Sam Culper
I just wanted to jot down a few thoughts about intelligence analysis as it applies to measuring progress and developments (both positive and negative).
In many ways, tracking conflict is like tracking a business: you have profits and you have losses, and sales volume, and margins, and variable costs, and overhead, and on and on. At the end of each week, month, quarter, or year, we need to know how much we spent versus how much we sold so we can determine the business’s profitability. Well, the same goes for conflict.
In the most recent theaters of war, the military has relied on an event tracking system called the Combined Information Data Network Exchange (CIDNE). (Take a gander at this website to get an idea of its functions: http://www.issinc.com/products/cidne/). It’s here where analysts and commanders (or their staffs) are able to call up detailed information about what was happening in the battlespace.
Combat-proven in harsh Iraq and Afghanistan environments, CIDNE is deployed worldwide. CIDNE supports Operations, HUMINT, Targeting, Information Operations, Engagement, Civil Affairs, Human Terrain, Indirect Fires, and Counter-IED communities, and for many it has become the primary tool for authoritative data.
