Note: Warning to readers. This is a bit long and rambling. I'm also half-asleep. I may edit this in the morning.
This is a great line. It is made better by the fact that the guy who authored it (one of them) is a Major General in the US Army and he is apparently serious…
Microsoft Word, rather than PowerPoint, should be the tool of choice for intelligence professionals in a counterinsurgency.
All this time, the solution to our problems was just one icon away on the desktop. Darn!
Okay, but seriously. I read through this paper that was brilliantly marketed through the public relations agency - masquerading as a think tank - known as CNAS. It is a lot of good stuff. It restates obvious issues that have been around for years and puts forth excessively complex solutions for simple problems. But, at least it hits on the right issues.
Many of you have probably seen this slideshow. I like to call it the Death Star blueprint. While it may have been created in PowerPoint (though I am not completely sure of that) it is presented in Portable Document Format – generally associated with Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader – so this is not in conflict with the sage advice above regarding which application in the Microsoft Office suite should be avoided. The latest article on fixing intelligence by the General-Celebrity-Civilian triumvirate, with its grand and ambitious proposals for mundane and simple problems, seems to complement the excessively complex pile-of-spaghetti-like analysis in the slideshow.
Reading between the lines, one might infer that I am a bit skeptical of the apparent novelty of this paper. Indeed, I am. The paper expresses frustration at a real or perceived lack of manpower and with the disparity between expectations and results of counterparts at lower echelons. Welcome to the Army. This is new? Okay, the problem has been around for a while and a solution offered. But, about that solution… remember the Death Star blueprint? It is kind of like that. Excessively ambitious solutions for simple problems that aren't even addressed by the solution.
The major oversight that I see in this article is that it assumes the solution is in new billets and redrawing organizational charts. The major issue, which goes unaddressed, is that staff officers work for their commander and they prioritize their efforts according to that commander's guidance. What the boss gives his attention to is what gets done. Many of the issues raised in this piece are the result of insufficient emphasis by tactical commanders on developing and answering intelligence requirements. Take, for example, the questions posed on page 8…
Officers in the field believe that the emphasis on force protection missions by spy planes and other non-HUMINT platforms should be balanced with collection and analysis of population-centric informa¬tion. Is that desert road we’re thinking of paving really the most heavily trafficked route? Which mosques and bazaars attract the most people from week to week? Is that local contractor actually implementing the irriga¬tion project we paid him to put into service? These are the kinds of questions, beyond those concerning the enemy as such, which military and civilian decision-makers in the field need help answering.
Seriously? If you cannot get those questions answered, then your problem is not a lack of outside help. Your problem is that you apparently are not doing any patrolling. Even a mediocre unit that does intermittent patrolling should be able to answer those questions in relatively short order. I will not dwell on it. Moving on.
Most of the issues in this article are derived from the pervasive foolishness that everyone gripes about but nobody ever corrects: over-classification, duplication of effort, and misuse of personnel. These issues arise in the paper, but again I think the authors propose inappropriate solutions.
Over-classification occurs largely due to questionable procedures and habits. Many staff officers do their work on SIPR. By default, everything that they do is Secret, simply because it is on the SIPR network. If the S-3 sends you an email that says, “woo hoo, the Yankees just lost,” and it is sent on SIPR, then it is Secret. The information may be public knowledge, but the email is Secret. Now, if you have a staff weiner who spends his entire day working on SIPR (not unreasonable, since he might need it to access various databases or other conduits of information), then any products that he creates are probably made on SIPR. The information that he accessed from the databases may be common knowledge, but consolidated on a database on a secret network. Perhaps what he assembled was all common knowledge, too, but consolidated with the help of the databases available on SIPR. The result is that the product is Secret, even if it is merely a consolidation of common knowledge and even if that consolidation does nothing more than quantify and verify existing assumptions held by all.
Dupllcation of effort has many root causes, which can include turf wars, over-competitiveness among adjacent units, lack of communication, et cetera. It occurs often. Someone compiles information that you need into a database, an overlay, a report, a spreadsheet, or something similar. If you knew about it, it would save you some work. But you do not know about it. So you repeat the process. There have been some attempts to reduce this. One example is with Wikipedia-type pages, but they are poorly maintained, out of date, and often flat out incorrect. For example, I was once gathering information on Ansar al-Sunna, which was a descendant of (among others) Jund al-Islam (abbreviated "JI"). I saw several instances in which Jund al-Islam was mistakenly interchanged with Jemaah Islamiyah (a terrorist organization in Southeast Asia also abbreviated "JI"). I guess one could be excused for accidentally typing the wrong group if you work with reports that include both. But, someone else got hold of that wiki entry and starting actually adding information about Jemaah Islamiyah onto the Ansar al-Sunna entry. I mean, this is so fundamentally boneheaded and misinformed that it is beyond description. So, I would add that not only is duplication of effort a problem, but really awful collaborative efforts are also a problem when they are initiated at high levels or on such broad scales that there is no oversight. There seems to still be a fair amount of that.
Misuse of personnel is a probably the most damaging of many poor practices. The authors wisely point out some examples…
Brigade intelligence officers keep their analysts busy creating charts linking insurgents, building PowerPoint “storyboards” depicting violent inci¬dents within the area of operations, and distilling intelligence summaries from units in the field. They direct their efforts toward keeping the brigade com¬mander updated with news from the battlefield.
Essentially, this describes the use of analysts to compile data, rather than to analyze information and intelligence. Why do you need an analyst to compile reports on IED strikes on a given stretch of road or tally up the number of small arms attacks in a certain area of operations? These are technical – almost mechanical – tasks that can be handled by the guys who are manning the radios at the end of their shifts and double checked by the Battle Captain. Your analysts should be consumers of this data, using it to help shed light on other intelligence that they are analyzing, not doing the unskilled work of tallying it up.
The authors, again, wisely point out another problem with how personnel are used…
… having all analysts study an entire province or region through the lens of a narrow, functional line (i.e., one analyst covers governance, another stud¬ies narcotics trafficking, a third looks at insurgent networks, etc) simply cannot produce meaningful analysis.
Bravo. Well put. This is one of the few things that I think the authors got mostly right. In fact, they arrive at the very conclusion that one of my old units arrived at nearly ten years ago while operating in Bosnia…
Before analysts can draw useful conclu¬sions along these specialized lines, they must first have comprehensive reviews of everything that is happening in the various districts.
Now, I said “mostly right.” The solution that my old unit implemented, with great success, was very simple. We assigned analysts to each opstina (a political unit larger than a city, but smaller than a province). The authors propose something a bit more ambitious, without a whole lot of justification, in my opinion…
… commanders must authorize a select group of analysts to retrieve information from the ground level and make it available to a broader audience, similar to the way journalists work. These analysts must leave their chairs and visit the people who operate at the grassroots level…
This sounds great. People cocooned in their office being encouraged to get a “boots on the ground” reality check. This briefs really well. But, hold on a second. Why is this necessary? Why is it not sufficient to just reorient analysis from lines to regions and to refocus analysts onto actual analysis, rather than compiling data? It sounds neat, but intelligence must be timely and relevant. How timely is it going to be if commanders are sending out a handful of people on helicopters to meet with ”civil affairs officers, PRTs, atmospherics teams, Afghan liaison officers, female engagement teams, will¬ing NGOs and development organizations, United Nations officials, psychological operations teams, human terrain teams, and staff officers with infan¬try battalions – to name a few”? To name a few? Wow. Speaking as someone who has felt the pain of commuting by helicopter and being continually grounded or delayed due to sandstorms, mechanical issues, or other factors, I seriously doubt that this intelligence is going to be collected and shared in a timely manner. In the authors’ defense, I must point out that, later in the paper, they explain that this would probably be a six-week cycle. This raises even more issues. Are S-2 analysts going to be making assessments based upon available intelligence and then, every six weeks, have these roving analysts putting forth their assessments? I foresee lots of bickering there as the S-2 and roving teams come up with their own independent assessments and haggle over the inevitable many details. But I will move on.
The proposals put forth on page 19 are great. I think it is a solution that addresses the problems with over classification and many problems associated with duplication of effort. My concern is that the lead-up to this solution was the listing of problems quoted above. To recap, those problems were failures to answer basic intelligence requirements, misuse of personnel, and efforts focused on lines instead of regions. These problems are merely glossed over. The solution proposed is to add more personnel, send them roving all over the country, and connect them to information centers. What about the fundamental problems? Aren’t we ignoring them? If units are failing to obtain basic intelligence requirements now, then how is this solved by creating an information center that relies on the same units to obtain that information? What about the personnel who were being tasked with compiling data, rather than performing analysis? How does this proposal result in them being more appropriately employed? The solutions to answering intelligence requirements and properly employing personnel seem to be easily solvable by way of leadership, rather than redrawing the organizational charts. Just to be clear, I do think the page 19 proposal is great. But I am lost when I see the problems above discussed as a jumping-off point to justify it. The problems are still not addressed. I think it is great that over-classification and duplication of effort are addressed, but what about the others? I think some false hopes are being created. If we continue to fail at intelligence collection – as the authors apparently allege – and in this type of warfare intelligence needs to flow up, rather than down, then how does retooling our efforts at echelons above reality fix this?