Excerpted from ENN DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT-Saturday, April 12, 1997 Vol. 3 - 102

MILITARY FORCES IN BOSNIA; INTELLIGENCE OVERLOAD ...
By Steve Macko, ENN Editor

According to a recently released Pentagon study, critical intelligence is not getting to lower-echelon U.S. forces in Bosnia while field commanders were at times overwhelmed by a torrent of useless information. The study was conducted by a Defense Science Board Task Force. The task force found that much more intelligence, including video images from unmanned aircraft and satellites, was making its way to troops in the field, but the problem was how to sort and use all that information in an effective way.

The task force concluded: "We nned to make sure that we dont' saturate the warrior with data while starving him of useful information."

A "broken communications pipe" between Army brigades in the field and command headquarters was described in the 64-page report. The communications breakdown was said to be caused by poor understanding of what information was available, a lack of communications "band width" to handle the massive amounts of data, equipment failure, and an inability to sort through and use the intelligence that was available.

"The dynamic that I would emphasize is the dynamic of time," said Kenneth Allard, a defense analyst and a retired U.S. Army colonel who has spent a considerable amount of time in Bosnia. Allard concurred with the findings of the Pentagon study. He added, "All the best intelligence in the world when it occurs after the fact is called history."

The task force reported: "There is a tremendous amount of information that never gets to users because they don't know where to find it and don't have effective tools."

As the editor of the ENN Daily Intelligence Report, I can certainly understand what the report was saying about information overload. ENN receives a tremendous amount of open source intelligece on a daily basis that it takes a great deal of time to just sort through it. It would be estimated that about 90 percent of the information that is received is not deemed usable.

The Pentagon report identified these problems:

-- Brigades had no way to overlay aerial images that were taken of a target over several weeks to look for changes. They also had no easy, computerized method of accessing imagery intelligence archives. <Editor's Question: Perhaps this is best left as a task for higher levels of command, who could forward the appropriate data...already overlayed>

-- The flow of intelligence gathered from HUMINT sources is considered "a major weakness" because information was not getting to the field where it would be useful to troops. <Editor's Comment: As was discussed in C.L. Staten's paper (Strategic Knowledge; Preventing the Bombing of the Bridge to the 21st Century...Click here to review that report) that was published in this publication on Friday, this is also a problem in civilian intelligence agencies. In fact, this problem is not new. >

-- Computer viruses were said to be widespread. <Editor's Question: Why? And where are they coming from?>

The report also indicated poor coordination between units in the field in Bosnia and "national intelligence assests," meaning spy imagery and listening satellites managed by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The report described one case where a spy satellite caught the image of a "Predator" unmanned drone flying on a patrol. This was said to be a mistake that could had been avoided with better coordination. The two different assets were duplicating intelligence efforts.<Ed. Note: Also refered to in Mr. Staten's Strategic Knowledge Report>

The entire report was not all critical. The report praised the performance of the JStars ground surveillance radar aircraft that is being field-tested in Bosnia.

While many people may not like the mission that the U.S. military is performing in Bosnia, the upside of the NATO peacekeeping mission is that all these intelligence assets are being field- tested and that will help when they are needed for a real conflict. The JStars system, alone, gives the United States a tremendous advantage.

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