Strategic Intelligence to Meet Institutional Planning Needs of the Twenty First Century

摘要

The Army is a primary consumer of strategic intelligence for force structure and acquisition planning. At this level the intelligence process integrates economic political military environmental technological and social information for use in assessments and forecasts. These products are pivotal to strategy formulation and development of supporting planning for future requirements. Relevant information must be collected integrated assessed and distributed to planners. Yet sometimes these efforts fail to have the desired impact on planning. Failure to effectively exploit the intelligence systems in planning is not a new problem but it is one that deserves a fresh look in the wake of the complex post-September 11th environment. The Army today must prepare to support a more diverse array of joint missions than ever before. This paper will examine the frequency impacts and underlying causes of intelligence failures. It will examine changes in the planning process which will impact intelligence requirements and suggest to problems identified. The traditional approach to long range planning is to construct representative scenarios and plan against them. Today services are moving closer to joint capabilities-based planning. When this change occurs the impact will be profound. The Army Intelligence process should anticipate this change.