National Air Space Intelligence Center.

The National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) is the Department of Defense's (DoD) primary source for air and space intelligence. NASIC (nā-sik') creates integrated, predictive intelligence in the air, space and cyberspace domains and exploits national and tactical intelligence sources, enabling effective military operations, force modernization and policymaking. The center, as a global enterprise, fulfills the intelligence needs of the U.S. warfighter, aids in shaping national policy, and guides weapons systems development. NASIC's products and services play a key role in ensuring U.S. forces avoid technological surprise and can counter existing and evolving foreign air, space and cyberspace threats. Combining a unique scientific foundation with intelligence analysis of air, space and cyber domains, enabled by multiple intelligence sources, NASIC is the one place within the DoD where all the pieces come together.

Mission
The center's analysts provide integrated assessments and tailored intelligence products and services for wide range of needs, regardless of complexity. NASIC provides intelligence directly to military units, national decision makers, and the research and acquisition community to ensure force modernization, development and sustainment of U.S. air, space and cyberspace capabilities. The combat effectiveness and survivability of advanced weapons and support systems, both in the field and in development, depend on the accuracy of NASIC intelligence. As the DoD experts on foreign air and space capabilities, the center also supports weapons treaty negotiations and verification.

NASIC develops its products by analyzing all sources of data available to the U.S. intelligence community to determine foreign air, space and cyberspace capabilities, as well as weapon system performance, vulnerabilities, employment intent and proliferation. The center begins with a dedicated foundational scientific and technical understanding of enemy threats. Building from this foundation, NASIC analysts apply an understanding of foreign capabilities within a context of foreign security goals and objectives to provide warfighters the knowledge and understanding they require to respond to dynamic threats. The center ensures these responses meet all requirements, whether an immediate analysis within hours of an event or a highly detailed analysis available for critical milestone decisions.

In addition to its all-source intelligence analysis responsibilities, NASIC has integral relationships throughout the national intelligence collection elements. NASIC performs specific processing, exploitation, analysis and dissemination roles within the domains of measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT), geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), and open source intelligence (OSINT).

NASIC serves as the national agent for the processing, exploitation, analysis, integration and dissemination of MASINT data collected from radar, electro-optical and infrared technical sensors. The center prepares spectral, spatial and temporal threat signatures in support of air and space forces; develops technical analysis tools; and provides techniques to fuse MASINT within the operational environment.

The center exploits SIGINT and GEOINT, and since 1955, develops machine translation tools for use throughout the DoD. NASIC's air-and-space focused OSINT reports and analysis serve the intelligence community via the Director of National Intelligence's Open Source Center.

Personnel & Organization
NASIC has a global force of more than 3,000 military, civilian, Reserve, Guard and contract personnel. The center has four intelligence analysis groups -- with 17 subordinate squadrons -- and four support directorates: 

· Air and Cyberspace Analysis Group 
· Data Analysis Group 
· Global Threat Analysis Group 
· Space and Missiles Analysis Group

· Communications and Information Directorate 
· Human Resources Directorate 
· Mission Support Directorate 
· Plans and Policies Directorate 

Through these intelligence analysis groups, enabled by the directorates, NASIC accomplishes a diverse set of missions. While some missions remain wholly within one group or squadron, often the dynamic nature of 21st century threats force missions to overlap between groups and squadrons; this overlap produces a collaborative, operationally relevant analysis. These missions are broken into seven main categories:

Air & Counterair
Assess the capabilities of foreign aircraft, air-launched weapons and remotely piloted vehicles, and the likelihood of their employment against U.S. forces. Fuse air defense intelligence analysis to produce a macro-level assessment of a country's air defense systems.

Space & Counterspace
Develop integrated, all-source space and counterspace threat assessments, and provide detailed understanding of foreign threats to U.S. space systems and the capabilities of foreign space users.

Ballistic Missiles
Assess foreign land-based ballistic missile systems with ranges of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) and greater, and their subsystems, capabilities, effectiveness and proliferation.

Intelligence Processing
Process and analyze multiple intelligence data sources -- signals; imagery; measurement and signature; open source; geospatial; and foreign materiel exploitation -- integrating and fusing these sources into intelligence products.

Integrated Assessments
Assess foreign war fighting capabilities, force structure and intent across the air, space, cyberspace and information domains, for both current and future forces, forming a complete picture of adversary air, space and cyberspace capabilities.

Disruptive Technologies
Assess emerging technologies that could potentially be used in an air, space or cyberspace warfighting capacity against the United States.

C4ISR
Assess the characteristics, capabilities, limitations and vulnerabilities of foreign air and space command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) infrastructure, networks, systems and processes.
 

The center use a variety of products to provide analysis, ranging from one- or two-page executive summaries to multiple volumes in comprehensive studies, and from presentation briefings to video simulations. These simulations condense intelligence documents, technical diagrams and engineering work into a three- to five-minute video representation of current or predicted threats. This innovative technique allows the clearest communication of threat capabilities and intents, regardless of the technical and scientific background of the audience.

History
NASIC traces its heritage back to 1917 at McCook Field in Dayton, Ohio, and T-2 intelligence at Wright Field, Ohio, in 1945. The Foreign Technology Division marked the beginning of NASIC's historical lineage in July 1961. The Air Force redesignated the unit as the National Air Intelligence Center in October 1993 and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center in February 2003. To mirror the Air Force's wing structure, NASIC changed its internal structure April 15, 2008, activating four groups and 17 squadrons.