On the Money or Out of Touch?

Major General Flynn's blueprint for fixing intelligence in Afghanistan has dominated the blogosphere today. Has the general laid the groundwork for finally getting it right or is this another example of senior leadership far removed from the realities of tactical operations?
Here is Maj. Gen. Flynn's ISAF interview from last month:


Part 1




Part 2

Among the initiatives Major General Flynn directs:

•  Select teams of analysts will be empowered to move between field elements, much like journalists, to visit collectors of information at the grassroots level and carry that information back with them to the regional command level.

•  These items will integrate information collected by civil affairs officers, PRTs, atmospherics teams, Afghan liaison officers, female engagement teams, willing non-governmental organizations and development organizations, United Nations officials, psychological operations teams, human terrain teams, and infantry battalions, to name a few.

•  These analysts will divide their work along geo-graphic lines, instead of along functional lines, and write comprehensive district assessments covering governance, development and stability.  The alternative – having all analysts study an entire province or region through the lens of a narrow, functional line (e.g. one analyst covers governance, another studies narcotics trafficking, a third looks at insurgent networks, etc) – isn’t working.

•  The analysts will provide all the data they gather to teams of “information brokers” at the regional command level who will organize and disseminate – proactively and on request – all the reports and data gathered at the grassroots level.

•  These special teams of analysts and information brokers will work in what the authors are calling Stability Operations Information Centers. (The authors discuss how these Information Centers cooperate with, and in some cases replace, “Fusion Centers”.)

•  These Information Centers will be placed under and in cooperation with the State Department’s senior civilian representatives administering governance, development and stability efforts in Regional Commands East and South.

•  Leaders must put time and energy into selecting the best, most extroverted and hungriest analysts to serve in the Stability Operations Information Centers.  These will be among the most challenging and rewarding jobs an analyst could tackle.

After reading the paper I was left with a simple two-part question. Who are these analysts and where are they coming from?

Anyone can draft a paper recommending the creation of the perfect intelligence analyst, then pass the buck to mid-level leadership to find them.

Lacking sufficient numbers of analysts and guidance from commanders, battalion S-2 shops rarely gather, process, and write up quality assessments on countless items, such as: census data and patrol debriefs; minutes from shuras with local farmers and tribal leaders; after-action reports from civil affairs officers and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs); polling data and atmospherics reports from psychological operations and female engagement teams; and translated summaries of radio broadcasts that influence local farmers, not to mention the field observations of Afghan soldiers, United Nations officials, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This vast and underappreciated body of information, almost all of which is unclassified, admittedly offers few clues about where to find insurgents, but it does provide elements of even greater strategic importance – a map for leveraging popular support and marginalizing the insurgency itself.

Bottom Line? The key to more relevant intelligence lies in unclassified information consolidated into one product for the operational commanders. Realistically, this is implying that a PFC straight out of training knows more about the operational complexities of a counterinsurgency environment than a full bird colonel. Were this not the case, the operational commander would have been requesting the precise information and assessments noted above.