Two Types Of Imagery Collection Platforms example essay topic

2 SEP 2002 THE MOST VALUABLE INTELLIGENCE DISCIPLINE: IMINT believe that the most valuable discipline will be the IMINT field, but with good evidence. During the Gulf War, the IMINT field was detrimental to mission accomplishment. The field of Battle Damage Assessment is in my opinion one of the factors that makes imagery so important to combative assessments. The forward observers that would ordinary be sent out to the battlefield to obtain target information are in a very vulnerable position and by using imagery the threat of danger is almost obsolete during a Battle Damage Assessment. Another type of operation that IMINT supports is the evacuations of non-essential personnel during times of conflict, also known as NEOs. A NEO operation sometimes may require the evacuation of personnel as quickly as possible, and IMINT provides an overview of the area, lines of communication for the quickest route to safety, and any current opposition operations in the area.

The current operations of humanitarian aid that the United States is increasing everyday will also increase the use of IMINT for the purposes of weather damage assessments, evacuations, fire controls, etc. IMINT is the most valuable tool when making terrain analysis without having to touch foot on the ground. With IMINT as a tool, there is no threat to personnel out in the field collecting information like HUM INT. Although there are two types of imagery collection platforms, breathing and non-breathing, the intelligence community is slowly moving to utilizing more and more non-breathing platforms. The breathing platforms will always be used, but with the increasing UAV (Un-Manned Aerial Vehicle) use, even air-breathing platforms will someday be totally without risk for intelligence gathering.

IMINT is also capable of locating permanently stationed non-US communication equipment. Without IMINT it would be impossible to tell exactly how to take out an electronic transmitting device. IMINT has already proven itself as being one of the most valuable disciplines as well as one of the newest disciplines. The Imagery by electro-optical, radar, and infrared have brought this new discipline to the forefront of every brief, and imagery is almost always certainly requested, "Show me a picture", is often what is requested. I believe that its value will increase the more that it is used, especially with the new multi-spectral imagery. Multi-spectral imagery is able to offer so much more than a photo-graph of what the naked eye can already see, but will give out heat signatures and material compositions as well.

The advantages of this new type of imagery are endless in the War on Drugs, which will require this type of imagery for possible plantations or cargo composition reports. In the next three to five years, I believe that with the Multi-spectral imagery as well as the electro-optical, radar, and infrared imagery that IMINT will be the largest contributor to the intelligence community. The most invaluable discipline will within three to five years will be the OSINT field. With the use of the Internet, information is always being updated and will always be available to anyone that knows how to use a web browser.

The problem with the Internet is that it gives an overabundance of information that has to be sifted through to decide what is worth collection and what is not. When a request for information is submitted to an intelligence agency, it is sometimes hard to figure out what exactly to look for and many times the wrong information is reported. The use of the Internet is far to easy and the OSINT field that used to be a technical field is quickly becoming an obsolete discipline. The use of Open-Source information should not be halted, but as a discipline should fall under all the other intelligence disciplines. The use of this information is many times so easily collectible that it is hard to justify the employment of extra personnel to retrieve it. As far as a contributor to the intelligence mission, OSINT will always have information, but in my opinion the other technical means of gathering information are far more important.