Intelligence-Led Operations: Business as Usual or Paradigm Shift?

[wm]

I can't see anything new here. These are what UK officers would call "SOBO" - Statements Of the Bl**dy Obvious.



So how would an operation to secure a refugee camp be "Intel Driven?" The orders paragraph "situation hostile/enemy forces" tells me the threat, so I plan on that basis. I am being given the mission as a result of an intelligence estimate that resources need to be allocated to protecting these folks.

While it may be SOBO, it is as often missing as present in the mission planning cycle, IMHO. The second paragraph is so laden wuth assumptions as to be scary. For starters, it presumes that the "situation" paragraph and intel estimate are read and understood by the operators. It also presumes that these two items have meaningful content instead of just wishful thinking and that that content instead of, again, wishful thinking motivates the mission assignment by higher HQ.

Your assertions remind me of the scenes from "The Magnificant Seven" when the villagers are asked by Harry Luck (played by Brad Dexter) about where they hide their gold and when he rifds back into town to his death, simply becuae he cannot believe that tthere is no gold in town,.

[Stan]

Hey Wilf !

So how would an operation to secure a refugee camp be "Intel Driven?" The orders paragraph "situation hostile/enemy forces" tells me the threat, so I plan on that basis. I am being given the mission as a result of an intelligence estimate that resources need to be allocated to protecting these folks.

If someone tells me to conduct operations to gain intelligence then that's as old as the hills.

Sounds a little off the beaten path with those orders. How ‘bout no general orders (read no idea whatsoever), but an initial assessment that you perform yourself (we could call that intel). Planning on a refugee crisis is anything but easy, and the situation changes with such frequency, that ‘driven by whatever’ will never work; each and every single day is a new one.

Tom can certainly tell you in grave detail, that there was no intelligence estimate for our refugee crisis, because we were sent there to perform said, conclude our assessment, drive the proverbial support train, and support those coming.

Yes, it was indeed Intel Driven.

Regards, Stan

[Jobu]

Gents,

Part of the problem here is that we believe the initial assessment will guide us through planning and well into execution. We plan, launch, and sustain operations based on the a priori knowledge from these initial assessments. Subsequent ISR efforts doctrinally shift to “direct support of current and future operations,” meaning collection efforts to support ongoing analysis of the adversary system fall behind that of targeting and other operational requirements. In other words, we place a high level of accuracy in an initial assessment and any new evidence during the course of operations tends to be viewed deductively, resulting in slow adaptation to the flaws in logic that are ultimately exposed.

I guess my point is we should admit that we don't have it right from the beginning and design specific operations to purposefully gain intelligence.

Running these operations off of the traditional "priority intelligence requirements" I believe is infeasible. Rather than trying to give collectors (and the operators supporting them) nebulous questions to answer, why don't we give them intelligence [I]objectives[I]....something like a mission statement (task and purpose)? Instead of defeat, neutralize, destroy, we'd use action verbs such as locate, determine, verify, etc.

I've been very frustrated by the PIR process. I think we need to accept that centering our collection efforts entirely around the commander's decisionmaking needs isn't enough to gain understanding of modern adversaries.

[slapout9]

Greetings, SWC. I am currently working on a related SAW thesis and have hit a snag on nailing down what “intelligence-led operations” really are. My hope is to generate a discussion that can tap into the conventional wisdom on the concept, as well get some thoughts on my ideas for expanding it. Anyway, on to my points…

The term “intelligence-led operations” is frequently used to describe our activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet one would be hard-pressed to find a single, overarching definition or theory behind it. A few sources on “intelligence-led policing” and the FM 3-24 discussions on “intelligence-driven operations” are the closest thing I’ve found to a theory. The following points are my best attempt to paraphrase the theory from these sources.

Intelligence-led operations…
- Are operations driven by intelligence, rather than vice versa.
- Subsequently produce the intelligence that drives further operations.
- Require intelligence personnel to take a pro-active, rather than passive, role in collecting intelligence.
- Requires operators to be intelligence collectors.

As I read the verbiage behind these points, I kept asking myself if there’s really anything new or different here from the typical intelligence-operations relationship. Using the first two points, one could argue that “reconnaissance pull” and the targeting process are forms of intelligence-led operations. The last two points should be standard operating procedure for any type of operation/environment.

If there’s nothing new here, has the term become a euphemism for tactical-level operations based on something other than a developed course of action with well-defined decision points and supporting intelligence requirements? Are these operations with no clear linkage to the campaign objectives and endstate? Although there may be an element of truth to these questions, I don’t believe they or the points above accurately describe the concept as we know and practice it.

Here’s my shot at a better definition/theory: intelligence-led operations are purposeful interactions with adversary systems for the purpose of gaining understanding and leverage. They are therefore applicable to any type of campaign and should be incorporated into the operational design, not simply left to the tactical level. Now here’s what I think is the most important part…to fully incorporate intelligence-LED (vs. intelligence-DRIVEN) operations into a campaign design, intelligence must be its own logical line of operations. Thus, classic fire and maneuver operations must sometimes be designed to support intelligence, instead of vice versa.

These last two points have been admittedly borrowed from LG William Boykin and Shimon Naveh, respectively. This ops/intel paradigm shift they’re describing, I believe, is necessary to conduct “systems thinking” at the operational level.

That's where I'm at so far. Hopefully I've made sense. I'm looking forward to the discussion.

V/R,

Jason Brown

Hi Jabu, I don't know if this will help but from a "Slapout Systems Thinking" point of view this paper may interest you.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...c/grieco2.html

[Ron Humphrey]

Hi Jabu, I don't know if this will help but from a "Slapout Systems Thinking" point of view this paper may interest you.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...c/grieco2.html

Gonna read the whole thing but I like this first part a lot

Thought is the basis of theory. Theory is the basis for doctrine. Doctrine is the basis for operational practice. Operational practice refines our thought. Today we’ll continue our journey through thought and theory by looking at system control points.

[wm]

Gents,

Part of the problem here is that we believe the initial assessment will guide us through planning and well into execution. We plan, launch, and sustain operations based on the a priori knowledge from these initial assessments. Subsequent ISR efforts doctrinally shift to “direct support of current and future operations,” meaning collection efforts to support ongoing analysis of the adversary system fall behind that of targeting and other operational requirements. In other words, we place a high level of accuracy in an initial assessment and any new evidence during the course of operations tends to be viewed deductively, resulting in slow adaptation to the flaws in logic that are ultimately exposed.

I guess my point is we should admit that we don't have it right from the beginning and design specific operations to purposefully gain intelligence.

Running these operations off of the traditional "priority intelligence requirements" I believe is infeasible. Rather than trying to give collectors (and the operators supporting them) nebulous questions to answer, why don't we give them intelligence [I]objectives[I]....something like a mission statement (task and purpose)? Instead of defeat, neutralize, destroy, we'd use action verbs such as locate, determine, verify, etc.

I've been very frustrated by the PIR process. I think we need to accept that centering our collection efforts entirely around the commander's decisionmaking needs isn't enough to gain understanding of modern adversaries.

If the PIR are nebulous questions, then you can bet the operation is not being adequately supported by intelligence. A PIR ought to be narrowly focussed, designed to tell a commander whether, at a given place and time the enemy is reacting as expected or not. If the answer is "not," then the commander and staff should have some alternatives ready to FRAGO to the unit based on what answer comes in to a given PIR.

As I posted earlier, a good intel shop does both Current Intel and studies. CuRIN (what I earlier called I & W) work answers those PIRs. The Studies cell provides the effort to gain understanding of one's current or future adversaries. Work done by the studies shop is what allows the commander and staff to identify what kinds of enemy actions to expect at those critical points in space and time which ar ethe focci of the PIR. If the enemy does not respond as expected, it is the Studies Section's responsibility to figure out why and readjust what we know as true aout the adversary. This may require additional collection taskings. It is likely that the level at which this additional work must be completed will be above that at which the current operation is being planned and executed, if for no other reason than a lack of analytic and dedicated collection resources.

Part of the in-fighting over who will have procurement responsibility for UAVs manifests the problem with control of collection reources.

[Erick]

... that we have to have an intel capability at company level in this kind of fight. It took several years but Benning and Huachuca finally got on board--with prodding from AWG. Look at the Tactical Intelligence Newsletter on the CALL Gateway and all of the Company-level SOS series (especially VOLS 1 and 3 as well as 6 which should be out soon) SWJ contributed to that effort.

Interesting observation. My co started doing this about half way through our deployment. We did not do this when we patrolled a heavily populated urban area; our CO initiated it only after we moved to a rural area bordering on a urban area.

Being that we were a NG infantry unit, we had cops in the unit with investigations experience. Two of the three who ended up working the Co -2 position had previously worked gang enforcement / investigations on the L/E side of things.

It was a lot of incident / location analysis and matching who was with who, plus trying to match that with information coming down from above.

Pushing the intel issue down to the Co level can only help - in so many ways.

[S. Robb Col USMC (Ret)]

Jason,
You've hit on an interesting and often debated question especially between intelligence analysts and operators. During OEF and OIF intelligence and operations were "mutually supporting." I use this because intelligence provided the targets for operations...after conduct of the operation, intelligence was gathered which would lead to addtional targets. Once we were weaned off conventional order of battle targets and started full-fledged man hunting operations, intelligence again provided the information required for ops to capture or kill the individual. At other times, the ops themselves yielded "enablers" on the spot which could be exploited immediately to lead to another larger or more lucrative target.
I was the JIC commander during OEF and OIF (2001-2004). I may be able to assist you in your paper with some better concrete examples. My email is robb_stephen@bah.com.
Semper Fi,
Steve