Posted on Jan 17, 2016
What event, person, place, or thing affects military intelligence history today?
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I know its such a broad question, but my professor posed this question for an assignment and I'm looking for ideas?
Military Intelligence
35M: Human Intelligence Collector
Military History
Posted 10 y ago
Responses: 25
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If it's for an assignment, maybe the Enigma Machine and the process of cracking codes? A lot of the process is still in use today, I think the last Enigma code from WWII was cracked a couple years ago.
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I would go with cyber SSG (Join to see). The cyber domain is an evolving arena that requires an ever changing and adaptable intelligence package to counter and/or defeat. Cyber covers a very broad area, but in my opinion, how we counter this threat now and in the future will be the means that history will judge the military intelligence profession.
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I would say satellites. That has allowed nations to collect information on things we could not have done before without placing our pilots at great risk. Perhaps next to that, I would add UAVs since those are even down to company level now.
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Capt Seid Waddell
COL Jon Thompson, agreed, sir; both positively and negatively. Satellites are the unblinking eye, but they also have been the motivation to degrade our HUMINT capability.
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Capt Seid Waddell
COL Jon Thompson, agreed sir; however, it becomes a negative if it is the easy way out of difficult decisions, IMHO.
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COL Jon Thompson
Capt Seid Waddell - Or when we lost technology due to an enemy attack, effectively blinding us.
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Aldrich Ames,in full Aldrich Hazen Ames (born June 26, 1941,River Falls, Wis., U.S.),American official of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who was entrusted with discovering Soviet spies, and who himself became one of the most successful double agents for the Soviet Union and Russia.
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SSG (Join to see)
Interesting you bring him up Sir. I had thought of him initially. However, he cancels out for me when Robert Hansen was caught. But thank you for your input
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The balance between Humint, Sigint, Elint, and Imint. Each one was thought to be the end all, but only really work when used together
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How about the advent of any of forms of electronic communications? Starting with cabled transmission (telegraph), then wireless (radio) transmission, and now with decentralized (not true point to point) internet communication. Military intelligence historically often focused on identifying movements of large troop formations through visual observation (scouts, etc.), identifying weakness in an enemy's tactics, and sometimes to surface intent. Human intelligence is still critical for the latter, but some of the historical innovations in technology over the last 150 years greatly influences our focus.
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Operation Dragon Strike, the largest land operation in Afghanistan. The entire operation was based off actionable intelligence. The entire operation has made history. The majority of successful operations across the Armed Forces start from the intel analysis. Therefore, I would argue the history comes for their outcomes.
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I would say two areas of technology have had tremendous affect on military intelligence:
1. The ubiquitous presence of social media
2. The rapid rise of miniaturized remote surveillance technology (drones and other remote devices)
1. The ubiquitous presence of social media
2. The rapid rise of miniaturized remote surveillance technology (drones and other remote devices)
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