Operational Failure

Contrary to popular belief, the art of intelligence and counterintelligence is not really all that new to the United States, but goes all the way back to the days of The American Revolution. Had it not been for the bravery of men and women alike, and the utter will to be free from the British rule, our military leaders would not have been so well prepared to engage the enemy and win in decisive battles.

After World War II American intelligence had the need to be transformed. The inexperience along with bureaucracy and poor coordination among American intelligence officers obligated the United States intelligence community to change dramatically in order to confront the new challenges that emerged after the end of WWII. From Early America through WWI the intelligence system of the United States of America was involved in operations in which they had to construct intelligence systems virtually from scratch (Andrew 1995). Human intelligence was already developed, but with certain limitations and other intelligence disciplines were underdeveloped and very seldom sophisticated. After WWI America recessed and settled in a period of peace. The

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.

A 1998 abstract review for military training by Paul J. Jaeger reflects to the importance of “the application of operational intelligence as a function of operational art” and how the “Planning and execution for the Midway operation required fusion of strategic operational and tactical intelligence by the commanders involved; most notably Admiral Chester Nimitz” (Jaeger, pg 22). The strategy employed was to act immediately and tactically to the intelligence the commanders received from the code breakers. David J. Jerabek also “analyzes Admiral Nimitz strategic leader competencies and evaluates his contributions in achieving a total victory in the Pacific for the Allied powers” (Jerabek)

Eleven years on from the invasion, the Iraq war remains an unforgettable sequence of events for people around the world, especially American’s and one of the greatest intelligence failures in living history. The pre-war intelligence gathered by the CIA suggested that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and connections with al-Qaeda. American officials did everything to prepare the entire world and the entire globe for war against Iraq. The intelligence collected, key to the invasion, was subsequently wishful thinking and wrong. The striking thing about prewar U.S. intelligence is that it played such a small role in one of the most important U.S. policy decisions in recent decades.

In late December of 1979, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) troops began streaming into Afghanistan by the thousands, marking the beginning of what would turn out to be a 10-year attempt to support the Afghan Communist party that had taken power (Britannica, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 2015). This paper demonstrates failures by the intelligence assets of the United States of America(U.S.) regarding the U.S.S.R.’s invasion of Afghanistan. The U.S. did not have a good understanding of the U.S.S.R.'s early involvement in Afghanistan; additionally, they failed to understand that by giving training and aid to the Afghani insurgency, they were forcing the U.S.S.R. to commit to military occupation, and

Anti -access/area denial assets are expanding at a rapid rate as other countries and groups seek to prevent United States power projection globally. In previous conflicts, especially during the Cold War, the way for the U.S. to win was to utilize better technology and employ it to prevent the enemy’s maneuverability. During the cold war, the US had the advantage over the Soviet Union due to power projection of weapons; they developed a better strategy and understanding of the most likely avenues of combat on the battlefield, and intelligence technology that allowed better capabilities to determine the enemy’s capabilities. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, conventional means of intelligence collection was hindered by the drawdown of US military forces, mainly in Europe and other countries in Asia, and allowed US adversaries to obtain advanced technology. “This reduction of US military power projection in those regions has led to equaling the battlefield against future operations and puts the US at a disadvantage as the loss of major intelligence capabilities crippled its oversight in those particular regions .” It also weakens future intelligence gathering networks, possibly future operations, and impacts policymakers’ foreign policy decisions.

Three of the potential roadblocks associated with the implementation of a National Counter Intelligence (CI) strategy that I believe are the most important rest within resources, information and risk, outlined in Michelle Van Cleave’s article “Strategic Counterintelligence What Is It and What Should We Do about It?” The idea of a national level effort is not a new idea. The National Security Act of 1947 provided basis of our intelligence and CI functions. DoD naturally took the mission of CI activity which fit within the DoD scope. Up and until the 1980s a series of failures within the CI world, such as the failed hostage rescue in 1980 helped to place emphasis on the lack of coordination between DoD services. A new definition of CI was

The future operating environment in the year 2030 will not be that vastly different from today. Persistent environmental factors of volatility, uncertainty, and ambiguity will remain. Because of this constantly changing security environment and cast of uncertain adversaries, there is a continued need for both special operations forces (SOF) and conventional forces working together within the military instrument of national power. This paper argues that future SOF composition and capability will not differ much from the present day because it is depends on careful selection of a very small niche of the population that can produce desired SOF results. Additionally, future SOF should be outfitted according to the current SOF acquisition model

Effective application of intelligence collection assets provides increased situational awareness that enhances the overall lethality of combat power, ultimately saving lives in the process. The U.S. and Japan used multiple forms of intelligence collection during the battle for Okinawa. Each commander used information gleaned from this collection in their decision making process, however, both failed to pre-empt the others actions leading to a fight for inches that lasted 82 days. This paper examines the events leading up to the invasion of Okinawa and the major phases of the battle. This paper will also highlight how alternative use of intelligence assets could have influenced the outcome and why.

Second, cyber-terrorism attacks need to be evaluated relative to the number of routine infrastructure failures. This is because cyber-terror attacks only pose a real threat to national security if the attacks are perpetrated on numerous infrastructures simultaneously for a long period of time. This would generate a noticeable effect and cause chaos. However, multiple sustained attacks on a variety of infrastructures are not a feasible scenario because hackers work to maximize their impact using as little resources as possible. Also, the redundancy inherent in infrastructures and the speed at which officials respond to any vulnerabilities would not allow for such attacks to happen at the rate they need to be to be considered an act of terror.

Strategic intelligence is essential in making the most appropriate decisions when it comes to defense policies. There should be proper gathering, analysis and appreciations of pertinent and factual data. In most intelligence failures, problems always starts with collection of data from the ground by professionals who then analyses

The evolution of intelligence centers continues but has major thresholds to meet before they can become effective enough to meet the demands that commanders put on them. Additional investments into intelligence centers will be required. Intelligence center force generation and integration with the wider intelligence community must be improved. Processes within the FVEY community need to be codified so that there is consistency in the approach to analysis and synthesis. In order to exchange both explicit and tacit knowledge the underlying networks need to be improved. Perhaps most importantly, the integration of intelligence and operations needs to improve. Not only to fix the issues surrounding collection management but also to ensure

Counterintelligence (CI) involves actions aimed at protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage from penetration and disruption by hostile nations or their intelligence services (Lowenthal, 2014). Three main components of Counterintelligence include collection, defensive and offensive. The collection is the ability to gather intelligence information about rivalry capabilities against own nation; defensive part of CI involves measures to prevent and thwart other nations ' attempts to penetrate into own nation 's intelligence system; while an offensive aspect deal with running double agents to penetrate, manipulate, exploit, and control targeted adversaries. CI is said to be the most essential aspect of the intelligence disciplines, in the sense that it helps in collecting vast quantities of secret information and produce an excellent analysis of intelligence, although, ineffective counterintelligence measures may diminish confidence in the final results (Van Cleave, 2013).

This paper discusses how political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment and time factors affect human intelligence operations within Pakistan against the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tabia. This paper goes on to identify the conditions, effect and response of previously mentioned factors while conduction human intelligence operations. By developing specifically tailored human intelligence responses to the conditions and effects a human intelligence team will be able to use the environment and population to amplify any existing advantage. When no advantage exists to the human intelligence collector the response will dictate how the human intelligence team will be able to reduce any disadvantage or if possible turn that disadvantage into the collector’s advantage.