Shore Up SOF
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The rest of the fleet receives relatively little OpIntel support. Afloat units are expected to pull intelligence from a multitude of available intelligence Web sites. This assumes fleet users have a sophisticated knowledge of intelligence and adequate bandwidth. The reality is that afloat personnel are forced to wade through myriad Web sites, often with contradictory information, trying to figure what products might be important. Moreover, bandwidth is still limited at sea. Even on large-deck ships, bandwidth for intelligence surfing is a luxury, and on many units, such as submarines, bandwidth is almost nonexistent—yet there are few low-bandwidth Web sites.
By not pushing OpIntel analysis to the fleet, naval intelligence is putting strike group commanders in the position Admiral John Tovey put himself in during the chase of the German battleship Bismarck in 1941. Admiral Tovey, Commander in Chief of the Royal Navy's Home Fleet and head of the task force hunting the Bismarck, expressly had requested that only raw high-frequency direction-finding (HF/DF) hits of the Bismarck, and not the analysis of these hits, be sent to him. He believed his staff could better analyze any situation by looking at the unanalyzed raw data. The admiralty's Operational Intelligence Center (OIC) received a sketchy HF/DF hit on the Bismarck, but in accordance with Admiral Tovey's request, OIC sent only the raw intercept data. Admiral Tovey's staff, inexperienced in these types of intercepts, misplotted the Bismarck's position, leading to an incorrect assessment of the ship's intentions and resulting in turning the Home Fleet in the wrong direction. The analysts at OIC, who were experienced in analyzing HF/DF intercepts at these northern latitudes, plotted the intercept correctly. It was only the receipt of additional intercepts several hours later and a decision to push the OIC's OpIntel analysis against the admiral's wishes that saved the day.3
Without the core skill of operational intelligence, the quality of intelligence analysis suffers, restricting the fleet's fundamental understanding of adversary fleet movements. This directly affects the way war fighters view intelligence products and, as a result, the intelligence community's relevance. If the community provides only reporting and not analysis, it can be replaced by computer systems. If the community forces afloat intelligence officers to search for the intelligence they need online instead of pushing it to them, it only reinforces the stereotype that the intelligence community cannot be bothered to assist the fleet. The naval intelligence community cannot expect to be taken seriously if it does not take seriously its own responsibility to directly support the fleet with actionable intelligence.
By reinstituting OpIntel as our key core competency, the naval intelligence community can achieve several tangible benefits:
- Improve the quality of shore-based intelligence. Provide naval intelligence officers training in and the opportunity to practice OpIntel.
- Increase the relevance of the naval intelligence community in the eyes of war fighters. Ensure the community is providing intelligence that will improve war fighters' ability to do their mission.
- Reduce at-sea manning. As the value of intelligence pushed to the fleet rises, the community can safely follow the Chief of Naval Operations' 2004 Guidance and begin to reduce rationally the at-sea intelligence footprint onboard large-deck ships.
- Improve other naval intelligence skill sets. OpIntel teaches analysts to track moving targets, and thus empower other disciplines.
- Targeting officers, for instance, will learn how to track mobile targets, enabling them to better target them.
Reestablishing OpIntel Is Key
The first step in reestablishing OpIntel as a core competency is to capture the detailed, practical knowledge of how OpIntel was carried out during the Cold War. There are enough senior personnel in the community who went through the formal OpIntel training and then served at OSIS nodes to capture this knowledge. The Navy should convene a working group of these individuals with the goal of producing an in-depth set of lessons learned, which would be used to create detailed personal qualification standards (PQS) for OpIntel.
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The next step is to thoroughly teach these skills, based on the PQS and lessons learned. OpIntel skills should be taught at the intelligence schoolhouse, the Navy-Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center. The naval intelligence community cannot rely solely on on-the-job training to impart the OpIntel skills, nor should it rely on one-week mobile training team visits. The complexity of OpIntel requires a studied course of instruction. In 1990, shortly before the demise of the OSIS system, the OpIntel course was six weeks long. Instructors who had just left OSIS centers taught the fundamental analytical skills and, more importantly, the OpIntel mind-set, to students, who then reported directly to an OSIS center. Every naval intelligence officer should be required to attend this OpIntel training.
It is critical to recreate fleet intelligence centers (FICs) at the forward-deployed numbered fleets. When the JICs stood up, the Army and the Air Force wisely kept large service intelligence organizations in the theaters to support their operations. The Navy should take a lesson from the other services and set up its own FICs at the Sixth and Seventh Fleet headquarters; Fifth Fleet already has a functioning intelligence center.
The Navy should not depend on the JICs to carry out its fleet support mission. The JICs are not likely to create a separate structure dedicated solely to supporting Navy units and answerable solely to Navy requirements, nor should they. In addition, the Navy should recreate the Navy Operational Intelligence Center (NOIC) within the Office of Naval Intelligence's (ONI's) National Maritime Intelligence Center in Suitland, Maryland. While the FICs would concentrate on supporting deployed naval units and would work for the numbered fleet intelligence directors, NOIC would provide OpIntel analysis to support the homeland defense mission of U.S. Northern Command and would absorb ONI's existing maritime watch.
The FICs and NOIC would serve as a training ground for OpIntel specialists to reinforce the OpIntel skills learned at the Navy-Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center. The FICs would provide the added benefit of reconnecting the link between intelligence and the fleet. The FICs also would enhance the work at the JICs. Removing the fleet support mission from the JICs would allow them to concentrate solely on supporting joint task force commanders and the theater joint staff. This large body of experienced OpIntel analysts would prove vital in assisting the JICs in providing OpIntel support to the joint community, improving the quality of joint analysis as well.
These changes require substantial commitment of personnel and financial resources. The naval intelligence community should not be a mere purveyor of information, nor should it focus solely on targeting. It should not continue forcing ships and submarines at sea to rely on themselves for their intelligence. Instead, naval intelligence must support the fleet through expert intelligence focused on the fleet's needs. Operational intelligence needs to be placed again at the center of our community. Just as every Marine is a rifleman, so must every naval intelligence officer first and foremost be an OpIntel analyst.
Commander Hines is the deputy director for intelligence at Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet. He is a graduate of the Joint Targeting School. His past tours included Carrier Group One, the Office of Naval Intelligence, Fleet Ocean Surveillance Information Facility Western Pacific, and Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 136.
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