This specification is intended to provide guidelines for the preparation and use of CADRG data to support various weapons, C3I theater battle management, mission planning, and digital moving map systems. This specification is a new publication and does not supersede any other publication.

a. CADRG 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 "moving map" displays. The post-reduction filtering scheme emphasizes legibility of text and contour lines to ensure that displayed and printed digital maps are readable and distinct. CADRG is intended to satisfy the needs of a broad range of users in its compression ratio, display and print quality and displayed screen size.

b. The 55:1 reduction in size of CADRG compared to source ADRG offers distinct operational, logistical, and supportability benefits to many users of digitized map/chart and imagery data. It permits the same datasets to be used for both ground-based and aircraft cockpit displays, offers significant savings in media storage/transportation and peripherals (i.e., hard disk) costs, results in faster data loading times and requires less frequent reloading of hard disks from media. It also allows multiple scale and product types to be placed on interchange media for geographic areas of interest.

c. CADRG [frame file]s may be physically formatted within a NITF message.