Mission-Critical Intelligence Support in War on Terror

The responsibility of leading SAIC's efforts belongs to Larry Prior, president of SAIC's Intelligence and Security Group, who is surrounded by a leadership team with decades of intelligence community experience, and more than 6,000 highly skilled employees, making his intelligence organization one of the intel industry's largest.

While much of the work SAIC does for the intelligence community is classified, Prior and members of his team recently spoke about some of the security challenges ahead and discussed, in general terms, how SAIC is providing mission-critical support to its customers.

Mission-critical support

How do they define mission-critical? "That's where you have anywhere from 10 to 100 employees and, oh, by the way, the future of the nation rests on their backs. We've got a bunch of those locations; not just in the [SAIC] Intel Group, but across the company," Prior says. "It is who we are and why we love being a part of something really important. It really defines and differentiates SAIC."

"We pride ourselves on being where the customer is," adds John Thomas, a retired Army major general who manages SAIC's Operational Intelligence Solutions Business Unit. "We have people deployed around the world — from Diego Garcia to Iraq and Afghanistan and lots of places in-between. We deployed to Iraq when the first military units went in and we've been there ever since with our customers.

SAIC's Intelligence and Security Group has roughly 300 to 500 people overseas at any point in time, many of them permanently stationed, Prior says.

Whether they're on the frontlines overseas or supporting homeland security missions from U.S. locations, SAIC's employees are part of a team effort among military and civilian agencies as well as industry, says Leo Hazlewood, who manages SAIC's Mission Integration Business Unit.

"The people who are in Afghanistan and Iraq depend upon the people who are back home and elsewhere to support them. The people who are doing 'spooky' things around the world depend upon their support networks. One of the secrets of this is teamwork among the pieces," says Hazlewood.

Since 9/11, the pace has been frantic and the working conditions often difficult and highly stressful, but SAIC's employees and customers are deeply committed to their national security mission, he adds.

"This is probably the best kind of business you can be in because you're doing important stuff for important customers. You're intimately involved. You're doing real live things that you can see matter, and it's enormously motivating to the employees. They're really proud of what they do," Hazlewood says.

For example, SAIC is a premier producer of geospatial information that goes into maps and charts that are used by soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, and intelligence staff around the world for their daily activities or in combat, says Hazlewood, whose business unit supports the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Working in another important area, SAIC was part of an NGA team that received a Meritorious Unit Citation in 2004 from the Director of Central Intelligence for their extraordinary effort and exceptional teamwork in developing and deploying a capability making theater airborne imagery available to a wide range of defense and intelligence users.

Geospatial information is just one of the area's Hazlewood's team specializes in, but it's a specialty he knows very well. Before joining SAIC in 2000, Hazlewood served as the first deputy director of NGA (then known as NIMA), and as the agency's first deputy director for operations. Before that, he served in a number of senior assignments at the Central Intelligence Agency.

One of the biggest challenges facing the intelligence community at home and abroad revolves around information analysis and sharing — sifting through all the information that's available, connecting the dots, then helping make sure the right information gets to the right person at the right time.

"We have a number of projects that are helping our customers to address that," Thomas says. "We do a fair amount of work in data mining, and in technologies that allow you to access large amounts of data and then provide tools that allow analysts to work with it and visualize it."

Much of that work is wrapped into a cutting-edge project called the Joint Intelligence Operational Capability — Iraq (JIOC-I). SAIC staff at home and in Iraq are helping to develop, test, deploy, and sustain this new capability, says Thomas.

Before joining SAIC in 2001, Thomas commanded the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca in the 1990s, and the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command — the Army's operational intelligence force, among other key assignments.

Understanding based on experience

"What differentiates SAIC from the big hardware companies is that we have a really good understanding of how the intelligence work gets done," Thomas says. "When we build an application it's not just some novel idea that comes from a backroom. It comes from the experiences of our analysts. No one knows the needs and demands of intelligence like the analyst who works in the field every day."

For example, Thomas cited our Pathfinder data mining and visualization tool suite, which is part of the JIOC-I. Built by and for analysts, this software technology has been engineered by SAIC to allow users to reach new levels of productivity in processing and analyzing data.

SAIC is also a key developer and operational supporter of the Biometric Automated Toolset (BAT), which is deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to maintain positive identification of detainees and track other persons of interest, Thomas says. BAT is a portable system composed of a laptop computer and supporting devices used to record a person's features — iris, fingerprints and face recognition.

In the heat of battle, geo-location is needed — and needed quickly. Our Web-based PRISM application allows theater users, in various functional roles and at different echelons, to synchronize end-to-end intelligence requirements and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) collection support with current military operations and priorities. PRISM, which stands for "Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management," was originally developed for the U.S. European Command. "It's the product of a lot of hard work by a lot of brilliant people," says SAIC's Ron Baham, who has been instrumental in establishing PRISM.

"When it comes to the depth of knowledge around analysis and around support to operations, we've got to be one of the leaders in the nation and in the world," Prior says, adding that a smart acquisition strategy and recent additions such as Presearch, IMAPS, and Object Sciences Corporation have added to SAIC's capabilities.

From boots on the ground to eyes in the sky

SAIC also plays a key role in support of military space missions, says Roberto Vasquez, who runs SAIC's DoD Space Operations.

For example, SAIC is a key provider of position, navigation and timing (PNT) services to the U.S. Air Force GPS Joint Program Office.

"SAIC is intimately involved in the development of strategies for acquiring, enhancing and sustaining GPS system-level capabilities," Vasquez says. "We facilitate decision-making at the highest levels of the U.S. government on how GPS should be utilized and protected for the military, national defense, homeland security, transportation activities and commercial concerns."

In addition, SAIC represents about 20 percent of the contractor workforce at NORAD-NORTHCOM, where we support the J2, J4, J5, J6, and J8 missions, he adds.

More than a high calling

For Prior, who has spent much of his 30-year career serving the intelligence community — including a stint early in his career as a professional staff member in Congress on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence — this is more than a business, it's a "high calling." And, in his case, it's also a family affair.

"My wife was an Air Force signals intelligence officer; I was a Marine Corps intelligence officer (she likes to say that's an oxymoron) and we met at Georgetown University at the security studies program," Prior says. "Hopefully, our two daughters have dominant genes for the intel community."

Prior heads up an impressive leadership team. In addition to Hazlewood, Thomas, and Vasquez, the leadership team includes Larry Cox, who manages SAIC's Intelligence & Information Solutions Business Unit; Stu Shea, who runs SAIC's Space and Geospatial Intelligence Business Unit; Phil Lacombe, who oversees SAIC's Integrated Security & Systems Solutions Business Unit; Chief Technology Officer Andy Palowitch, who previously served as director of the CIA's Central Intelligence Systems Engineering Center and the Systems Engineering and Analysis Office; and Sam Visner, a national security and intelligence expert who oversees business development efforts.

"We have this multi-generation model that works wonderfully at SAIC. You can get somebody with decades of intelligence community experience coupled with a young engineer bringing a solution that they've never thought of before," Prior says. "And it's the marriage of those generations and a commitment to accomplishing a mission that I think is a real competitive differentiator for SAIC."

"I believe the heart and soul of what we do is knowing our customers and their missions better than anyone, understanding what they need to do going forward, taking good science and engineering, and bringing them solutions one job, one challenge at a time," says Prior.

The future of global intelligence

Over the next 10 years, the U.S. faces global uncertainties and risks in a variety of venues, he adds.

"For example, will China be one of our best allies or will China be a threat in terms of what happens with Taiwan or Hong Kong or competition for global resources? I think there's as much a chance that they will be a great ally as a great risk," Prior says. "But that's a classic dilemma facing the intelligence community as they support policy makers and decision makers. And, for every China there are another 20 issues."

For the moment, the main focus is on fighting and winning the global war on terror.

"The one thing that's always in the back of my mind is our employees overseas and making sure they are okay," Prior says. "When you think of how important their mission is, what they're doing for the nation and for the company, we really spend a lot of time on managing our operational risk and taking care of our people."