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The U.S. military has access to the world’s best topographic maps. It is now trying to build “culture maps” that include details such as a region’s tribal affiliations, ethnicity, religion and language. The commander of U.S. Central Command, Army Gen. David Petraeus, in a number of speeches has repeatedly said that “human terrain” is the decisive element in counterinsurgency operations. “His remarks have had a rippling effect across the intelligence community,” said Jesse Wilson, who works at the command’s Afghanistan Pakistan Intelligence Center of Excellence. Officials there are pairing human terrain analysts with traditional intelligence teams. Traditional intelligence, based upon satellite and aircraft imagery of the geophysical environment, worked well in past wars where open battle spaces far removed from civilians were the norm. Commanders needed to know the lay of the land in order to attack the opposing force. But in current conflicts, they are relying upon soldier interactions with the local people to gather information. Check out the full article from the NDIA’s National Defense Magazine here.

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Here we are. It’s Monday morning and time to dust off the cob webs and kick it into high gear – professionally speaking of course. Today, we have a wide range of GEOINT-related news from the business side (latest on sale of TASC) to the disturbing (space warfare with China) to the entertaining (NKorea’s Kim travels like a rock star). Our intention, as always with this post, is to provide you with a wide range of news stories to help you kick off your work week with professional gusto. So, as we say, go fire up that second cup of coffee and read on and Happy Monday!

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The Department of Defense recently disclosed annual budget documents that reveal the structure and the contents of the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) that supports DoD operations. As many of our readers may know, the U.S. Intelligence Community is funded through two separate budgets: the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and the MIP. Secrecy News recently did a blog post that showcases how the Director of National Intelligence revealed last month that the combined annual cost of the NIP and the MIP is approximately $75 billion. $25 billion of that amount goes to the MIP.

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This could certainly be good news for those of us developing top secret technologies and solutions for the Defense Department. Wired’s “Danger Room” blog recently ran a story about how the DoD will spend $35.8 billion on secret technologies in 2010, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The funding is split between research and weapons purchases. Eighty percent of the funding goes to the Air Force. It is also noted that “black” spending accounts for nearly half of the Air Force’s purchases, and secret Air Force spending previously produced the SR-71 recon plane, the F-117 stealth fighter and the B-2 stealth bomber. Read more here.

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With the election over, the president-elect’s transition team is making most of the headlines.

But it isn’t all business on Friday …

Is this the new Manhattan Project?

Calling in sick? You might want to check this site first.

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