Intelligence : The And Intelligence

The U.S. did not see the situation in Vietnam as a typical war between the leaders in the north and the leaders in the south. The U.S. felt that it was combating a general friend contrive rather than an adversary that was engaged with a typical war and that decided its vitality and eagerness from the will of the overall public. This psyche boggling anticommunist evaluation would play the most fundamental factor in the evident need of the U.S. to fight in Vietnam. This was the start for the blockading exertion known as Operation ROLLING THUNDER.

All this was still not enough to force the US government to leave the war that they could not win. Instead the US turned to massive bombing attacks which were called operation “Rolling Thunder”. This operations main goal was to obliterate all signs of communist rule in North Vietnam. The US would use tons and tons of explosives on a daily basis, destroying everything but their enemies. These bomb raids continued for years costing not only innocent lives but also billions and billions of dollars.

Intelligence gathering and collection in the United States has significantly increased over time. This paper examines how intelligence reporting and pre-mission planning was crucial to the success of the United Nations involvement at The Battle of Inchon during the Korean War. By examining how intelligence played a role in this battle, you will be able to understand why it is important to gather and collect intelligence prior to every mission executed. Intelligence collection should be the baseline for all military operations. Inchon Landing has an ample amount of actionable intelligence; collected and disseminated appropriately we will discuss how it played a role in a low probability mission accomplishment to the last great amphibious assault in history. This paper provides detailed explanations on why The Battle of Inchon was a success and what could have been the outcome had it gone the other way.

As we have seen throughout the entire history of warfare, ancient world terrorism, political intrigue and elitist terrorism of the middle ages, and into modern terrorism, intelligence is of vital importance on both sides. Armed forces have always used intelligence of some form be it sneaking up a hill and scouting what is on the other side to the use of modern platforms such as

The 9/11 attacks opened the avenue for a scrutiny of the performance and ability of the intelligence community to detect any threats to the safety of the United States. The media, politicians, reformists and other interested parties would not comprehend how such an attack would happen without the knowledge of the intelligence community. However, it is important to consider the fact that the attack was one of its kind and could not be approached with the resources and expertise used in other initiative such as the cold war. Therefore, the need to restructure the intelligence community arose from the view that it was still operating in the mindset and spirit of the cold war even in the modern era that had seen a revolutionary change of warfare

It got to the point where it was necessary for the American troops to intervene and stop communism. By doing so, this would also cut the heavy loss of troops from the beginning of the war. In order to counteract the Vietnamese forms of fighting, the United States started to use tactics that were less and less morally right. Although the soldiers thought it was necessary to use these strategies, it does not excuse any action that they carried out. It shows how easily something like the My Lai could occur, and how it could happen at anytime during a war. Desperation to win caused people to do things that went against what was morally right, but that does not excuse what they did.

In today’s modern world of security threats, intelligence and the ability to respond to incidents are the keys to survival. As technology continues to change and advance, we also must change our security procedure and techniques. Dina Evans from LookingGlass has a good definition of threat intelligence, “We define threat intelligence as the combination of technical and contextual information regarding existing or emerging threats from all available sources. It has been evaluated and analyzed for accuracy, timeliness, and relevancy, and implemented among an organization’s tactical, operational, and strategic stakeholders.” (Evans, 2016). The process of threat intelligence feeds into all

We deploy globally alongside war fighters and interagency partners to defend America’s national security interests.” [4] The Defense Intelligence Agency is always represented no matter where the military presence is located. They work side by side with military soldiers ensuring assisting with analysis and helping soldiers out in any way they are able to help out. The agency is often confused with law enforcement agencies, but they are not the only agencies this occurs too. Other foreign intelligence organizations have the same issue as well. The Department of Defense (DoD) who is over the Defense Intelligence Agency is in the public eye. Now that the public has much more awareness of their existence, the friction between the organizations is more prominently. “Defense Intelligence Agency is an all-source defense agency designed to prevent strategic surprise and deliver a decision advantage to war fighters, defense planners, and policymakers.” [5] The agency has multiple roles they are responsible for. Some of those roles include collection and analysis of defense-related foreign political, economic, industrial, geographic and medical and health intelligence. [6] Being able to be aggressive during the collection process and being analytically precise, it provides an advantage when making tough decisions for war fighters and the policymakers. This will allow the counter intelligence to be aggressive as well. By counter intelligence being aggressive policymakers along with the war fighters will be confident that the right decisions are being made on time and producing results. This is a critical part for the soldiers on the ground having to conduct these missions the Defense Intelligence Agency come up with and believe

Vietnam’s new government was divided into pro- communism in the north and pro-democratic liberty in the south. Their enemy over Vietnam wasn’t a national army, but a group of gorilla fighters, this and a lack of knowledge no the terrain where battles occurred made it extremely difficult for the Americans to advance north.

Instead, he declared himself “president” of the Republic of Vietnam. This created a feeling of dislike among Vietnamese civilians, both from the North and South, and the creation of Viet Cong, a group set to abolish Diem’s dictatorship. Viet Cong originated from the Viet Minh, and because of this, the group was strongly supported by the North. Eventually, Diem was assassinated, and North Vietnam took advantage of his death. The U.S. sent more troops in response, and U.S. soldiers were faced with harsh conditions, as well as booby traps sent by the Viet Cong. Because of this and the various protests at home, the U.S. “sought to achieve ‘peace with honor’ by combining a policy of ‘Vietnamization,’ or South Vietnamese self-reliance, with a policy of détente with the Soviet Union and China” (Lind). As the U.S. withdrew their troops, they hoped that South Vietnam would be able to fend for itself. However, South Vietnam lost the war, and a communist Vietnam followed.

A main component of the operation was the reliance on the South Vietnamese population revolting, the government collapsing, and the communist forces being welcomed in the south as liberators. The establishment of a pro-Communist regime would come as an after-effect of “unit mutinies and defections,” “mass popular revolts,” and the “annihilation…[of] the opposing military forces” (Cosmas, 2009). The NVA/VC were planning on leveraging all their possible assets in order to ensure victory. This would not solely be a ground fight – the Politburo in the North had decided to wager everything on the outcome of this battle, seemingly believing the US narrative of an approaching victory for the Americans. In addition to the “very strong military attacks” that would shift control of cities and towns, the NVA/VC would disseminate propaganda amongst the populace but specifically target the “enemy officers and enlisted personnel” (Turner, 1992).

It was sometimes called a ‘Search and Destroy’ strategy. This method required a steadily increasing commitment of American manpower. By the end of 1966 General Westmoreland wanted 450,000 troops, however in June of 1966, president Johnson only approved 431,000 troops to be deployed by mid 1967. However, this strategy was poor given that North Vietnamese had approximately 200,000 people reach draft age each year and could match American troop escalation.

The North Vietnamese Communist leadership's ability to reassess and adapt during the Vietnam War was reflected in how well they combined guerilla and conventional operations to achieve their strategic goal of unifying Vietnam under communist rule. Throughout the conflict, the Viet Cong (VC) were employed to conduct guerilla operations while North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and VC "main force" units were used to transition to conventional operations. Guerilla operations enabled Hanoi to inflict a steady flow of casualties on US forces which increased anti-war sentiment in America. NVA and VC main force conventional operations reinforced the US Army's conventional approach to the fight which caused the Americans to alienate the people of South

The United States Intelligence community draws on advanced technology and analytical techniques. An intelligence process that sets objectives, collects, analyzes, and report findings, with feedback loops integrated throughout. Explicitly, the intelligence community advantages technology and tradecraft within a proscribed process. However, estimation of threats and decision-making are outcomes of human thinking. Analysts and policymakers create mental models, or short cuts to manage complex, changing environments. In other words, to make sense of ambiguous or uncertain situations, humans form cognitive biases. Informed because of personal experience, education, and specifically applied to intelligence analysis, Davis

Introduction: Throughout the intelligence cycle there are five different phases of gathering information and making decisions on your analysis. The intelligence cycle contains 5 different phases that being planning, collection, processing exploitation, analysis, and dissemination. In the intelligence cycle we dive deep into articles pulling out every viable piece of information that may be useful in a case and do whatever it takes to get that information “no matter how it is obtained”. In the analysis of the intelligence cycle there are many different procedures that agencies follow for gathering information.