((a)) ** .—** The Secretary of Defense may use members of the National Guard to carry out a program to aggregate, analyze, and assess multi-source remote sensing information for interagency partnerships in the detection and monitoring of wildfires, and to support any emergency response to such wildfires. Such a program shall be known as the “FireGuard Program”.

((b)) ** .—**

((1)) The Secretary of Defense may enter into a contract or cooperative agreement with a qualified individual or entity for the performance of duties to supplement members of the National Guard in carrying out the FireGuard Program under subsection (a).

((2)) In association with a contract or cooperative agreement entered into under paragraph (1) with a qualified individual or entity, the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, in coordination with relevant State, local, and commercial entities, shall execute a memorandum of understanding with the qualified individual or entity, which shall clearly delineate the roles, responsibilities, functions, timelines, and end dates for the transition of the duties to be performed under the contract or cooperative agreement.

((3)) In this subsection, the term “qualified individual or entity” means—

((A)) any individual who possesses a requisite security clearance for handling classified remote sensing data for the purpose of wildfire detection and monitoring; or

((B)) any corporation, firm, partnership, company, nonprofit, Federal agency or sub-agency, or State or local government, with contractors or employees who possess a requisite security clearance for handling such data.