One of the greatest things that an Intelligence Analyst does for his commander is visualize the battlespace. I’m not talking about Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets like hide sites or drones. I’m talking about the ability to take raw data, plot it on a map overlay, and show the commander an area view of relevant activity and its corresponding locations. The commander gets a much better picture of enemy activity or ethno-sectarian violence (or insert activity here) throughout the battlespace by examining the analyst’s overlay. (An overlay is simply the term for removable clear plastic over a map, which is used for tracking events. We never draw on maps. Go get some clear mylar, lay it over your map, and battle track events on the mylar.)
But Intelligence Analysis isn’t just the map or overlay. The Analyst answers the “So what?” of the data. There were murders here, or IEDs here, or looting here — that’s the news. We can get that anywhere at 6 and 10 o’clock. Intelligence Analysts don’t just provide the news, they provide the information in its proper context. We get bonus points for making that intelligence actionable or predictive.
When we get some free time, we’ve been listening to our HomePatrol II scanner, which is so much more than just a simple police scanner. The information relayed by police, fire and EMS units gives us a great indication of the types of events happening around us. Last night, for instance, someone’s step-father got drunk and broke into a neighbor’s shed. EMS was called after a woman took Xanax and got drunk. These are relatively unimportant events for now. But what if we start hearing more traffic about armed robbery or shootings or other violent, gang-related activity? In conjunction with a near-SHTF event, or the actual unwinding of derivatives and our debt-based economy, what’s heard over the police scanner becomes very important for the Intelligence Analyst. This is the collection of vital intelligence information that he needs to do his work.
