To lure Defense Department users away from wholly government-developed and -owned mapping applications, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency knew it had to tinker with licensing arrangements to drive down cost and make a package of commercial apps appealing. And that’s just what NGA did for its Commercial Joint Mapping Toolkit.

Through the CJMTK program, NGA wants to enhance geospatial data interoperability across DOD command, control and intelligence systems. Under an 11-year, $73 million contract awarded in June 2002, Northrop Grumman Information Technology of McLean, Va., is leading the effort to provide DOD’s C2I systems organizations with a commercial replacement for the government Joint Mapping Toolkit. At the core of the toolkit, which complies with the Common Operating Environment and the emerging Network-Centric Enterprise Services initative, is another common piece of software: ArcGIS from ESRI of Redlands, Calif.

“CJMTK is more than just a client-side desktop application. It fits more into the whole enterprise architecture,” says Brett Cameron, CJMTK program manager for Northrop Grumman. “Not only do we have the client-side pieces, but we have the back-end server pieces as well. When you implement an enterprise solution like NCES, we’ve got the pieces that fit into the entire enterprise architecture.”

NGA’s rationale for using commercial geographic information system software is simple: It works, and it’s cheap. ESRI’s ArcGIS is based on open systems standards, meeting 95 percent of CJMTK’s requirements out of the box. CJMTK enhancements, which extend the capabilities of the ArcGIS engine, meet the remaining requirements. In addition to ESRI, the Northrop Grumman CJMTK team is layering in satellite modeling from Analytical Graphics Inc. of Exton, Pa., and image processing from Leica Geosystems AG of St. Gallen, Switzerland.

“The commercial vendors had a viable option for all the functionality we needed for mapping and visualization,” says Sue Riley, NGA program manager for CJMTK. “We started out with 120 mission applications, and we’re now close to doubling that number. The value of the enterprise license for the C2I community has been the real return on investment.”

Heck of a Deal
Because the primary commercial component of CJMTK is ArcGIS, ESRI bears significant R&D costs and contractually must offer regular software upgrades, extended functionality and training. “NGA licenses the technology, pays their maintenance, and they get a huge increase in functionality every year or so as we release new versions of ArcGIS. That’s the real advantage of CJMTK for NGA,” says Gary Scoffield, defense C4ISR business development manager for ESRI. “Yes, they pay some money for it, but it’s a fraction of the money that we invest in R&D in the platform.”

The toolkit is provided at no cost to authorized DOD developers of C2I mission applications, such as the Air Force’s Joint Mission Planning, the Army’s Maneuver Control System and the Global Command and Control System.

“At its heart, CJMTK is a licensing agreement. Most people don’t realize that,” Cameron says. “For mission applications that qualify, they get free use of the software. We do not count seats. The mission application developers do not have to worry about registering license files. For both development and deployment, it’s all covered.”

Under the toolkit licensing option, NGA fully funds and provides the licenses and lifecycle support for the CJMTK-approved user community, which includes the Coast Guard (search and rescue is considered a C2I mission application). Non-C2I Defense programs such as environmental programs and facilities and range management may use CJMTK under an extended user community licensing option, but they must pay for it out of their own program funds.

CJMTK program officials are quick to point out that integration of the toolkit or applications within a C2I program is the user organization’s responsibility. “We can’t dictate how to do something, but we can recommend best practices, so we developed reference implementations and provide that source code on the CJMTK Web site for mission application developers to download,” Cameron says.

The current CJMTK version runs on clients and servers under Windows 2000, Windows XP, Solaris 8, Red Hat Linux and SUSE Linux. Incoming Version 9.2, CJMTK will be available for systems running Solaris 10 and Windows 2003. Linux, in particular, has come to the forefront because of some of the newer battlefield initiatives, including the Army’s Future Combat Systems program.

“There’s a lot of interest in Linux, but most of the CJMTK deployments have been in Windows,” Scoffield says, adding, “The Army has been the heaviest in looking at it, and it makes sense in some areas.”

According to Riley, ESRI plans to push out 9.2 early this year, following the November beta release. The quick run from beta to final also makes the commercial applications appealing. “The commercial product as it’s released from ESRI is taking only 90 days to get into the hands of the developers, which is a big switch,” Riley says. “We’re not looking at 18 to 24 months for deployment and integration. We’re getting it out there as quickly as we can to the warfighter.”

Latest, Greatest Version
The big piece of the server story for CJMTK 9.2 will be ArcGIS Explorer. “What it boils down to is that visualization has become commoditized,” Scoffield says. “You don’t really pay for visualization. You want to make your content available to a wide variety of viewers and analytical capabilities that go along with it. ArcGIS Server enables you to put out your information to a wide variety of clients and they can visualize it with free clients, desktop clients or whatever they want.”

Version 9.1 of CJMTK did not support Google Earth’s data format, Keyhole Markup Language, out of the box. With 9.2, ArcGIS Server can publish GIS data in a format that can be consumed by KML clients, including Google Earth. Version 9.2 also has an enhancement to ArcGIS Server called Globe Server, which lets users stream 3D visualizations over the Web so that other CJMTK clients can consume the files using ArcGlobe, Globe Control, ArcReader or Reader Control, as well as the new free ArcGIS Explorer.

ArcGIS Explorer, a geospatial information viewer, offers a free, fast and easy way to view geographic information, while performing queries and analysis on the underlying data through the use of Web services that can be stood up by ArcGIS Server. ArcGIS Explorer can consume and fuse local data with services from ArcGIS Server’s Globe Server, ArcIMS, OGC WMS and ArcWeb Services.

“Streaming 3D visualization is one of the requirements we’re really trying to assist the warfighter with,” Riley says. “That’s the ArcGIS Explorer in Version 9.2 and Google Earth. Those two will be the streaming globes that are going to help with geo-intelligence visualization.”

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