Capital Chapter Spends an Informative Evening with Planet Labs

On 2 December, NIP members visited the Planet Lab’s Arlington, Virginia office, to discuss the company’s open source GEOINT and Maritime Domain Awareness capabilities. Retired Naval Intelligence officers, Commander Adam Hudson and Captain Silas Ahn, hosted the group of over 20 intelligence professionals, providing engaging conversation along with comprehensive briefings that elicited thought-provoking questions from the astute audience. Hudson gave an overview of Planet Labs and its focus on broad area coverage of the world, and he explained that one of the reasons he invited NIP to the event was to look at how broad area electro-optical coverage can improve naval intelligence. Planet Lab’s Richard Ghani provided an overview of the Global Management System (GMS), to include a few vignettes that demonstrated the real-world applications for the military, and the Navy in particular. The attendees also had the opportunity to see two of the company’s satellites, which were remarkably small! 

Drawing from the success of the professional development event hosted by Janes last April, Capital Chapter president Commander James Martin coordinated the Planet Labs event with Hudson, who recently retired in June and just started working at Planet Labs four months ago. “The conversation was surprisingly sophisticated,” Martin said. “I really think the industry partnerships can provide some phenomenal professional development…and there is value for the junior officers in understanding that not everything is classified. There is a lot of interesting work happening in industry.” 

NIP Chair Vice Admiral (Ret) Bob Sharp, who also attended and provided substantial valuable insight during the discussions, said, “I agree that it was a valuable event. Not only are these types of events appealing and beneficial to those learning the business, but they are also useful for those who are contemplating future opportunities—either directly for themselves or in establishing and growing partnerships.” 

The chapter will seek additional professional development opportunities like this one and the Janes event in the future. Stay tuned!

Many thanks to Planet Labs for hosting NIP for an enlightening evening!

Adam Hudson welcomed the NIP members to Planet Labs and provided the introductory brief.

NIP Chair Bob Sharp provided opening remarks to the group to emphasize the relevance of the event.

Silas Ahn contributed to the discussion and answered questions.

Rich Ghani provided an overview of Global Management System to the group.

Doug Cupo and Jiffy Lueb inspect one of the Planet Lab satellites that was on display.

RDML Josh Himes, VADM (Ret) Bob Sharp and Glenn Yeck

CAPT (Ret) Haruna Isa, CDR (Ret) Adam Hudson, and

NIP had a great turnout for the Planet Labs event.