NGA hired Northrop Grumman as the system integrator for this effort based on the company's extensive experience with DCGS-related programs in all four military services.

Video clips can now be electronically stored and catalogued in the image product library (IPL), which serves as a source of images for the DIB. The IPL was "co-hosted" with the Imagery Exploitation Support System (IESS) on a single hardware system.

By involving both the IESS IPL common imagery processor and the DIB in its integration effort, Northrop Grumman showed how the co-host can post and forward FMV clips via the DIB. Users of the DIB can access the video through the DIB's Metadata Catalog.

The FMV capability will support Empire Challenge 2006, a Joint Staff-led coalition war game testing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and targeting concepts, scheduled for September 2006 at China Lake, Calif. As the system integrator for FMV, Northrop Grumman will provide multi-intelligence information to the Empire Challenge 2006 participants. The event is expected to demonstrate possible future applications for FMV.

"Full Motion Video is yet another dimension of geospatial intelligence that we must mainstream into our day-to-day business, and make available to a growing customer set," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, director of the NGA.

"Full Motion Video will allow much broader access to relevant video imagery throughout the fielded armed forces," said Ken Wilson, vice president of C4ISRT Networked Systems at Northrop Grumman's Electronic Systems sector. "It greatly improves the flow of information that can be delivered to the warfighter rapidly and efficiently."

Northrop Grumman built two FMV adapters to expose the video clips and post the metadata into the Metadata Catalog. This will enable coalition members at Empire Challenge 2006 to pull and analyze the data from the catalog. Northrop Grumman also added its Common Software Baseline (CSB) 8.0 to the co-host to add multi-intelligence data via the CSB Multi-Intelligence Core database.

This allows all relevant intelligence data, including FMV, to be posted on a single situational awareness screen for a true multi-intelligence view of the battle space, embracing a concept known as the tactical warfighter node.

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