- Info
Scientific and Technical Intelligence Analysis
SECRET |
S&T Analysis
|
| | | |
| (and frustrating) for many CIA analysts and senior officials. Any time an analyst working on SAM upgrade seemed to be making progress toward a solution, someone would find a new wrinkle in the problem which forced a fresh start. One lesson of SAM upgrade is that we can no longer produce only conventional intelligence assessments. Intelligence analysts will continue to answer questions which read, "What is the capability of weapon system `X'?"; but more and more analysts will encounter questions which begin "What if ... ?" These are usually the Case #4 questions. |
| | | |
| Last summer, DDS&T intelligence analysts had to address the idea that the Soviets might be developing a space-based laser ABM system. This concept was proposed by a senior official of another government agency (interestingly, most Case #4 problems are proposed by people who are outside the intelligence community but have contact with it; seldom if ever are such cases proposed by intelligence officers). The idea was that the Soviets might be working on a program to put large high-powered ultraviolet lasers into synchronous altitude (25,000-mile-high) orbits. By focusing the laser energy on U.S. ICBM reentry vehicles during their midcourse phase of flight, the Soviets would then be able to destroy any number of the reentry vehicles. The fact that such a program would cost the Soviets more resources than the U.S. put into the Apollo Program seemed to daunt no one least of all the advocates who insisted that we look for evidence of a Soviet program. After considerable expenditure of analyst time and effort, we concluded that the Soviets were not developing a spacebased laser ABM system. Unfortunately, this was probably only the initial effort on this particular problem. It seems characteristic of Case #4 problems that they never go away; they simply go through cycles. |
| | | |
| Sources o f S&T Intelligence | | |
| | | |
| Jones used the analogy of the human head to describe how S&T cases were handled. In his analogy the eyes represented photo intelligence and the ears represented signal intelligence. Both of these intelligence inputs were fed to the brain, which handled the job of collating the intelligence, analyzing what it meant, and making decisions. To complete the analogy, one might consider the mouth to represent the dissemination process. |
| | | |
| Despite Jones' comment about the eyes and ears, an S&T analyst normally uses six sources of information in his work. They are: |
| | | |
| | Photo Intelligence Signal Intelligence Human Sources Foreign Literature Results of U.S. Work Basic Physical Laws | |
| | | |
| Many intelligence analysts refer to the first two of these as "hard" intelligence and the second two as "soft" intelligence. This unfortunate terminology reflects a common bias that photo and signal intelligence information is more reliable than the other kinds. Actually, human and foreign literature sources have provided some of our most valuable insights into foreign scientific and |
Posted: May 08, 2007 08:43 AM
Last Updated: May 08, 2007 08:43 AM
Last Reviewed: May 08, 2007 08:43 AM
