What Do You Understand By The Term 'Intelligence' & What Are Its Major Elements? Examine Critically & Discuss The Element Of 'Collection' & Its Essential Characteristics

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What Do You Understand By The Term ‘Intelligence’ & What Are Its Major Elements? Examine Critically & Discuss The Element Of ‘Collection’ & Its Essential Characteristics

Assignment no. 2

Words: 2,500

"Sizing up opponents to assess dangers and distances is the proper course of action"

 (Sun Tzu)

Intelligence is a term that is definite yet broad as it encompasses vast vicinity.  Depending on the context, it has different forms.  Intelligence has main elements of planning, collection, analysis, processing, production and dissemination.  The element of collection is cosmic with an immense amount of sources where intelligence can be gathered from.  While the definition and importances of intelligence are somewhat controversial, there is a consensus on the definition relating to security and collection.  The essential characteristics of collection are mainly from human sources or open source intelligence.  

It is widely understood that intelligence is “the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations: the skilled use of reason: the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria” The dictionary meaning defines intelligence as "the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge by means of thought and reason." Intelligence can be defined as the “product resulting from the collection, processing, integration, analysis, evaluation and interpretation of available information concerning foreign countries or areas.  Collection can be defined as the purposeful acquisition of any information that might be desired by an analyst, consumer, or operator.  Collection activity can take several overlapping forms: open source collection, clandestine collection, human source collection, and technical collection.

Modern intelligence gathering has both an electronic and human face.  The gathering, or collection, of intelligence is nothing more than stealing someone's secrets.  It is done strategically, which means according to some direction, plan, or mission, and it is done competitively, which means that your opponents and allies are also most likely doing it, and it is done non-transparently, or in secret.  The policymaking process which is informed by intelligence may be transparent, but the intelligence gathering or collection process rarely is disclosed.   The military takes intelligence gathering immensely and vitally serious, as it is almost always collected for the purpose of assessing risks and hazards in preparation for the order of battle and help form foreign policy. The whole purpose of gathering information about other's secrets and processing it into intelligence is to provide your leaders or policymakers with options to make policy more effective and efficient.  There is no point in tasking, collecting, analyzing, and distributing intelligence products if there's no policy, issue, or anticipated issue on the table.

Intelligence is divided into strategic and operational intelligence. Strategic intelligence provides policy makers with the information needed to make national policy or decisions of long-lasting importance. Strategic intelligence collection often requires integrating information concerning politics, military affairs, economics, societal interactions, and technological developments. It typically evolves over a long period of time and results in the development of intelligence studies and estimates. Operational intelligence is concerned with current or near-term events. It is used to determine the current and projected capability of a program or operation on an ongoing basis and does not result in long-term projections. Most intelligence activities support the development of operational intelligence.

The intelligence cycle is the process through which intelligence is obtained, produced, and made available to users. In depicting this cycle, the United States Intelligence Community uses a five-step process. Other nations may describe this cycle differently; however, the process is largely the same. The steps in the intelligence cycle are depicted in the following illustration: 

It is important to put the collection and analysis activities conducted by various intelligence units into proper perspective-that is, to relate to those activities to the requirements and needs of the decisions makers and the use made of the finished intelligence product.  This objective is achieved through the concept of the “intelligence cycle.”  The intelligence cycle is the process by which information is acquired, converted into finished intelligence, and made available to policy makers.  Generally, the cycle comprises five steps: planning and direction, collection, processing analysis and production, and dissemination. 

The planning and direction process involves the management of the entire intelligence effort, from the identification of the need for data to the final delivery of an intelligence effort, from the identification of the need for data to the final delivery of an intelligence product to a consumer.  The process may be initiated by requests or requirements for intelligence based on the needs of the President/Prime Minister, the Department of Defense, and Treasury, or other consumers.  In some cases, the requests and requirements become institutionalized.  Thus, the President/Prime Minister does not need to remind the intelligence community to collect information on nuclear proliferation.

SOURCE: Jeffrey T. Richelson, (1995) The U.S. Intelligence Community. P.98

Collection, as indicated as before, involves the gathering of raw data from which finished intelligence will be produced.  The collection process involves open sources, clandestine agents, and technical systems.  Processing is concerned with the conversion of the vast production of finished intelligence.  It involves language translation, decryption and sorting by subject matter as well as data reduction-interpretation of the information stored on films den tape through the use of photographic and electronic processes.

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The second step, collection, includes both acquiring information and provisioning that information to processing and production elements. The collection process encompasses the management of various activities, including developing collection guidelines that ensure optimal use of available intelligence resources. Intelligence collection requirements are developed to meet the needs of potential consumers. Based upon identified intelligence, requirements collection activities are given specific tasking to collect information. These tasking are generally redundant and may use a number of different intelligence disciplines for collection activities. Tasking redundancy compensates for the potential loss or failure of a collection asset. It ensures that the failure of a ...

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