Intelligence dissemination management

[1] Due to the necessity of quick decision-making in periods of crisis, intelligence analysts may suggest possible actions, including a prediction of the consequences of each decision.

Drawing from business, another way of thinking about flow is the idea of just-in-time (JIT) inventory management, where a minimum of parts stays in a factory or store, with a closed loop between supplier and manufacturer/seller.

Involving relevant policymakers and other consumers in the regular personnel evaluations of the analysts who serve them would strengthen the importance of such an effort and provide an incentive to individual analystsThe proper relationship between intelligence gathering and policymaking sharply separates the two functions....Congress, not the administration, asked for the now-infamous October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, although few members of Congress actually read it.

Some parts of the intelligence community are reluctant to put their product onto even a classified web or wiki, due to concern that they cannot control dissemination once the material is in the published online format[5] While modern information storage simplifies the handling and dissemination of exceptionally sensitive material, especially if it never is committed to hard copy, the systematic handling of compartmented information probably is most associated with the Special Liaison Units (SLU) originally for the distribution of British Ultra COMINT .

Prior to US adoption of the British system, officer couriers brought COMINT to the White House and State Department, staying with the reader in most cases.

For a time, after an intercept was found in the wastepaper basket of FDR's military aide, the Army and Navy cryptanalytic agencies unilaterally cut off White House access.

Countries with modern intelligence and operations communications networks can, on detecting indications and warnings, can initiate collaboration tools to help analysts share information.

Specific actions, ranging from border crossings in large formations, to sorties of nuclear-capable ships and aircraft, to actual explosions, move at high priority on both operational and intelligence networks.

According to the basic US Army manual on intelligence,[11] "Fundamental to decision-making in regard to any military operation is knowledge of the environment since it enables combatants to optimize the assets they have, to target their effort, to anticipate developments and husband their force."

Longer range, more intractable intelligence challenges are addressed by grouping analytic and operational personnel from concerned agencies into close-knit functional units.

Estimative intelligence helps policymakers to think strategically about long-term threats by discussing the implications of a range of possible outcomes and alternative scenarios.

Japan's early WWII strategy towards the US, for example, made numerous assumptions that would lead the US Fleet to sail into the Western Pacific, to fight, on advantageous terms for the Japanese, a "Decisive Battle".

At its highest governmental levels, France did not understand the way in which Germany would combine tanks and aircraft, closely coordinated, and drive quickly into the rear, with German infantry securing the breaches.

Robert S. McNamara, US Secretary of Defense during most of the Vietnam War, came from a background of quantitative analysis both in conventional warfare and industry, but appeared to assume that the North Vietnamese leadership would use logic similar to his own.

There was widespread belief that some of the key US weapons systems, such as the M1A1 Abrams tank, AH-64 Apache helicopter, stealth technology and precision guided munitions would not be effective in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq.

In the broadest definition, "strategic assessment" implies a forecast of peacetime and wartime competition between two nations or two alliances that includes the identification of enemy vulnerabilities and weaknesses in comparison to the strengths and advantages of one's own side.

The authors of the military portions of the assessment came from two institutions that have counterparts in Beijing today and were prominent in Moscow in the 1930s: the General Staff Academy and the National War College.

Over time, even more so after the end of the USSR, Russia and the US have taken various steps to avoid military misunderstanding, such as putting liaison teams into one another's' strategic warning centers.

Originally, the GLOBAL series of naval wargames assumed that the US Mediterranean fleet would be obliterated in hours, and the Soviet submarine threat would stop major transatlantic movement by US forces.

They included the following: "One of the reasons for this favorable appraisal [of GLOBAL] was the growing involvement of the military services and relevant civilian agencies of the federal government in a common forum.

"Finally, this sorting out of the conventional from the game-tested wisdom helped the players, in the real world after the exercise was over, to focus on the pertinent second-order issues.

"[33] "Andy Marshall, the Director of Net Assessment in the Pentagon and a notable consumer of wargaming, has argued that the circumstances facing the United States today, in terms of strategic uncertainty, are quite similar to those we confronted in the early 1920s.

What trends appear to be emerging from contemporary wargaming that can help shape our (significantly downsized) armed forces for the next century, as well as planning the intelligence community to meet the warfighters' needs?

games and cases point to the importance of developing visions of future conflict, and working them to discern how changes in the external environment could cause the next war to differ from the last.

The 20 year target, and the associated "History of the Future" document, was intended to allow examination of concepts without worry about budget, but the interaction between leadership and gamers educated all in what was realistic.

In this case, however, it appears that a confrontation with an unpleasant present, rather than the repetitive pull of a coherent vision of the future, was the catalyst providing new direction for Army planning and wargaming.

Expeditionary Air Forces involve new mixed units of different aircraft types, but are not as disruptive as early frameworks that assumed extensive use of space-based systems, UAVs, and extremely long-range operations.

Just as the Army found looking forward 20 years was unrealistic, the Air Force reexamined the chances of revolutionary assets being affordable and implemented in a more modest future.

According to Robert B. Oakley, ambassador and later special envoy to Somalia, who played the Red civilian leader, Van Riper was "out-thinking" Blue Force from the first day of the exercise.

In the Louisiana Maneuvers of 1940, George S. Patton moved an armored division with unprecedented speed, eventually capturing the commander of the opposing army, Ben Lear.