Intelligence Collection and Sharing

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I'll never forget the time in Afghanistan, when I asked the NCOIC of the terrain team at Bagram for analytic products for certain key locations in-country I was in the process of assessing. He offered me some great overhead imagery, with key points clearly demarcated and a nice glossy unit logo on it. But when I pressed and asked again for an analytic terrain product, he just looked at me like I had something growing out of my forehead.

This anecdote captures almost perfectly what was in essence the point in my earlier post. Annotated data is just that--annotated data--not intelligence. High quality logic and critical thinking skills are not a given in people--they have to be groomed, and as with race horses, all the grooming in the world may not produce a Derby Winner.