Via Satellite illustration.

ST. LOUIS — A new version of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) primary tool for ordering imagery should be ready for operational use later this year, an agency official said.

The tailored version of the GEOINT Information Management Services (GIMS) tool developed to operate in contested communications environments is being exercised with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command now and, if all goes well, the SlimGIMS will be ready for wider adoption, the official told Defense Daily on Tuesday at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium.

GIMS is a long-time tasking tool developed and maintained by Lockheed Martin. The tool allows analysts, warfighters and others to acquire older imagery or task for new imagery depending on the needs. That imagery can come from National Reconnaissance Office and commercial assets.

In a benign environment, combatant commands would work through NGA’s GIMs but in a denied, degraded, intermittent, and low-bandwidth (DDIL) environment, SlimGIMS will provide alternative, although “less than ideal” pathways to task GIMS, the official said.

The SlimGIMS effort began last summer and underwent testing five months later in late 2024. The initial test was not done in a contested environment but a second test in early 2025 was conducted in DDIL conditions and was successful. It has gotten “rave reviews,” the official said.

The Kubernetes-based technology is deployed on NGA’s Joint Regional Edge Nodes (J-REN) at four locations, including Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Forces Korea. There is also a J-REN test node in the U.S. The SlimGIMS effort was first reported by Breaking Defense.

NGA’s source directorate is “very focused” on speed of delivery, a requirement for all of the combatant commands, Tracey Maloney, deputy director of source operations at NGA, said on Monday during a panel discussion here.

“We are practicing the way we want to operate in the future,” Maloney said. “We are practicing with new tools…We plan for that to operate in a DDIL environment within a command, and we are practicing with this tool as we speak with the commands in the various exercises that have already happened. So, this isn’t something that we’re just planning for in the future. This is something we’re doing right now, and we’re getting feedback on this tool, and this tool is being used in the components and at the command level.”

GIMS also allows users to specify the quality of the imagery they want, such as the angle of capture and a specific area of an item of interest.

NGA last week said it awarded Lockheed Martin a new contract potentially worth $615.7 million to continue sustaining GIMS and to support modernization of the program in what it calls the Geospatial Intelligence Collection Next program.

This story was first published by Defense Daily