I can personally vouch for that. My Company coordinated often with an ODA in our AO on my second deployment. They always emphasized that, "our [higher] doesn't know we're talking to you" and they asked that, in return, we wouldn't share the information with our BN HQ. The arrangement struck me as bizarre, but I came to understand the dynamic on my third deployment, which was with a JSOTF.Originally Posted by Ken White
The JSOTF staff was paranoid about sharing intelligence with CF and having them "steal our targets" or "burn our sources" or similar SNAFUs. I do think that some of these concerns were justified because the difference in sophistication was extraordinary and it seemed easy to envision someone misusing a source or some intel. The manner in which SF develops sources is several orders of magnitude more sophisticated than what I saw in the CF world. Their intel collection, in general, was so well funded, equipped, manned, and executed as to make any CF S-2 shop, imo, a joke.
My impression was that some kind of mutually beneficial arrangement could have been worked out, but the staff over-estimated the incompetence of CF units whom they shared "battlespace" with. On my earlier deployment, the ODA kept sharing intelligence with us because it was a mutually beneficial relationship. If we lower-ranking folks with less "professional education" could figure it out, why can't two staffs full of higher ranking Officers and NCOs who are supposedly more educated and experienced figure it out?
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