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Subject:
Military Intelligence: Old Habits Die Hard...
lightningtest
2/6/2006 3:53:04 AM
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I recently read this a thought it made interesting reading.
link
by Ted McKenna
Jan. 25, 2006
"A lot of intelligence is being collected by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it doesn't always get to the people who need it most: the soldiers on the ground. US Defense Department officials speaking at a recent conference on military intelligence technology said many systems exist for collecting and displaying intelligence ? too many."
".... One training suggestion: soldiers at Ft. Carson, CO, and elsewhere who are preparing to deploy to Iraq could be connected to regional intelligence centers in Iraq, so they become familiar with how they work, Bair said. In addition, soldiers could be better trained to record intelligence gathered with their own five senses. During one fourth-month period since "major combat operations" ended in Iraq following the US-led March 2003 invasion, 40,000 patrols were conducted, but just 400 reports captured, because only those patrols with trained intelligence officers submitted reports. That's valuable information lost, and training soldiers to make intelligence reports about what they've learned during patrols is not hard to do, Bair said.
Through new training and policies, as well as making intelligence collected through electronic means ? including signals and communications ? available to forces at the lowest levels through programs like Overwatch, which starting this year will collect and disseminate targeting information to deployed forces, troops should be able to have more intelligence that they have had to this point, Bair said.
"We need those tools at the lowest levels, not just the higher corps level," Bair said. "But what we found at the lowest levels in the Army was that there was zero analytical capability. What they saw was what they got."
end of quote
What do the infantrymen and other Combat support staff think of that last statement, surely just because a report doesn't get passed on to the S2 the info isn't lost...or is it? |
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