustain the relationship. My fear is that as overseas contingency operations wind down, we will regress to where we were before and that [despite] all the lessons learned, we'll go back to the way we were doing business. We can't afford to do that. I think that with NGA, by the integration we have in the facility, that won't happen. We're postured well to articulate our requirements to NGA. As long as they continue to be flexible and responsive, we're going to be good to go. What we see is there's this insatiable demand for GEOINT across the enterprise. I think it's staying at the cutting edge, constantly having a chance to wring out within your organization, and we can help you wring those things out and promote that very quickly to the forward edge. We're very confident that we'll be able to sustain that. I tell all the agencies that we've made so much progress over the last 12 years. Some of it has been a result of incredible pressure that has allowed some things to move forward faster than they would. We can't afford to slip back to the way it was before. As long as we remember that we'll be OK.
Q. What's next for GEOINT in the Army?
If you look at Intel 2020 for the Army, one of the pillars is 'Relevant intelligence to the edge.' What we want to do is move to where I can push a final [product] very quickly. If we're building our visualization tools and you guys are there right from the beginning, you [can] understand what the requirements are and you can build to those requirements. We have to work day to day to increase our collection where we have access. When we get access, we have to take advantage of that. Then we've got to really listen to the customer. In some cases, it's the ability to take really dissimilar, disparate types of data and integrate it into a standard product very quickly and be able to push that down in the most efficient manner to the guy out on the edge. There's a mutual benefit to that. In COIN (counterinsurgency) in particular, information has a tendency to be bottom up. If we enable the [soldier] with the latest, most advanced, most sustainable graphic representation that will speed information flowing back up. If we can send a guy out and he's got a pre-loaded set of maps or charts, and all he has to do is put an icon on a spot, send a report and shoot that back up and it automatically populates, number one it will be a lot more accurate. It will be much more timely, and that's what we're striving for.
Q. Is there anything you'd like to add?
My admiration and appreciation for how talented and dedicated the workforce is. I don't know how many times I saw the same guys that had been at previous locations with me. You've got frequent deployers. They bring such incredible expertise. NGA had the right people. They had good technology, but it was the integration of all of that with the commander forward that made that very, very successful. The reality is NGA guys are saving lives. There are men and women who made it home today because of the work that a crew of very talented, very dedicated NGA engineers, scientists and analysts were able to work. I will forever be in your debt for that. You had the whole enterprise leaning into something that you were committed to and making a difference where it was really important.