Intelligence Collection

The Need to Optimize Intelligence Collection and Management

John Wolf

March 25, 2018 Introduction
In the contemporary threat environment, intelligence collection issues can rapidly develop and expand, placing a strain on an already limited availability of collection assets and collection resources . The continuous evolution and global availability of technology allow both state and non-state actors alike to plan, coordinate, and execute operations with little to no warning, further complicating intelligence collection efforts. Military and civilian leaders within the U.S. government rely on timely information and accurate analysis from the Intelligence Community (IC) to enhance their situational awareness in order to

Government 1996, 43). In the context of this paper, intelligence collection refers not only to the “entire process from the planning stage to the dissemination of raw intelligence” but also to the “one step in the process where information or something else of intelligence value is physically acquired” (Lowenthal and Clark 2016, 3). The operational requirement for intelligence collection will always exceed intelligence collection capabilities due to the United States Government’s (USG) global presence and influence. Ultimately, there are too many areas of interest and concern for the IC and its analysts to maintain effective situational awareness on every single

This program would continuously intake data, track trends, and enable military commanders and government decision-makers “to make decisions which take into account the economic, historical, cultural, political, anthropological, and environmental aspects of the region they are operating within” (Hsia 2008, 20). The merits of this approach are that it is software that can be added to the secure internet protocol router (SIPR) network without any additional hardware, all intelligence discipline products could be filed, and collection managers would have a catalogued database which they could browse saving countless hours of recollecting intelligence that had already been collected. The drawbacks to this solution are that it does little to speed up the PCPAD process and that it relies on users to upload intelligence. If an analyst or collection manager does not upload products to the database, then it fails to benefit commanders and policy