[Central Imagery Office Seal]

The Central Imagery Office

The Central Imagery Office (CIO) was established in 1992 by the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and the Secretary of Defense. It is a joint Intelligence Community-Department of Defense activity organized as a separate agency within the Department of Defense and designated as a Combat Support Agency.

The mission of CIO is to ensure responsive imagery support to the Intelligence Community, the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and other US Government departments and agencies. As a Combat Support Agency, CIO is also responsible for ensuring timely imagery support to military operations during peace, crisis, and war.

Imagery includes all products of reconnaissance that provide a likeness of any natural or manmade features or related objectives or activities. This imagery can be acquired by satellites, airborne platforms, remotely piloted vehicles, or other means of sensing the visual or any other segment of the electromagnetic spectrum by sensors, including but not limited to panchromatic, multispectral, infrared, and radar.

CIO develops, recommends, and implements policy; formulates guidance and standards for training personnel; and manages requirements related to the tasking, collection, processing, exploitation, and dissemination of imagery. CIO also develops and implements imagery standards and architectures to foster the interoperability of equipment associated with systems controlled separately within the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense, ensuring that these standards and architectures are consistent with programs conducted by civil organizations that use imagery from national collection systems. CIO provides centralized functional management of the Consolidated Imagery Program, the Tactical Imagery Program, and all appropriate research and development activities related to imagery collection, processing, exploitation, and dissemination.

As the central imagery tasking authority, CIO tasks national imagery collection assets of the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense in accordance with intelligence requirements established by the DCI in peacetime, and the Secretary of Defense in wartime. CIO also provides advisory collection tasking to theater and tactical imagery collection assets not allocated to meet national requirements.

Since its creation, CIO has promoted improved interaction and a new relationship between imagery producers and users through an integrated US Imagery System. This system emphasizes full integration of imagery capabilities, including national, theater, tactical, and civil imaging resources. It addresses the full imagery cycle--tasking, collection, processing, exploitation, production, and delivery--in all situations from peace through crisis to open conflict, aiming to deliver imagery when, where, and how it is needed.