Darkness settles across southern Iraq as two F/A-18C Hornets each release a Joint Standoff Weapon toward a surface-to-air missile (SAM) site. The bulky munitions glide in silently for a direct hit on a Global Positioning System coordinate chosen by the carrier battle group's intelligence team and approved by Joint Task Force Southwest Asia. The Hornet pilots have done their job well and U.S. high-technology weapons performed flawlessly. The next morning, however, the battle group's intelligence staff briefed the SAM battery as fully operational. In the time it took to pick and validate the target and get munitions on top, the SAM battery had moved and the Joint Standoff Weapons exploded harmlessly over an empty stretch of sand. National technical means had confirmed the departure of the target hours before the aircraft left the carrier, but slow, stove-piped intelligence processes prevented rapid retargeting before weapons were launched.
It has become painfully clear over the past decade that the intelligence processes supporting strike warfare need to be reengineered. On the shoulders of one of the Navy's smallest communities rests the challenge to realign manning, training, technology, and procedures to fix this problem. The risk of inaction is twofold: the continued deployment of outstanding warfighting tools with dysfunctional intelligence-support processes that mute their effectiveness; and an intelligence community that becomes increasingly irrelevant at the tactical level—preferring instead to gravitate toward strategic or operational level decision-making support.
Intelligence officers and enlisted personnel provide intelligence support to all warfare disciplines, conduct afloat and ashore staff support, and perform in functional areas as diverse as technical collection operations, all-source analysis, database and system administration, and direct combat support roles. Training often is on the job, as personnel shift between a range of mission areas throughout their careers. The diversity of skill sets has presented the establishment of a current shared, and in-depth naval intelligence community expertise. This jack-of-all-trades approach was acceptable when the community had a shared core competency—a deep understanding of the Soviet Navy. With that cohesive element gone and many once-unique intelligence functions and tools available to a wider audience, it is time to ensure the continued relevance of this community by reallocating a significant portion (10%?) of its billets to a new core competency. Naval intelligence must remain a diversified community with a broad range of skills, but its core should be a fundamental expertise in the intelligence processes related to time-critical targeting.
One of the greatest challenges facing the Navy today is the ability to locate, track, and destroy mobile targets . For years, the joint intelligence centers and cruise missile support activities have focused on fixed targets, but as the Persian Gulf War (and its endless string of "response options") and the recent Balkan conflict make clear, the time-critical targeting problem is the most difficult and often most important part of combat operations. The Navy's role is central, not just because we often will arrive first, but also because our future is tied to the tools we now are purchasing to destroy these mobile shore targets. The function of naval intelligence in the targeting cycle (usually divided into six steps: guidance, target development, weaponeering, force application, force execution, and combat assessment) is focused on target location, tracking, and combat assessment. While the trend toward a sensor-to-shooter continuum lessens that part further, there still is a significant role for naval intelligence to play and it is an area that has not been addressed comprehensively.
To stake a claim in the time-critical targeting arena and develop naval intelligence expertise in processes that support that mission, the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) may wish to promulgate a vision statement and road map leading to tough calls on time-critical targeting technology, training, and manning. This should pave the way for studies of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance integration, and explore tools and formats for the mensuration, production, and delivery of targeting data. A plan of action also should address cooperative bonds with weapon program teams and doctrine/procedure formulators and adaptation of intelligence databases to meet these challenging targeting requirements. In addition, it should propose a transition program that moves the fleet past the ad hoc adaptation of the dysfunctional technology of today and toward an interactive system that couples capabilities ashore with defined duties afloat.
The recent choice of the DNI as the chair of the nascent Naval Targeting Working Group is a step in the right direction, but a strong staff effort must build roles for naval intelligence on the Joint Staff's Military Target Intelligence Committee and All-Weather Precision Strike Integrated Process Team, as well as the Air Warfare Division's Time-Critical Strike Working Group. The DNI's team also must play a key role in naval experimentation by partnering with the Maritime Battle Center. Unfortunately, naval intelligence influence presently is minor in these forums, and the cohesive link between intelligence aspects of experimentation, systems integration, and fielding, training, manning, and procedure definition is missing.
Naval war fighting is changing rapidly and the requirements levied on naval intelligence demand engagement. Because of the central role targeting plays in this sea of change, it also is imperative that a greater number of naval intelligence billets be committed to time-critical targeting processes and that most personnel obtain a core competency in a related intelligence field. The community's goal should be to become the recognized Department of Defense expert in this exciting new arena.
Deliberations on the future of the naval intelligence community traditionally have degenerated into discussions on the depth and level of expertise desired in the officer ranks. Intelligence specialists perform a range of duties wider in scope than almost all other enlisted specialties, but it is in the intelligence officer corps where specialization has been eschewed with particular vehemence. The underlying logic is that this small community needs officers ready to fill the present broad spectrum of assignments, and that specialization would restrict the detailing process or stifle optimal career progression. The result of generalization has been a naval intelligence officer cadre that can jump in literally anywhere and bring a range of experience to bear that is much wider than that in most other officer communities. Naval intelligence has been successful in developing some of the best senior officers for joint billets, but it is outclassed when manning more junior positions requiring extensive expertise in a particular field.
To bridge this gap between a community of generalists and a required baseline of expertise, we need look no further for an example than the community's Cold War Ocean Surveillance Information System's (OSIS) operational intelligence culture. OSIS helped develop a widely shared expertise in tracking the Soviet Navy through pattern analysis and real-time fusion of all-source worldwide surveillance data. This all-source fusion approach that succeeded in tracking Cold War targets afloat should be reestablished to ensure streamlined tracking of time-critical targets ashore.
A shift in billets, even to improve support to vital warfighting areas, is exceptionally difficult in naval intelligence. As a first step, naval intelligence should consider moving billets in system support and program administration to other communities that may be better equipped to fill them. The Navy's early success in building an information technology community would seem to make the shedding of these billets more feasible as long as naval intelligence clearly states data-processing requirements and holds the providers accountable. Personnel across the waterfront have found their energies increasingly focused on data packaging, with an emphasis on style over substance. A critical look at the work our folks actually are doing may result in freeing billets for the new core competency. Finally, the community's expectations from the dramatic shift of 40% of its officer billets into the joint world in the early 1990s have not been met fully. It may be time to examine the transfer of some of that talent back to Navy tasks. Getting naval intelligence manning realigned on the most critical tasks and ensuring training and systems acquisitions are tied to support them will obviously require vision, drive, and salesmanship from above. It will not be easy, but the community must have a comprehensive plan to sell to the Navy's leadership that Jays out options and provides direction for the 3,300 active-duty members of the community.
Naval intelligence should evolve into a community that addresses slightly fewer issues—but it should do those things closest to warfighting requirements and do them better. Many of us have been saddened to see our community turn into a cadre of information brokers or packagers skilled at preparing glitzy PowerPoint briefs, at the expense of deep knowledge of an enemy. Our most famous World War II community leader, Rear Admiral Edwin Layton, stood at Admiral Chester Nimitz's side from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay, not because he could package data, but because he knew the enemy intimately. Our enemies are harder to define, and we have the benefit of accessing vast remote resources when at sea—but an established competency in helping put munitions on moving targets will strengthen the contribution naval intelligence makes to the Navy and position us well for the next conflict.
Lieutenant Commander Shanower is a naval intelligence officer assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence. He wishes to express his appreciation to Lieutenant Commanders Bob Allen, Bill Bray, Dan Driscoll, Jim Fanell, Jason Hines, Bob Poor, and Bob Rose for editorial assistance with this article.