Back in the days before Gulf War I, I was a remote sensing specialist from the Oil and Gas industry looking for work in other areas.  After interviewing with the CIA and passing due to low pay, I interviewed with a beltway bandit company in Maryland.  Imagine my surprise when I walked into the interviewer's office and noticed a high resolution radar image on his desk of a city with a large  river running throught it.  Numerous bridges, towers and buildings were circled.  I raised an eyebrow and  asked, "Bagdhad?" he laughed and said yes.

 

Most of the companies staff was in Riyadh frantically producing digital terrain maps for uploading into cruise missiles and other smart weapons that needed updated models to keep from flying into the wrong building.  Remember in the Balkans and the  unfortunate Chinese embassy employees who's day was ruined by a smart weapon guided by a terrain map made before their building was erected?  He was picking targets for the military in his spare time.  Turns he  was a former spook of Vietnam vintage for the CIA.

 

Long story short, the US military is chronically short handed in this area.  Lots of eyes on whatever is in vogue at the time but not always where they are needed. 

 

Funny follow-up.  I saw the interviewer on 60 Minutes several years later as an expert for the company I interviewed with (didn't take the offer, it was too low, what with a family and living in the Washington area)  It was a segment on an interpreter who reportedly saw the words POW stamped out in grass in Laos and other indications that there might be POWs still there.  The interviewer was on to refute the other interpreter.  No mention was made of his former affiliation with the CIA, which I felt was an agregious conflict of interest, seeing how the CIA had always denied even the possibility of POWs still being held.  60 Minutes dropped the ball on that one.