Initiatives seek to transform Army intelligence capabilities
Army News Service
Release Date: 4/13/2004
By Joe Burlas
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, April 13, 2004) -- While more than 100 fixes are already in place to boost Army intelligence capabilities in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, more initiatives are on the way.
The priority of effort on the initiatives will go to those units that have returned from deployments and are resetting into modular units of action, according to Army officials.
"Transformation is a journey along a continual path of change," said Lt. Col. Steve Iwicki, Task Force Actionable Intelligence deputy director. "You can always do better -- find a way (to improve things) through initiative and sheer determination. It's about ramping up capabilities."
The critical Actionable Intelligence initiatives are centered on four overarching concepts: changing the intelligence culture and mindset of all Soldiers; improving battlespace intelligence capabilities; providing tactical overwatch capabilities; and creating a network centric environment.
Culture/Mindset
No matter how well Army intelligence transforms, commanders will rarely be given perfect intelligence, Iwicki said. Changing the Army culture and mindset, in regards to intelligence, means training commanders to fight for knowledge by exploiting windows of opportunity, despite the lack of perfect intelligence. "With today's asymmetric threat, you often have to move quickly or lose that window of opportunity," Iwicki said.
Soldiers and commanders must also understand that every Soldier is a sensor on the battlefield. Soldiers are our smartest collectors, but they are only effective if they report their observations of their piece of battlespace in a timely manner, Iwicki said. The other half of the "Every Soldier is a Sensor" initiative is to ensure the intelligence community also provides the correct information and intelligence to those Soldiers whenever and wherever they need it.
Everyone in the Army must understand that combat operations and intelligence operations are not exclusive of each other, Iwicki said. Rather, they go hand-in-hand with each other. This requires training leaders to underwrite calculated risk-taking in an ambiguous environment as part of the fight for knowledge.
Red Teaming, viewing ourselves through the enemy's eyes, is another key initiative. The concept was recently tested in Iraq as the Army and Central Command began planning the recent rotation of forces in and out of theater.
"What we found was the planners did a great job of building an efficient plan to move those forces quickly," Iwicki said. "However, the plan was predictable in some cases -- same flight times from the same location; same convoy routes. When this was pointed out, the plan changed."
Battlespace Capabilities
Situational Awareness on the complex battlefield of the 21st Century demands greater access to information with increased fidelity at every level, starting with the Soldier. Battlespace capabilities represent what is in the hands of our Soldiers or organic to their unit.
As the Army moves to modular units of action, the units that reset are being manned with a larger organic contingent of intelligence specialists-- including human intelligence assets and unmanned aerial vehicles, capabilities normally found in the current force at division or higher level.
Tactical Overwatch
Tactical Overwatch is creating standing, fixed analytical intelligence capabilities that provide dedicated intelligence support and overwatch to committed maneuver units.
Traditionally, theater intelligence assets support the corps and division commanders' intelligence priorities, which often outweigh satisfying maneuver brigade requirements, Iwicki said. The tactical overwatch cell would be connected via a shared intelligence network that can pull information from multiple sources and provide succinct answers (vice megabytes of information) directly to supported units when time is of the essence.
Project Foundry will station selected tactical intelligence Soldiers with the Army Intelligence and Security Command and national intelligence organizations, to provide a foundation of regional and subject-matter expertise developed through daily training in a live mission environment.
The Army intelligence community is expanding the Information Dominance Center to operate as a test bed for emerging advanced technologies and best business practices. These new capabilities will then be fielded across the Army.
Today, any new technology that has intelligence applications must be promptly incorporated into the intelligence system. To that end, the Pantheon Project is reaching out to academia and industry to assist in solving information management challenges, Iwicki said.
Network Centric Environment
The intelligence enterprise is intended to provide information transparency made possible by a common network which integrates people with shared databases, advanced analytical tools, knowledge centers, and sensors/collectors that are accessible by all. An assured network centric environment is the key enabler and the glue that binds all these concepts.
An optimal network centric environment will mean Soldiers thinking faster, making decisions faster and generating combat power faster than any adversary, Iwicki said.
"It's about being situational aware through shared and timely information," Iwicki said.
The Network Centric Environment begins by digitally connecting the Soldier to the Battle Command system. We must provide Soldiers the capability to receive common situational awareness of their operating environment and enable them to easily and digitally report the valuable information they collect. That means getting digital systems to the point of origin of information -- into Soldiers' hands.
It also means creating a robust and seamless network from the Soldier to national level intelligence agencies. With that network, the distance between operators in Iraq with analysts in the United States is not a factor in sharing information quickly.
"There is a lot of information out there and no single person knows it all," Iwicki said. "We have to work as a team to get more complete answers to what we want to know and get in the hands of the Soldiers who need it."
(Editor's note: This article was written as a sidebar to Actionable Intelligence relies on every Soldier.)
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