September 19, 2022
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. (Kratos/Constellations) — The Defense Intelligence Agency was one of the early adopters of commercial space domain awareness (SDA) data and it continues to need imagery and other sensory data outside traditional RF and optical collection.
“A lot of the focus thus far has really been on imaging from space,” Dr. John Huth, head of the Office of Space and Counterspace at DIA told Constellations on the sidelines of the 2022 Intelligence & National Security Summit. “We’re interested across the electromagnetic spectrum.”
DIA is looking for commercial partners to support Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT) collection in the space domain. Huth specifically cited agency interest in gravimetric detection, which can identify chemical compounds and determine what an object is made of, as well as nuclear detection for gamma rays and other radioactive material. Those signatures can provide information on the uses and capabilities of an object in space that go beyond the information provided by RF sensing and optical and electro-optical collection.
“We’re interested in looking up or across and being able to characterize objects in space,” Huth continued. “Because that’s the real intelligence.”
Read the full article: https://www.kratosdefense.com/constellations/articles/why-dia-wants-more-commercial-sda-partners
