10 U.S.C. § 442 — Missions

(a) National Security Missions. NGA must provide geospatial intelligence in support of U.S. national security goals. That intelligence consists of imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information. As directed by the Director of National Intelligence, NGA must also build a system to help analyze, share, and fold into the broader National System for Geospatial Intelligence any images, videos, or presentations that come from ground-level sources — including handheld or secret photography taken by, or for, human intelligence collectors, or found in open sources. But NGA is not given authority to manage the tasking of that handheld or secret photography itself. Whatever geospatial intelligence NGA provides under this subsection must be timely, relevant, and accurate. (b) Navigation Information. NGA must work to improve safe navigation, by providing accurate geospatial information — under the Secretary of Defense's authority — for use by federal departments and agencies, the merchant marine, and navigators generally. (c) Maps, Charts, Etc. NGA must acquire, prepare, and distribute maps, safety-for-navigation charts and datasets, books, and geomatics products, as authorized elsewhere in this chapter. (d) National Missions. NGA also carries out "national missions" — additional duties specified in a different law, section 110(a) of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. § 3045(a)). (e) Systems. In support of any NGA mission, NGA may design, build, deploy, run, and maintain systems related to processing and distributing imagery intelligence and geospatial information. These systems may be transferred to, accepted by, or used by (or on behalf of) the armed forces — including any combatant command, part of a combatant command, joint task force, or tactical unit — or any other federal department or agency. (f) Validation. NGA must help the Joint Chiefs of Staff, combatant commands, and the military departments establish, coordinate, combine, and validate their requirements for mapping, charting, geomatics data, and safe-navigation capability, through a formal process the Joint Staff runs. Based on those validated requirements, NGA must provide safe aeronautical and nautical charts, maps, books, datasets, models, and geomatics products.