that the Intel Community puts far more reliance on its assets, no matter how far removed from reality (or real time), than it does on reports from the troop units.
I think that is the greatest failure of us intel folks in these wars. We don't seem to realize that the best collection asset we have are those guys on the ground, who've patrolled that valley day in and day out, know enemy TTP from hard experience, who the local powerbrokers are, etc. Don't tell those sensitive anthropologists who are opposed to their discipline's association with war, but the Human Terrain Teams are performing an intelligence function. The intelligence community could be and should be doing that, but we aren't, so it's outsourced. Very little of that kind of information can be discovered with our traditional intelligence assets and our traditional intelligence mindsets.

So the intelligence community needs to look at HTT's and the boots-on-the-ground for what they are - probably the best collection assets we have. If intel personnel were pushed down to the lowest echelons so they could directly interface with those knowledgeable soldiers, they would, IMO, be much better positioned to do two things:

1. Tap into, and report on, all that knowledge soldiers have of their AO into intelligence channels.

2. Leverage that knowledge by facilitating better and more coordinated collection from traditional intelligence assets. The IC has a lot of analytical and specialist capability that could provide a lot better value-added information than is currently the case.

We even see some of this operations-becomes-intelligence dynamic among the air forces in what's called Non-traditional ISR (NTISR). Increasingly, non-intelligence platforms are being used for intelligence purposes - specifically aircraft with EO/IR sensors. Much of the time they are performing what is really an intelligence/overwatch role instead of a straight combat role. They are not ISR assets, however, and are not doctrinally or functionally tied to intelligence, so the information they provide, while useful at the real-time tactical level, may never be further exploited by intelligence professionals. This is another area that needs more work.

New UAS's like Reaper blur the line even more. Is Reaper an ISR asset? Is it an operational combat asset? The Air Force, I think, is still figuring that one out. In reality it's both, but because the C2 that controls and coordinate ISR and combat aircraft assets are different (in the AF and Navy at least), the question of who controls the asset becomes an important one.

Maybe the separation and stovepiping of intelligence and operations is the root of the problem. The technological stovepiping is in the process of getting fixed in some cases, but the tough nut is the organizational aspect.