There’s a brand-new facility opening up in town. And this location is going to be accessible for all of these geospatial intelligence firms that are looking to acquire a classified environment in order to best conduct business. It’s accurate to state that the 75,000-square-foot space will in itself be categorized as a very sensitive and compartmentalized facility of massive information. It’s certainly an interesting choice on the part of Missouri, as this building is a guinea pig of sorts.
The first of any intelligence firm to open so close, yet so out of the way from the Nation’s Capital. In itself, the space is located there in the Globe Building of Downtown. The space is also known as an SCIF. That’s specifically known as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. This type of instance allows for sensitive information to be viewable and discussable minus the threats of surveillance or spies.
Previously, St. Louis had opened a new campus for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.
This was back in 2019, around mid-November. Towards which there was much excitement. “The new campus will be a secure, flexible, cutting-edge intelligence facility that will put NGA in the heart of St. Louis’ growing geospatial ecosystem and help NGA take advantage of its biggest strengths, its people and partners.” That is according to NGA Director Vice Admiral Robert Sharp.
That facility had incorporated about 712,000 square feet of useable space. So this spot in the downtown area is likely going to be as comparable to it’s predecessor as the iPod Nano is to a 1960’s “supercomputer.”
What else is happening in the intelligence community?
The NGA Accelerator is a program in St. Louis that is made to incubate geospatial technology startups. There are about eight startups that are trying to get about $100,000 in funding. This will therefore show a particpating factor in a 13-week accelerator starting on Monday. The startups show a development of geospatial technology applications, including also new navigation technology for the military, with devices that can generate data from blockchain technology and underwater technology as well.
Nicole Washington, a senior associate for entrepreneurship and chief transformation officer for NGA Research says that, “NGA remains committed to leveraging commercial technologies by engaging companies with innovative solutions that can help us meet our mission. Thanks to our partnership with MTC, Capital Innovators has created an accelerator that allows us to expose these companies to geospatial problem sets while also connecting them to a host of opportunities the agency has for potential industry engagement and collaboration.”
