Defense intelligence firm Vantor has captured a $5.3 million contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to leverage artificial intelligence for detecting real-time changes from the company’s own imaging satellites and space-based sensors.
The NGA contract aims to support missions tied to regional conflicts around the world, natural and man-made disasters and even humanitarian assistance. Representatives from Vantor, a Colorado-headquartered company with offices in Asia, Europe and around the U.S., say the surveillance program can detect when satellite images show changes to buildings, roads, vegetation and even ground disturbances.
“Under the contract, Vantor will use AI-powered analytics and integrate data from multiple space-based sensors — including its own imaging satellites and third-party electro-optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites — to identify changes to the Earth’s physical terrain,” according to a statement by the company. The artificial intelligence-powered system will be able to pull together data from “multiple space-based sensors” at once.
Vantor, formerly Maxar Intelligence, told The Washington Times back in December that the company was pushing forward with more AI-powered systems.
“That’s the big transition that we’ve been doing with Maxar to Vantor,” Dan Smoot, the CEO of Vantor, said during that interview. “We’re taking this foundational data, its both 2D and 3D digital twin, of the entire world, but as you drive more advanced analytics, it requires additional sensor data that you have to fuse together.”
The new NGA contract is an example of exactly that new capability, fusing data from multiple sensors at different resolutions, viewing angles, and levels of accuracy. Vantor has developed software that automatically pulls together the data to connect it to the “digital twin,” letting it identify even small changes in the landscape.
“This win highlights Vantor’s unique capability to integrate the vast amount of data from multiple sensors to not only detect changes on a global scale, but to also deliver advanced analytics,” Susanne Hake, an executive vice president and Vantor’s general manager for U.S. government contracts, said in a statement this week.
Ms. Hake said Vantor’s capabilities aim to provide intelligence “that provides a decisive advantage to policymakers, warfighters, intelligence professionals, and first responders from seabed to space.”
The “living globe,” the technology supporting the Luno program, is a significant leap forward in global monitoring and surveillance capabilities for Vantor’s technologies.
The new NGA contract builds on an earlier Luno program that Vantor participated in last June. The company successfully deployed its specialized Site Sentry capability, a core component of the Luno program. The successful execution and performance of Site Sentry during that earlier phase laid the essential groundwork and secured Vantor’s position as a key partner for developing and implementing this wide-reaching, new-generation global surveillance architecture.
According to a statement released by Vantor, the new combined Luno program will possess the capability to conduct “large-scale global monitoring” operations in real time.
• John T. Seward can be reached at jseward@washingtontimes.com.
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