Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre (JARIC)
RAF Brampton Huntingdon Cambs PE18 8QL
The Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre (JARIC) is based at RAF Brampton, near Huntingdon. It has a total staff of about 500, comprising service personnel from all three services and approximately 144 civil servants. During 1998/99, it employed an average of 465 staff and had net operating costs of £20.7 million. It acts as the Department's centre of excellence for the production of imagery intelligence. Its role is to exploit and analyse imagery from all available sources and produce intelligence products and services to meet the requirements of MOD and the operational Commands. It provides this intelligence to military commanders and the Government, in support of current military operations, defence planning and wider intelligence matters. JARIC is also tasked with provision of trained and experienced personnel in support of specific military operations.
The Secretary of State for Defence announced on 19 July 1995 that the joint air reconnaissance intelligence centre was a candidate for defence agency status. The Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre launched as a Defence Agency on 19 April 1996.
JARIC's role as an operational enabler was significantly enhanced by the Strategic Defence Review [SDR]. The Agency was extensively reorganised early in 1999 to bring a closer alignment with post-SDR customer requirements and to take full advantage of new technology. The reorganisation was undertaken on the basis of an internal Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) study, commissioned by the CE, and aimed at improving the Agency's effectiveness.
The performance of JARIC is monitored by the Agency Owner's Advisory Board, which is chaired by JARIC's "Owner", the Director General Intelligence and Geographic Resources, DGIGR, and is made up of the Agency's major customers and its Non-Executive Director. The Chief Executive of JARIC formally reports his progress against Key Targets to the Owner's Board twice a year and also through the Owner's Quarterly Performance Reviews. The first Owner's Board to review the 1998-99 Key Targets met on 7 October 1998 and the second met on 24 February 1999.
Although photographic processing remains the mainstay of much of the agencies' current business, digital technology is opening up new techniques for imagery analysis that are likely to be increasingly in demand, including for example computer-generated 3-D visualisations and the merging of multi-source images. The agencies envisage that they will have an increasingly overlapping requirement for new technologies to provide these capabilities.
Phase 1 of the program to enhance JARIC's ability to exploit digital imagery was implemented in late 1998. This gave JARIC an improved ability to respond to customers' requirements. The final Phase 2 of the program is being managed by the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA), which, subject to scrutiny, will be taken forward as part of a joint submission with the Military Survey's MDS project (Mil Svy Digital Geographic Information and Production Management System), and is planned to be implemented in 2001. It will replace all JARIC's legacy systems with state-of-the-art technology. To enable JARIC to respond to these new demands, there is a continuing need for connection to modern defence communications systems.
For Resource Accounting and Budgeting (RAB) purposes JARIC is in the process of developing Customer Supplier Agreements (CSAs) with its main customers. It also works closely with those customers through the JARIC Customer Tasking Group (JCTG) where improved procedures are now being introduced to manage and prioritise requirements placed on JARIC. Customer surveys were conducted in 1996 and 1997, the latter by the Defence Analytical Services Agency (DASA). A further survey is currently under way, under the sponsorship of the JARIC Customer Tasking Group (JCTG). Additionally, each product dispatched from JARIC is accompanied by a mini-questionnaire inviting comments from the recipients. The results from successive surveys have shown a high level of customer satisfaction with the Agency's products and services.
JARIC Defence Agency occupies a building belonging to Royal Air Force Brampton. The Agency is therefore dependent on its landlord to work with the providers of public utilities and services such as air conditioning. JARIC has been involved in three major estate relocation/rationalisation studies since 1996. The first, in January-July 1996, the Collocation of Defence Intelligence Units (CDIU) Phase 2 study, employed outside consultants to determine the viability of moving JARIC to the DIS site at Chicksands. The decision was taken to leave JARIC in situ. The subject was revisited in connection with the SDR programme in early 1998. The two main options in this study were the relocation of JARIC to either Feltham or a green field site. Once again, the substantial costs of relocation, re-calculated to a 1998 cost base militated against a move and the decision, once again, was taken to leave JARIC at Brampton. More recently, JARIC has been involved in discussions on the future use of the Brampton estate post the demise of RAF Logistics Command in November 1999.
The case for merging the Military Survey and JARIC Defence Agencies into a single agency was considered under the Strategic Defence Review. The study, which was completed in September 1998, concluded that there were a number of drivers, mainly in the medium to long term, recommending the merger of Military Survey and JARIC. These would secure improved operational effectiveness and better service to defence. Early implementation of a merger was recommended. On 10 May 1999, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State announced that two of these agencies -- JARIC and Military Survey -- would merge on 1 April 2000 into a new agency, the Defence Geographic and Imagery Intelligence Agency.
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