U.S. forces streamline intel delivery

NORFOLK, Va., April 3 (UPI) -- The U.S. armed forces are streamlining the delivery of intelligence to active units in real time.

The need to get more intelligence to warfighters faster so they can act on it is fueling big changes in how information is gathered, processed and shared, a U.S. Joint Forces Command official said.

There's an increasing appreciation that the global war on terror is an intelligence war, Christopher Jackson, chief of JFCOM's Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Transformation Division, told the American Forces Press Service. With that appreciation comes a recognition that information has to be made available more quickly and to more people.

"I think there's a clearer understanding that, in some ways, intelligence delayed is intelligence denied," Jackson said.

"Back in the era when we were dealing with the Soviets, we had a lot greater understanding of how they were going to move and when they were going to move and the conditions," Jackson said.

Terrorists, on the other hand, have no rules of engagement or doctrine that guide how they operate. They are highly adaptable and quickly change their tactics. "So we have to try to adapt to and get in front of the situation," Jackson told AFPS. One way to do that is with intelligence.

Traditionally, the U.S. intelligence community operated as a series of independent "stovepipe" systems, all collecting and processing intelligence, but highly compartmentalized and protective of who had access to it. Often, the more pressing concern was protecting how the intelligence was acquired in the first place.