The 11th Annual International Association for Intelligence Education
Come What May:
Preparing the Next Generation to Master Change Itself
(WORKING PAPER!!!)
Dr. William L. Mitchell
C2 & Intelligence
Centre for Joint Operations
Royal Danish Defence College
IMO -VF11@fak.dk
Panel (B) Intelligence Disciplines of the Future
Chair: George Tagget
Tues, June 23 2015, 1300-1430 hrs.
Marymount University
Abstract
The global security upheaval at the turn of the century pushed complexity
to the forefront of military operations, and consequently, the supporting
military intelligence function. By 2008, systems of systems and effects
based thinking formed the philosophical basis for intelligence cycle
inputs into operational planning and targeting. It is no accident that it is
around this time we began to see a renaissance in the art and science of
military intelligence, as cold war approaches to intelligence, begin
disappearing, replaced by new language, concepts, and doctrine. This
paper will argue that from a military intelligence perspective, it is not a
changed world we must prepare for, but rather the dynamic of change
itself. It will be based on several examples of current
military
intelligence doctrines that directly embrace systems of systems thinking,
netwars, inter-agency, and attack the network principles. All of which
allow the next generation of military and civilian intelligence
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professionals to be agile enough to master the dynamic of change itself,
come what may.
Introduction
From the perspective of an intelligence instructor in an active western
military, the last 10 years have been a period of revelation,
enlightenment, and reformation. We have witnessed the transformation
from a doctrinal perspective that taught every situation could be packed
into static doctrinal practices, to the present where we are teaching
approaches to intelligence to support operational agility. Situational
understanding is what is sought after by commanders in order to drive
operations, not just situational awareness, which was the predominant
framework for cold war intelligence products.
This paper suggests that current and developing intelligence doctrines
inherently focus more on providing tools for the management of complex
adaptive operational environments, rather than static descriptions of
operational environments. Change in the operational environment is
expected, it is inevitable, and it is perpetually driven through actions and
effects. The question for intelligence educators is then how do we best
train our intelligence professionals to deal with change? Before
presenting two approaches the Danish Defence is using, our
understanding of the key characteristics of an operational environment in
the 21st century will be presented. Essentially it sees 21st century being
dominated by operational environments that are dynamic, complex, and
highly adaptive.
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Complex Adaptive Operational Environments
First, this not a declaration that the nature of war has suddenly changed to
become more complex, but rather participation in war has become more
complex for belligerents. Engaging a battlespace in the 21 st century is not
turning out to be so straightforward, belligerents learn faster, and are able
to identify and exploit asymmetric advantage continuously. This results in
a conflict that has more to do with battlespace management, than winning
or losing. Essentially we accept John Arquillas Netwars understanding of
21st century conflict, where conventional conflict can quickly mutate to
militancy/insurgency, while organised crime flourishes in the vacuum of
resulting judicial authority. Such a battlespace will likely have more to
do with scales of intervention rather than winners or losers. Fig. 1.0
illustrates this dynamic understanding of a 21 st battlespace, it is an
adaptive operational environment.
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It has also become more complex because of the extensive use of
unconventional strategies that exploit the perceived asymmetric weakness
of opponents. The net result is that the military that gets involved in a
conflict is likely in the 21st to be responsible not only for using their
weapons to coerce and destroy, but msut do so in a manner that takes into
account international law, home politics, international media, local
politics, social politics, and indeed even the environment issues. If you
are going to blow something up – it should not pollute the environment.
So essentially - more dimensions for the military to take into account
when doing operational planning. Task complexity has also increased
because there are far more sources of information in the 21 st century than
there were in the 20th century. If you just got your information from one
source to provide situational understanding, it would be relatively easy,
but if you have 20 sources, the task becomes more complex. The resulting
increase in workload for the military intelligence should by no means be a
surprise, and has led to the development of approaches designed to
facilitate the management of change, if only because we can detect it
faster. Overall military intelligence in the 21st century will have to
support a more agile military organization. The following sections will
introduce two approaches adopted by the Danish Defence to help train
intelligence analysts to manage dynamic operational environments.
Teaching Systems of Systems Thinking
In order to manage the new complexities for intelligence analysis, we
have taught a system of systems approach as the fundamental
philosophical approach to developing situational awareness and
understanding. The specific approach tested and adopted NATO wide in
2008, with some national variations here and there, is called PMESII –
which
stands
for
Political/Military/Economic/
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Social/Information/Infrastructure dimensions of the battlespace. (See Fig.
2.0.)
Fig. 2.0 PMESII
It is a very versatile approach to understanding change in the battlespaces
of the 21st Century. First it tackles the “complexity” of a modern
battlespace by dividing them into 6 interacting dimensions. By doing so it
provides a common framework of reference to communicate between
analysts and agencies changes in the battlespace that are not necessarily
military factors, but can have an impact on the operations. Secondly, and
most importantly, is that it brings the links between the nodes into focus,
are the dynamic engine of change for a battlespace. Understanding them
will allow intelligence analysts to inform Commanders of the effects of
particular actions on the systems as a whole, and not just the military
dimension of the battlespace. A good example of this concerns the
narcotics trade in Southern Afghanistan, initially many in the military
thought the best way of defeating the narcotic cartels was to burn the
poppy, but intelligence analysts had adopted PMESII approach, and the
resulting analyses quickly pointed to the negative social, political, and
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economical effects on the operational environment it would have. The
plan was changed. In this manner, a system of systems approach is built
to facilitate the understanding of actions, and thus changes in the
operational environment. Whether they are instigated by oneself or
someone else.
Teaching AtN (Network Philosophy)
However all intelligence cycles must have a start point and when taking
over a battlespace that usually begins with an Intelligence Preparation of
the Battlespace (IPB). It is an overview of all that is believed to be
important to situational awareness & understanding and provides the
basis for the first planning session. In Afghanistan 2010, we found out
that the doctrines analysts come
with will greatly affect their
understanding of the battlespace, and the consequent operations that will
be executed.
The following example is one taken from real operations in the Upper
Gereshk Valley in the middle of the Afghanistan war. What you seein fig
3.0 are two doctrinal approaches to understanding the operational
environment, the first one is the traditional time & space orientation of
the battlespace. It can be characterized by its linear approach to
understanding not only the terrain - but also the ‘enemy’ organization. In
this real example, the picture of the enemy built by the linear time &
space analysts depicted small enemy units operating from fixed territories
that actually matched our own, each unit with own hierarchal structure,
defending a territory. Of course this was impossible because there was
never any agreement with the enemy as to the geographical limits of the
battlespaces – how would they know where to place whole units? What
had happened was that the conventional forces were applying
conventional doctrine and unwittingly "squeezing” the insurgent situation
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into their doctrine. The results were extremely negative with regard to
operations.
A second group of analysts versed in the basic principle of ‘Attack the
Network’ applied network philosophy to the existing picture quickly
presented several key issues not raised by the situational awareness
produced through the time & space approach approach. The first was that
the enemy improvised explosive device (IED) production, distribution,
and laying was systemic and organized in manner that transcended the
boundaries of established coalition forces’ areas of operation (AO) neatly
depicted on the traditional time & space map. It was a stark realization for
the Danish battlegroup that the enemy moved at will across the various
areas of operations - and beyond. The second was that poppy fields and
narcotics played a key role in determining the location of key enemy
command & control nodes, and what type of activities they would engage
in, and when. Thirdly, that the traditional tribal system also had a role,
either by its presence or its absence, among local national across the
different areas of operations. Finally it was quickly determined that
corruption within the official authorities would also affect our planning
especially when the strategic goal is to promote the legitimacy of the
official government among the local nationals. It was because of the
application of PMESII that these layers and their impact on operations
could be managed. Under the linear dominated analysis, though it sounds
unbelievable, the narcotics was not considered a problem for the military
and subsequent operations. In fact, despite all the intelligence concerning
money ad weapons being provided to the very same persons identified as
insurgents – it was simply ignored. Cold war land doctrine did not see it
as a military problem.
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Fig 3.0
We found that not only did adopting a network approach to understanding
the battlespace facilitate, the approach itself was inherently suited to
manage PMESII driven changes within the battlespace, while the linear
approach created a far greater win-lose linear understanding.
The
network understanding also allowed us to engage the underlying
dynamics for change in the battlespace, including the ability to create
measurements of effectiveness that we could relate to the PMESII
dimensions of the battlespace – opening up for a much wider range of
possible targets for both lethal and non-lethal action. ( See Fig. 4.0.)
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Fig. 4.0 Target Generation & Evaluation “The Insurgency”
This expansion of target sets and contact after action assessment turned
targeting itself into a method of managing change in the battlespace. It
forces new routines with up-dating effect assessments, and monthly limits
for the updating of target lists (see Fig. 5.0) All these new routines
focused on identifying and tracking changes in a very complex
battlespace environments.
Fig. 5.0 Example Target List
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Conclusion
It is no longer a calculation of winning or losing, but rather managing the
dynamic (changing) situation so that it
develops (changes) in the
direction where less outside military coercion was needed, and other
types of activities take over. To manage a situation that is always in the
process of becoming. One could argue that the military has won if it is no
longer needed to resolve the situation in the desired manner, but from a
historical perspective it does feel a bit odd, as the end-state for all military
campaigns will arguably be ‘when there is no longer need for a
campaign.’
This understanding of change in the operational environment is young,
yet we are already convinced that the management of change should be a
priority for intelligence education in the 21st Century. It should really be
no surprise in that it fits well, or goes hand in hand, with a general desire
across NATO and its members to construct more agile organisations and
doctrines. The two approaches for managing change presented here are
probably the tip-of the iceberg, they were essentially stumbled upon in
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order to deal with real challenges in Afghanistan and Iraq. By accepting
the 21st challenge of complex adaptive battlespaces, intelligence
education and research should take a serious look at finding/developing
other approaches that prepare intelligence analysts for the future – come
what may.