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The intelligence community has always faced issues from the standpoint of new threats and evolving adversaries. One of the most recent, and perhaps most viable, threats facing our intel community is the increased use of cyberspace, a man-made physical domain ushered in by the digital age. The cyber domain is very complex … it is embedded in all aspects of military operations underpinning our ability to conduct worldwide missions. Clearly, we must be mindful of the problems, the challenges, and the opportunities cyberspace creates. Unlike other domains spanning the global commons, entry to the cyber domain must be constructed, operated, and maintained. Every node, component, and strand of fiber is owned by an entity … whether it be an individual, a business, or government of a sovereign nation. This creates its own challenges in terms of jurisdictional uncertainty, applicable laws, and attack attribution.
ReplyDeleteA cyber attack is one of the most asymmetric threats our nation could face, and the internet is the ultimate asymmetric tool. The advantages to be gained in this domain are tremendous, and potential adversaries will not ignore this fact. Whether it's access to the electric grid, the NASDAQ, or an individual’s bank account, cyberspace has inextricable linkage throughout our society and is interwoven into our daily lives. Tackling the domain of cyberspace will require not only an increased impetus from the intelligence community, but a whole-of-government approach to gain and maintain a proactive stance in this arena.
“The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.” -Sir B.H. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, 1944.
ReplyDeleteThe US Army has been involved in fighting counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last ten years. In order to be successful, the Army has changed and adapted to the environment in which it has been employed. As part of this effort, the Army has relied on the formation of Company Intelligence Support Teams at the company level to describe the effects of the weather, enemy, terrain, and local population on friendly operations to reduce uncertainty and aid in decision making (Handbook No. 10-20, 2010, p. 1). The Army has learned that these teams are essential to its success, and while this organizational change has not been easy, it has been vital to the success of our current counterinsurgency campaigns, and those in which we may be engaged in the near future.
Successful counterinsurgency operations focus on decentralized operations. This is driven by the dispersed nature of insurgency, and the tempo of operations conducted by counterinsurgency forces (FM 3-34, 1-23). Contemporary units have found this to be true, and have been forced to adapt in order to provide the critical intelligence needed to conduct operations against insurgent forces. Major Morgan (2008) gets to the heart of this problem by stating that in the current combat environment, intelligence is driving operations on the battlefield, and company commanders need help performing intelligence analysis and fusion at their level (p. 23). Morgan’s arguments are supported by Major General Michael Flynn, who has recently been highly critical of our intelligence efforts in Afghanistan (Flynn, 2010). General Flynn, the senior American intelligence officer in the Afghanistan theater of operations, believes that the most important intelligence for the fight is being lost below the battalion level.
As stated in FM 3-0, the nature of land operations has expanded from a nearly exclusive focus on lethal combat with other armies to a complicated mixture of lethal and nonlethal actions directed at enemies, adversaries, and the local population, itself often a complicated mix (2008, p. 1-18). In order to deal with these complexities, it is important to realize that there is a relationship between intelligence and operations. They are symbiotic in that intelligence drives operations and operations produce intelligence. The need for intelligence from the population, which is focused on the population itself, is a necessary requirement. Therefore, intelligence collection during counterinsurgency is more ‘bottom up’ driven than in other types of conflict. LtCol Mann and Capt Driscoll (2009) recognize this fact in their own operations, and largely attribute this fact to the vast area their unit was responsible for and the de-centralized nature of their operations this forced upon them (p. 28). The best intelligence is that intelligence which is gathered at the lowest level. In order to accomplish this task, the US Army, and the Military Intelligence Corps in particular, have had to learn some old lessons that they had forgotten.
In order to provide the support necessary for success on the battlefield, the Army has had to learn and adapt to the environment in which it was engaged. The Company Intelligence Support Team (COIST) is one of the adaptations that have come out of the current counterinsurgency conflicts that the Army is prosecuting. The COIST is generally a small organization that is attached at the company level to help the commander at that level analyze the intelligence his unit is gathering, and use that intelligence to focus his operations. As CPT Devin (2008) points out, effective bottom-up intelligence during today’s counterinsurgency operations call for units to augment intelligence teams with analysts down to the company level (p. 33). The COIST is a proven concept, used by many units, to help collect and analyze intelligence gathered at the lowest levels. As Devin (2008) goes on to state, this is the best method of providing pertinent intelligence to the commanders who need it most, and the Army’s elite units traditionally employ such additional intelligence cells, which are not part of those unit’s organic organizations (p. 33). The Army and the Marine Corps units on the ground have found an adaptation in the form of the COIST to provide the necessary low-level intelligence support to their operations. The Intelligence community must move to better support these efforts on a permanent basis at the ground combat level.
ReplyDeleteThe current ad hoc or out of hide way of building COISTs is not optimal nor is it sufficient. While Devin (2008) suggests using soldiers that are among the “best and brightest” (p. 35); Mann and Driscoll (2009) propose that “commanders must be willing to cut into muscle” (p. 30) in order to build this capacity. Many leaders charged with raising, training, manning and equipping the COIST concept agree that augmentation by intelligence soldiers is the most efficient way to provide quality intelligence support to the counterinsurgency effort (Mann & Driscoll, 2009; Devin, 2008). While those in Army Intelligence agree with the concept, they are limited by the number of intelligence analyst billets available at the battalion level. Until these issues are rectified, the ad hoc nature of the COIST organization will continue. While many units in the Army and the Marine Corps have demonstrated the ability to institute change at the ground combat level based on lessons learned by the unit during current on-going and previous combat tours, successful manning, equipping and training of COISTs will still require more effort from Army Intelligence to change the way it currently does business. The change necessary to properly man, equip and train COISTs will not come easily. This will require strong leadership to guide Army Intelligence through a difficult process. Regardless of this, the Army as a whole has achieved this change because it is a learning organization. When looked at through the theory of holographic design, the processes and principles can be applied to the Army and it’s embracement of the COIST concept.
The US Army has not squandered the lessons it has bought at such a high price over the past decade. And these lessons have clearly argued for the need of an organizational change in the form of the COIST, an organization that provides commanders on the battlefield with better intelligence and more timely analysis for the counterinsurgency fight. If the Army had not changed its strategy, it would have needlessly endangered more lives and, ultimately, endangered its chances of success in prosecuting the counterinsurgency missions given to it by the nation.
ReplyDelete“It should be the duty of every soldier to reflect on the experiences of the past, in the endeavor to discover improvements, in his particular sphere of action, which are practicable in the immediate future.” -Sir B.H. Liddell Hart
References
Devin, D. (2008). Organizing S2 Sections to Support Company Intelligence Teams.
Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, April – June 2008, 33-36.
Doll, Y., Miller, B. (2008). Applying the Kotter Model: Making Transformational
Change in a Large Organization. Reprinted in US Army Command and General Staff College, AY 09-10 Student Issue Advance Book Developing Organizations and Leaders. Fort Leavenworth, KS: USACGSC, June 2009, 104-110.
Flynn, M. T., Pottinger, M., Batchelor, P. D. (2010). Fixing Intel: A Blueprint
for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan. Center for New American Security, January, 2010.
Heinl, R.D. (1966). Dictionary of Military and Naval Quotations. United States Naval
Institute, Annapolis, Maryland.
Liddell Hart, B.H. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved July 11, 2010, from
BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/b_h_liddell_hart.html.
Mann, M., Driscoll, M. (2009). Thoughts Regarding the Company-Level Intelligence
Cell. Marine Corps Gazette, June 2009, 28-32.
Morgan, G. (2006, Updated Edition). Images of Organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Morgan, R. (2008). Company Intelligence Support Teams. Armor, July-August 2008,
23-25, 50.
US, Department of the Army. FM 3-0, Operations. Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office. February 2008.
US, Department of the Army. FM 3-07, Stability Operations. Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office. October 2008.
US, Department of the Army. FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency. Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office. December 2006.
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Government Printing Office. October 2006.
US, Center for Army Lessons Learned. Handbook No. 10-20 Company Intelligence
Support Team, Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures. Fort Leavenworth, KS: USACAC. January 2010.
My perspective is limited to the actual use of military intelligence in Aviation. In Aviation,we rely on our MI analysts to identify and predict threats to our aircraft over a large area. During my 36 months in the Combat Aviation Brigade on staff and as a Battalion XO, I saw large diversity in experience and competency. Most of the Captains we received and relied on at the Battalion S2 OIC were Branch detailed into MI from another branch and had very limited experience or intelligence analyst experience. Over time, these officers were able to mature in their speciality and became very good. My number one question is what unnecessary risk are we placing our combat crews. They must also take in consideration the effects of the branch detail officers walking directly into a primary staff position without previous experience in the branch.
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