Let’s take a totally hypothetical situation. All resemblances to real life or real persons are entirely coincidental…ahem

At six months notice you are to be an NCO assigned to a brand new role as an Intelligence Officer for an infantry company in a FOB or PB of a province of Afghanistan, which for the purposes of this we’ll call Helmand. See how I said none of this is based on a real life scenario?

The details you have about your job are thin on the ground. You don’t yet know where you’re going or in support of whom. You have not yet met any of the personalities you’ll be working with or for. You don’t know the disposition of your company commander, for instance, and cannot yet begin to be disturbed iby his desire to smash everything, or to be encouraged by his more population centred, delicate approach. His IRs might be totally enemy centric, or he might appreciate that between himself and the enemy is a pretty important entity called ‘the population.’

During your deployment, you connectivity to online open sources will be essentially zero, though you will receive a number of other reports from higher formation int cells and assorted collection assets. By far your most important stuff, though, will come from patrol reports and sometimes you’ll head outside the wire yourself to get a flavour of the lie of the land. You plan to attend shuras and meet influential local personalities and have begun to think about some of the fundamental questions you’d like information on from the locals; have there been changes in the village population? If so, why? What are the most important problems facing the village? Who do you believe can solve your problems? What should be done first?

So if you’re a Company commander with a J2 specialist at your disposal, what are you going to be looking for from him?

I’ve been deliberately as unspecific as possible because for this job I’ve got a blank canvas. I’ve not got uncooperative hierarchies to particularly worry about, nor loads of brass interfering. As far as the J2 goes, it’s me running the show it seems. Although necessarily there will in that scenario be a degree of learning on the job, especially if deployed to an area I’m not overly familiar with, there are certain considerations I’d like at the forefront of my mind. Very close to the top of the list is to ask other practitioners what they would be looking for from a chap like me. You’re a crowd worth listening to, so please fire away.

I open it up to the floor.