Digital Mapping: Fact or Fiction.

The Defense Mapping Agency has passed the point where we provide only the traditional paper maps and charts used by the Armed Forces. Many of the traditional, manual, labor intensive production processes currently in use are no longer cost effective in supporting present readiness requirements. DMA is now heavily into the production of digital data to support the navigation and guidance requirements of new advanced systems. To meet the ever increasing sophistication of these new systems, as well as updating our capability to support our traditional products, DMA is in the midst of the most ambitious modernization in the history of cartography. While the all digital softcopy production system is today still a fiction, the Defense Mapping Agency has committed itself to make this fiction a fact by the early 1990s. Keywords High resolution User needs.