This specification is intended to provide guidelines for the preparation and use of ECIB data to support various military weapons, C3I theater battle management, mission planning, and digital moving map systems. ECIB data is not a commercial product and is releasable only to DoD and its' associated contractors.

a. ECIB image data is of appropriate size and quality for use in military command and control systems, ground-based force to unit-level mission planning systems, and aircraft cockpit displays. ECIB is intended to satisfy the needs of a broad range of users in its compression ratio and display resolution.

b. The image compression of ECIB compared to source images offers distinct operational, logistical, and supportability benefits to many users of controlled imagery. It permits the same datasets to be used for both ground-based and aircraft cockpit displays, offers significant savings in media storage/transportation and peripheral costs, results in faster data loading times and requires less frequent reloading of hard disks from media. It also allows multiple product types to be placed on interchange media for geographic areas of interest.