Integrating Intelligence and Information
Ten Points for the Commander
Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, U.S. Army
Brigadier General Charles A. Flynn, U.S. Army
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After ten years of war, there are a number of truisms that have
been developed from hard-fought battlefield experience. One that has
gained prominence is the concept of intelligence and information integration.
Integrating intelligence and information means different things to
different people, but one thing is certain: without integration, the entire
decision-making process is compromised, rife with gaps that can lead to
miscalculations. The following is a compilation of thoughts and ideas we
call “Ten Points for the Commander.” There are no magic bullets or new
ideas. However, unless we capture these lessons and begin to incorporate
them into our training and education programs, we are likely to miss a critical
opportunity and have to reinvent them during the next conflict.
1. Learn about and build fusion cells. Organizations called fusion cells
built in Iraq and later in Afghanistan should be a focal point for integrating
intelligence and information in the future. The birth of the modular army
stripped the division and corps headquarters of their organic “fusion-like”
capability found in the all-source control elements in their intelligence
battalions. This created an environment where the volume and velocity of
information from so many different sources forced organizations such as the
brigade combat teams and below to collect and analyze data. This makes the
development of these fusion cells a critical requirement.
Fusion is about focusing our intelligence and information collections systems,
and about the speed of responding to the task, precision in addressing
the problem with the best available capability, and understanding what the
expected outcomes should be. Fusion is a leadership function. It must be topdown
driven, and we must provide top cover so that the fusion element can
have complete freedom of action. This element must be able to communicate
rapidly up, down, and laterally across organizations without restrictions (flattening
networks). The level of maturity in the team will grow over time as
experience grows. It will grow much quicker if the right leaders are chosen
and everyone on the team (service, interagency, or coalition) understands
the commander’s intent.
As fusion cells became effective, more players
wanted to be involved (joint, interagency, coalition,
and indigenous forces) and these organizations
became the “go-to” formations for integrating
intelligence and fusing it with operations. We have
yet to capture all of the lessons learned and pull
together best practices. We must ensure we capture
the “how to” based on a decade of intelligence and
warfighting fusion experience.
2. Over-classification hinders. The over-classification
of information by ill-informed headquarters
and individuals continues to challenge our ability
to be transparent across our forces, the services, the
joint and interagency communities, and our international
partners. The classification habit, as well as
the inability to merge our servers and data, cripples
us when we try to integrate intelligence. It inhibits
building trust and confidence among the various
military and civilian players that collaborate, share,
and build relationships to make informed decisions.
Complementary unclassified and open source intelligence
can often be better than what we have in
the classified domain. The fusion and analysis of
open source information with other forms of classified
materials is essential to understanding the
operational environment. The emergence of open
source information as an intelligence discipline
is powerful, and one cannot overstate its importance.
In the past, most intelligence came from
the normal “INTs”: signals intelligence (SIGINT),
imagery intelligence (IMINT), and human intelligence
(HUMINT). In today’s information age, the
old closed-loop system of intelligence, especially
that which is over-classified, is rapidly becoming
irrelevant.
3. Understand and learn to integrate ISR
capabilities. As many are well aware, the integration
of surveillance and reconnaissance assets is a
maneuver commander’s responsibility, yet often
this is left to S2s, G2s, and J2s to synchronize. Why?
Either the commander doesn’t make the time to do
the work, or he doesn’t understand the capabilities
he has to employ. Senior and operational leaders
do not know or understand intelligence collection,
surveillance, and reconnaissance tools well. As we
have matured with material solutions over these
past ten years of war, our leader development,
training, and education on these various systems
has not. Often the only time we use and integrate these “tools of collection” is when we are in combat.
Using and synchronizing these assets and understanding
their capabilities should begin much earlier
so that commanders are not wasting deployed units’
valuable time figuring out how to synchronize and
integrate these assets and their collection plans; we
must begin this training and education immediately.
4. Everyone must do intelligence and information
integration. Integration has a different
meaning for the intelligence community than it has
for the operational community. The intelligence
community sees integration with two components
(collection and analysis), while the operational
community seeks an outcome, an action, a result
from the enormous amount of collection and analysis
it performs.
The intelligence community must align its thinking
with those who have to decide or execute the
findings from collection and analysis. Think of it
as a three-legged stool. The intelligence community
has responsibility for two of these legs, when
in fact, the third is the most important and least
understood inside the broader intelligence community.
The intelligence community needs to see
itself as the critical enabling capability of decision
making, whether tactical or strategic. The challenge
in today’s complex world is knowing the difference
between the two.
5. Leadership is critical. Rank doesn’t matter
in intelligence. A junior analyst inside an organization
may have the most knowledge on a critical
subject debated at the senior staff level. However,
many times he is not involved in the discussion.
In other cases, a young captain or major may have
the best set of skills to run a fusion cell and direct
operational elements on the battlefield, but some
senior commander is uncomfortable responding to
junior officers.
We have to understand that brilliance comes in
all sizes, shapes, colors of uniforms, and ranks. We
have an incredibly talented and young work force
that has gained enormous experience over the past
decade of war. How will we nurture them in the
years ahead? They represent the best of our organizations
and our future and see the world differently.
They must be allowed to continue to thrive in this
highly uncertain and complex world we live in. Our
future training programs need to be developed in
a way that allows for this type of environment and
talent to flourish. Given diminishing budgets, we
remain very concerned that first on the chopping
block will be training, when in fact, it is training
that made us as good as we are today, and now is
the time when training becomes paramount.
While we still need to prosecute the war, we
will need to start looking very hard at adjusting our
future priorities. Many of these are directed, some
from Washington, D.C., all the way down to the
company command level, but do they use the right
priorities? The closer one gets to any problem, the
more one understands it and can focus on solving
it. That said, the leadership can and must focus,
aligning our intelligence system to address priorities
and solve problems we are likely to face in the
future. This will require strong leaders at every level
to believe their voice matters (the intelligence collection
system is not a fair-share system—it goes to
the highest priorities). If they see intelligence collection
does not align with their desired outcomes,
they need to speak up.
6. Everyone wants to “see” a map. Mapping
cultures is probably the most difficult geospatial
task, and we are going to have to do a better job at
it. We’re exceptional at mapping defense-related
activities, facilities, homes, bridges, and the like,
but how do you map a tribe, a culture, or an entire society? This will take vastly more integration
between the all-source community and the geospatial
community. This also requires geospatial
specialists to get out into the field. Just because
you can see imagery from miles above the earth
doesn’t mean you understand the problem. We need
to get our best and brightest into areas where we
are operating or likely to operate. We need to build
teams of area experts and geospatial analysts who
can construct templates of societies. The burgeoning
populations in the places most likely to experience
conflict are those we understand least. We can do
better in defining regions and areas of the world.
We can determine gaps in our knowledge base, and
then decide how to better focus limited collection
resources.
Just because you can see
imagery from miles above the
earth doesn’t mean you understand
the problem.
7. Combine the different “INTs.” Intelligence
integration combines different intelligence capabilities
(often from different organizations and agencies)
into a product that is better informed and more
accurate. We often derived our assessments of things
from a Central Intelligence Agency (HUMINT) or
National Security Agency (SIGINT) perspective,
and each organization’s view was strongly biased
by overweighting the intelligence it specialized in,
leaving the all-source analyst to be the integrator.
That works in effective fusion cells, but it’s difficult
elsewhere. It is human nature to want to get the
golden nugget of intelligence that drives success,
but one rarely does. We have to figure out how to
better integrate all-source intelligence and to do it
geospatially (and that information has to be sharable
across an entire coalition).
8. Mission command will affect the decision
maker as the ultimate consumer of intelligence. The decision maker is the ultimate consumer of
intelligence. That person or group of people must
be intimately involved in the intelligence collection,
integration, and analysis process—it’s too difficult
and dynamic to understand otherwise. This is an
all-consuming endeavor and nearly an impossibly
tall order, but strategic decisions still require senior
leaders to take that approach. It’s their responsibility
and duty, especially when lives are at stake. Since
we demand this type of “mission command” on
the battlefield, we should also expect it all the way
up the chain. Training in this discipline must begin
at the earliest stages. Commanders at every level
must mentor and coach subordinate commanders
on this integration work. A deeper understanding
of both the tools of collection and the operational
understanding that the senior commander is trying
to achieve is a good start point. These lessons carry
over as the younger generation of leaders move
up the ranks. Knowing the fundamentals of this
work early in a career helps to create integrators
at senior levels.
9. Create context and shared understanding. Context is king. Achieving an understanding of
what is happening—or will happen—comes from a
truly integrated picture of an area, the situation, and
the various personalities in it. It demands a layered
approach over time that builds depth of understanding.
We achieve greater levels of understanding and
context by transparency; we may need to develop a
process that requires us to involve outside experts
to comment on different reads from the area under
review. If we do this effectively, we could increase
our understanding ten-fold. It may be much like
posing a specific thesis to people to see if it passes
their common-sense test. For many years, we were
prisoners of the reports we got, and had precious
little depth or nuanced analysis by natives of the
region or people closer to the problems. Good intelligence
does not always come from the intelligence
personnel on a staff or from within a headquarters.
Outside expertise or local expertise is of value to
an organization and can help build expertise within
the wider command over time. We did this poorly in
the early years of the war and only really expanded
into this type of expertise in recent years. It is still
rare to find a subject matter expert at the company,
battalion, or even BCT level. Most of these experts
are typically at much higher echelons. While they
are helpful and of value at those levels, we need
them most down where the proverbial rubber meets
the road.
10. Synchronization of intelligence over time
is critical. The final task is to pull it all together in order to execute the assigned mission effectively.
This is not an easy task. In fact, it is a tall order for
even the most experienced commander and staff. As
we develop our plans, we need to consider how to
integrate intelligence capabilities and the associated
intelligence assessment throughout each component
of the plan, synchronizing it in time and space to
meet the commander’s intent. Whether it is for a
small unit patrol or a theater campaign plan, we
must integrate intelligence into each aspect (i.e.,
pre-, during-, and post-operation). Did we answer
the “commander critical information requirements,”
“priority intelligence requirements,” and other
information collection related tasks? How reliable
are the answers? How credible are the sources?
Not working through the why, how, when, and
where of each allocated or assigned asset a command
receives places the mission at greater risk.
Synchronization has been part of our thinking for
many years now, but it usually falls short within
our higher headquarters, especially once we make
contact with the enemy. If we do more synchronized
planning with greater rigor right from the
start, using our operations planning process, we can
provide our subordinate units greater flexibility and less uncertainty. At the end of the day, we achieve
success in combat when subordinate units collectively
understand the mission and higher commands
have properly resourced them for success. Then and
only then can they accomplish a well-synchronized
campaign plan.
Conclusion
Intelligence and information integration is a critical
warfighting skill in today’s complex and rapidly
changing operational environment. As an Army, we
have made huge strides, but we still have work to
do in the joint, interagency, and multinational areas.
With the speed of technological changes, speed of
war, and the scale of modular Army Force adaptations,
it would be irresponsible not to capitalize
on all of the extraordinary gains we have achieved
throughout this decade of war. We still have enormous
strides to make, and we hope these “Ten
Points” provide an azimuth to assist commanders
and leaders at every echelon. They are the ultimate
integrators of intelligence, those who build teams,
build trust, and build relationships. Our strongest
desire is that these “Ten Points” can help to start and
accelerate that building throughout our Army.
Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn currently serves as the assistant director
of National Intelligence, Partner
Engagement, after serving as the chief
of staff for intelligence, International
Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan.
He holds a B.S., three masters
degrees, an honorary Doctorate of
Law, and is a graduate of the School
of Advanced Military Studies.
Brigadier General Charles A. Flynn recently served as the commanding
general of the Combined Arms Center
at Fort Leavenworth, KS. He was the
director of the Mission Command
Center of Excellence at the Combined
Arms Center. He holds a B.A. from the
University of Rhode Island, an M.A.
from the U.S. Naval War College, and
an M.S. from the National Defense
University.
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