Formulating the Intelligence Mission

Keshav Mazumdar

Antiterrorism Officer & Sr VP ATAB

Anti Terrorism Accreditation Board

The Intelligence Element

Mission Formulation-The Intelligence Element

• Mission drives intelligence and intelligence in turn drives tactical operations or battle.
• Stating the mission as protecting our forces from enemy attack is not a well defined mission statement.

Intelligence for Mission Planning

• We need to take into account the threats before they materialize and the attacks before they are launched by the enemy.
• Proper Mission Planning and Analysis is required to understand the battle.

Defend

• Defending our installation, our troops, our information is a priority.
• We need to understand our vulnerabilities, our weaknesses.
• At the same time we need to know the threat so as to strengthen those weaknesses.
• What exactly is the threat aimed at.

HUMINT/CI To know the Enemy

• To properly defend ourselves we have to both harden ourselves (meaning pose before the enemy a hard target) and at the same time resort aggressively to HUMINT/CI to know the enemy and hunt him down.
• Our primary Defend mission is to protect our battlespace, our Area of operations.

Diminishing the Enemy Threat

• Diminishing the enemy’s resources is our next mission. The enemy’s logistical networks need to be identified.
• All facilitators of the enemy, its support systems, its weapons caches, its safe houses where it stacks communications equipment, weaponry and all supply routes need to be identified with aggressive application of intelligence.

Good Military Tactics are to Destroy the Enemy Logistic Support

• We need to choke off, destroy these logistical and facilitation networks, thus crippling the enemy's combat capability.

Denying the Enemy

• Denying the enemy a pull-back safe area or safe haven is our next mission.
• The insurgents resort to hit and run tactics.

Celebrating a Victory

• When they hit us, attack us they do so with the surety that they have places to retreat to, back-up places where they are hidden, safe. The stronger this assurance the greater impunity with which they launch attacks.

Cutting the Enemy off

• They also fall back in the human terrain—the communities of our area of operations where they easily mingle.

Deny them the Safe Area

• Using intelligence as well as counterintelligence we need to identify these physical and human terrain based safe havens.
• We must identify the community members who lend them support.

Strike Hard

• We need to strike and strike hard these safe havens, make them feel very unsafe.
• It is in these safe havens that planning of operations are conducted.

Surprise Attack

• It is here they are least aware of any impending surprise attack.
• We can catch them off-guard and destroy them if and only if with the proper application of intelligence we are able to locate these safe areas of the enemy.

Deny them their Safe Havens

• We must make it a point, a very strong point at that , that if they attack us by encroaching on our area of operations, we attack them with 10 times the might at ‘’their’’ safe havens. We must Deny them the sanctuary of safe havens, fall back positions—they will have nowhere to escape.

Destroy Their Sense of Security

• Defend, Diminish and Deny all go into making the enemy very vulnerable to our attacks.
• We destroy their sense of safety while hardening their attack objectives and choking off their supplies.

Defeating the Enemy

• This, if properly executed, that is the 3 mission objectives of Defend, Diminish and Deny , then we can be sure of defeating the enemy right to the core.

The Final Mission

• Thus DEFEAT BECOMES OUR FOURTH AND FINAL MISSION OBJECTIVE.

The Toothless Tiger

• Thus Intelligence is not only crucial but an ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY FUNCTION to determine enemy intentions in advance. Without intelligence we are NOWHERE—its like the tiger without its teeth.

Weapons Must have Good Direction

• We may be formidable with advanced weaponry platforms with accurate delivery capabilities, we might have a formidable manpower strength but we fail to realize that intelligence, although it is in the information domain and not belonging to the firepower BOS

Intelligence is the Foundation

• NEVERTHELESS IT HAS AN EQUAL DESTRUCTIVE CAPABILITY…DESTROYING ENEMY INTENTIONS AND ALSO SUPPORTED BY CI DESTROYING ENEMY COMBAT CAPABILITY, ITS PHYSICAL AND HUMAN RESOURCES BY PROVIDING TARGETING GUIDANCE TO THE COMMANDER.
• Intelligence is the foundation of military operations

Must Have a Great CI/Intelligence Program to Defeat Our Enemies

• We need intelligence and counterintelligence to be always in the lead.
• Intelligence is the most important prerequisite for any mission to be successful. Without intelligence, however well armed we may be, however qualified officers we have, however strong our support and ancillary units may be, we can never be sure of defeating the enemy.
• Hence we should formulate our mission by taking into account these 4 basic mission variables.