The largest military intelligence occupational specialty (MOS) is FUBAR and has been for at least the five plus years I taught there. Sources continue to inform me it is only getting worse. Ninety-five percent of the problems on this committee can be traced to the unjustified rising through the ranks of one person – Bill Glessner.
Student all-source intel analysts are fresh out of high school and basic training where they were presumably taught to be soldiers. All-Source Intelligence Analyst training is considered critical Advanced Individual Training (AIT) in which these new soldiers are trained to do their specific job. Doctrinally, intel analysts are supposed to be able to analyze the enemy threat to the friendly commander, articulate enemy possible courses of action in battle and identify/recommend targets for the combat commander to attack. If these analysts can’t tell their commander where the enemy is and what he is going to do when or where then the battalion commander may as well get his information from CNN. The course is approximately 17 weeks long culminating in a 7-9 day field exercise. One would think by the time students get to the field exercise they are able to conduct intelligence preparation of the battlefield which results in target recommendations to a notional combat commander. They can’t. Nor, as I’m hearing from more and more former students of mine from the M.I. Captain’s Career Course, do these analysts seem to have an inkling of what to do once they arrive at their permanent duty station. Why?
Proposal #1: Get rid of “Education Specialists – stick to basics.”
The army has surrendered training troops to “education specialists” rather than by the backbone of the army – NCOs. Non-commissioned officers – sergeants- have responsible for lower enlisted troops learning their profession since the Revolutionary days of Baron Von Steuben. NCOs presumably have had the time and experience commensurate with their rank qualifying them with the wisdom of knowing what the troops need to know to fight, survive and win in battle. The army’s employment of “education specialists” is either an admission of failure by NCOs or a military-industrial complex money grab exhibiting a gross and insulting lack of faith in the NCO corps.
When I first arrived on the 35F committee in September, 2007 a concept was being rammed down instructors’ throats called Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH)” Also known as Heuristic Theory. It called for the analyst to brainstorm ALL the possible courses of action that could conceivably taken by an enemy commander. Sounds logical, right? This concept was devised by a senior CIA analyst working on his PhD dissertation. Tactical analysts neither have the time nor the access to the data (or life experience) necessary to conduct this depth of analysis. Safely sitting at a desk inside CIA at Langley with all the strategic time needed one may wander through the maze of every possibility. Tactical analysts on the other hand are severely time constrained to answer the commander’s RFI’s because lives of real soldiers depend on it. As I studied ACH (in order to teach it) I couldn’t help thinking it sounded so much like Chaos Theory. When the cerebral warrant officer committee chief (himself working on his PhD – and whom I consider a friend) transferred out ACH died a quiet death.
Since then the 35F curriculum has been chained to an academic speeding train with no conductor. Succeeding committee chiefs’ main concern is to complete their tour with no negative incidents. That includes not being noticed by their commanders for failing incompetent students or firing totally incompetent instructors. The “speeding train” is the apparent necessity for the curriculum to change every 90-120 days. This is insane. “Version xxx” is always forthcoming and the instructors dread it. The job of intel analyst hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years yet, in order to justify “ed specs” employment, somehow a new iteration of the curriculum has to be implemented every six months. As each version is published the training gets further and further from the basics. I was ordered to write a lesson plan by outlining the table of contents of the military’s Joint Doctrine Field Manual despite the fact the majority of the FM was irrelevant to intel and the students hardly grasped the concept of intel itself much less how the Air Force, Navy, and Marines were supposed to function with the Army. Recently, the current (name dropping) battalion commander has ordered the 35F curriculum reflect Unified Command doctrine – again echelons higher than what tactical analysts need to know. This has resulted in 35F “All-Source Intelligence Analysts” arriving at their units totally ignorant of their jobs. I have heard this from many former captain students who receive these graduates from the army’s “School of Excellence.”
What I see in this approach is a Freudian-perverse inclination for M.I. personnel -who dream of safe, clean, strategic assignments where they can kiss general’s asses to get promoted – implementing concepts at echelons much higher than that required by initial entry, tactical analysts. They are doing the new graduates, the combat commanders and the muddy boots troops whose lives depend on good intelligence a grave disservice by doing so.
