U.S. Joint Forces Command has reached a verbal agreement with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) to transfer responsibility for the Valiant Angel video management initiative to NGA sometime around 2012, with a formal agreement still to be negotiated and signed, a U.S. military official said.

JFCom has overseen the $48 million Valiant Angel initiative on behalf of the Defense Department’s ISR Task Force, a group established by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in 2008 to plug intelligence shortcomings in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The task force established Valiant Angel out of concern that troops and commanders would not be able to manage and display wide-area imagery feeds from piloted Constant Hawk intelligence planes and from Reaper unmanned planes equipped with Gorgon Stare camera pods starting in 2010. The first Valiant Angel tools are scheduled to be ready in March over the military’s secret network, followed by full operational capability in July.

Under the tentative agreement, the ISR Task Force would fund Valiant Angel through 2012. Then it would be up to NGA to decide whether to continue Valiant Angel as a formal “program of record” in its budget, or whether to end Valiant Angel because the capability is being satisfied elsewhere.

JFCom confirmed that a transfer agreement is in the works: The command has reached an “agreement in principle” to transfer Valiant Angel to NGA “in the 2012 timeframe,” said Col. George “Skip” Krakie, chief of JFCom’s ISR integration division, in a prepared statement. NGA spokesman Marshall Hudson said his agency would not comment “until an agreement is ready to be signed.”

Lockheed Martin and Harris Corp. are adapting broadcasting industry video tools for military use under the Valiant Angel initiative.