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Eagle Vision IV attends the GEOINT 2012 Symposium

  • Published
  • By Capt. Roy Condrey
  • 169th Communications Flight
MCENTIRE JOINT NATIONAL GUARD BASE, South Carolina --  During the month of Oct., SCANG's Eagle Vision IV (EV4) Tactical Mobile Satellite Ground Station attended the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation's (USGIF) 9th Annual GEOINT 2012 Symposium in Orlando, Florida. GEOINT is short for Geospatial Intelligence and is defined as the gathering and interpreting of data that is associated to a particular geographic location. The GEOINT Symposium is the nation's largest intelligence event of the year and it attracted over 4,400 attendees and exhibitors from the defense, intelligence and homeland security communities. It is an event that allows members of the GEOINT community to learn about the latest GIS technologies, to network with one another and to hear from key industry leaders. Some of the keynote speakers during this year's event were the Honorable James R. Clapper Jr., the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and GEN Keith B. Alexander the current Commander, U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), and Director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service (NSA/CSS).

EV4 is one of only five Tactical Mobile Satellite Ground Station owned by the United States Department of Defense and is assigned to the 169th Communications Flight at McEntire. The Eagle Vision program offers a service of producing near real-time unclassified commercial imagery for use by various government agencies.

During this year's event EV4 deployed nine SCANG members and a satellite communications package that consisted of the Data Acquisition Segment (DAS), the DAS Antenna, three Data Integration Segment (DIS) workstations, two tents and four Environmental Control Units (ECUs). Additionally the team deployed an ICE V3 Communications package and a total of four ROVER 4 and 5 packages. The team set up operations in the convention center's parking lot and performed daily real-time downlinks of commercial satellite imagery of Orlando. Event goers were able to witness EV4 in operation and view actual down-linked imagery of the local area using the SPOT 4, SPOT 5, and the Rapid Eye satellite constellations. Additionally, users were able to view imagery of Syria and Iraq using the "Store and Forward" capability of SPOT 5. Also during the event, the Eagle Vision / ROVER Responsive Exploitation of Space Products for Tactical Use (EVR2EST) Team demonstrated how EV imagery can be provided to troops in the field via hand-held devices such as smart phones and PDAs. During the entire event there was a heavy flow of visitors showing an interest in the EV4 equipment and the EV program. As a result new contacts were made that will possibly lead to providing EV products and services to some new customers.

Overall the deployment and event was a great success. EV4 is looking forward to attending again next year and to providing its quality service and products for its customers in 2013.