Intelligence: February 23, 2004

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Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have shaken up the United States Department of Defenses intelligence community. The widespread use of UAVs by the troops, and the availability of networked tools like Blue Force Tracker, led combat units to generally ignore the large intelligence organizations (not that these outfits were ever much use to an infantry battalion commander anyway.) Then came occupation duty, where divisions in Iraq set up their own informer networks and intelligence databases. As a result of this, the Department of Defenses Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and CIA have again pledged to really, really get intelligence information to the troops on a timely basis. With everyone down to the battalion level now hooked into the military Internet, there are certainly no technical problems to doing this. It's all a matter of will, which the intelligence agencies (mainly the DIA and CIA) say they now have, and follow through. Only time will tell if the latter is present as well.

 

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