Civil Information and Intelligence Fusion

Civil Information and Intelligence Fusion:

Making “Non-Traditional” into “New Traditional” for the JTF Commander

by Martin J. Lindenmayer

Download the Full Article: Civil Information and Intelligence Fusion

Since the publishing of MG Mike Flynn’s controversial admission that current intelligence programs, policies and doctrine did not meet the needs of Commander’s fighting today’s conflicts, there has been an attempt to point to ongoing efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere while to defend the status quo. The problem has become that several innovative and agile senior leaders and front-line organizations have instituted piece-meal changes that address immediate issues without fully developing long term, programmatic changes to or development of, new doctrine. Just recently the ISR Task Force was directed by the SECDEF to refocus on developing non-material solutions to providing intelligence to ISAF commanders and to slow down the acquisition and deployment of the disparate ISR platforms, intelligence data collected and processes that have been “home grown” within the tactical forces to process, exploit, integrate, aggregate, fuse and report/disseminate the data; and this is only the usual intelligence gathered from standard intelligence disciplines (SIGINT, IMINT, MASINT, GEOINT, HUMINT, etc.) Meanwhile, the necessity and demand from commanders at all echelons for information on the civilian populations, organizations, governments, institutions, specifically socio-cultural data on the tribes and clans that our forces are encountering have grown exponentially. At the same time that the intelligence community has been expanding its intelligence databases, Civil Affairs and other information gathering organizations have been developing and expanding theirs. The all too predictable problem that this article and the CIFC are looking to address is that Commander’s, while receiving “more” intelligence and information, still aren’t consistently getting a single, layered view of the environment that integrates for both types of data. Service, Joint, military and civilian doctrine needs to evolve to solve this issue, before we end up replacing one set of problems with another. The CIFC is offered to both provide a view towards the goal and a potential path to get us there.

Download the Full Article: Civil Information and Intelligence Fusion

Martin Lindenmayer is a Senior Intelligence Officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency and a retired Navy Captain specializing in intelligence support to Special Operations. During his 32 years of government service his assignments have included USSOCOM, USEUCOM, USSOUTHCOM, NATO/IFOR, Operation Northern Watch and prior to his assignment at JIWC he served as Chief, Collection Operations Group and Collection Manager, USAFRICOM. Since 2001, Mr. Lindenmayer has had numerous deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, several countries in Africa including CFTF-HOA, Philippines and other areas in support of OIF/OEF and has served in a variety of SOF and conventional organizations supporting technical collection operations against CT and COIN targets.