Actionable Intelligence relies on every Soldier
Army News Service
Release Date: 4/13/2004
By Joe Burlas
Editor's note: This is the 13th article in a weekly series on the 17 Army focus areas. This one focuses on "Actionable Intelligence." WASHINGTON (Army News Service, April 13, 2004) -- Actionable Intelligence means providing commanders and Soldiers a high level of situational understanding, delivered with speed, accuracy and timeliness, in order to conduct successful operations, according to the charter of the focus area task force on the subject.
Actionable Intelligence is not perfect intelligence -- commanders need to be trained on what intelligence can be reasonably delivered and what cannot, said the Army's top military intelligence planner and policy maker.
Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, Army G2, gave members of the Pentagon press corps a snapshot April 8 of what Task Force Actionable Intelligence has found since it was created last fall and how its initiatives will transform the way military intelligence will operate in the future.
One of the ways the task force hopes to change in the Army is making every Solider a sensor that quickly reports the Soldier's slice of the battlefield into a digital network.
Combat Soldiers are trained to report what they believe to be critical information up the chain of command. However, that report takes time as it makes it through the chain, and the information that is reported is often filtered. By the time it makes it to where it might be acted on, it is often too late or incomplete, Alexander said.
A shared network, with each Soldier having a means of digitally inputting and sending what he sees, is where Army is heading, Alexander said. Progress in the area is being made, as he said his action officers are in close coordination with their counterparts in G6 to develop and implement the infrastructure, equipment, procedures and tools needed for that network.
Looking at lessons learned from Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom from the start of major hostilities through recent observations of current threats, the task force identified 127 issues that needed to be fixed as soon as possible. Interim and permanent solutions for the majority of those issues have already been implemented, Alexander said. Some of those fixes have been changes to procedures, software updates and rapid fielding of new equipment.
One of the biggest intelligence shortcomings of both operations was the lack of human intelligence assets at the battalion and brigade level -- something that is being addressed as returning forces reset into modular forces, Alexander said. Warfighting forces currently in the Central Command area of operations have been beefed up with a number of ad hoc tactical HUMINT collection teams as well.
The greater need for tactical HUMINT is because the threat has changed in our lifetimes, from facing a Cold War adversary armed with lots of tanks and artillery to an asymmetrical enemy, Alexander explained. The intelligence community is no longer just looking for a bunch of equipment to identify where the enemy is and determine what his intentions might be; it is also looking for individual people, Alexander said.
The G2 said he is looking to industry and academia to help better organize and visually present information from multiple intelligence databases. The current system is much like an Internet search using a standard search tool that gives you thousands of hits. Refining your query until you get what you are looking for is time-consuming, Alexander continued.
There has to be a better way of getting the data you need than using a hierarchical Industrial Age process when we are living in the Information Age, Alexander said.
Situational awareness also means sharing information seamlessly across all levels -- from national intelligence assets down to the Soldier on the battlefield. That will require a cultural change and a lot of training, Alexander said.
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