Intelligence has two objectives:

First, it provides accurate, timely, and relevant knowledge about the enemy (or potential enemy) and the surrounding environment.

The second intelligence objective is that it assists in protecting friendly forces through counterintelligence. Counterintelligence includes both active and passive measures intended to deny the enemy valuable information about the friendly situation. Counterintelligence also includes activities related to countering hostile espionage, subversion, and terrorism. Counterintelligence directly supports force protection operations by helping the commander deny intelligence to the enemy and plan appropriate security measures.

Stated differently it acts as an early warning system by attempting to provide accurate and timely information about the adversary’s intention, and the surrounding environment. It also provides a counterintelligence tool to deny the adversary valuable information and also to combat terrorism, subversion and espionage. Thus intelligence is protective, exploitative and positive in that it supplies us with positive intelligence about the adversary and protects our own infrastructure. Intelligence thus renders our actions either offensive or defensive.

“Intelligence supports the commander’s force protection needs by estimating an enemy’s intelligence, terrorism, espionage, sabotage, and subversion capabilities as well as recommending countermeasures against those capabilities’’
Today’s war scenario is of the 4th Generation type. Asymmetry has factored in most battle or tactical operations to a great deal. In fact most of the conflicts around the Globe are asymmetrical in nature , with the players in the combat environment being terrorists, insurgents with very limited firepower , elusive and most of the time operating while mobile , very less identifiable with no conventional forces insignia , very limited personnel strength , distributed and sporadic operational tactics, undefined infrastructure logistical capabilities on one hand and a national power or allies with a formidable military, attack and defense platforms and a central military organization with subordinate headquarters and units spread at unique identifiable geographic locations. Hence not to be subdued by this disparity between themselves and govt. forces the asymmetric adversary

resorts to sudden, sporadic, hit and run type attacks on the forces bases , installations , camps , ordnance depots, communication systems, personnel and information systems with the sole objective to degrade the forces combat capability and kinetic termination of its key leaders at top echelons or middle and ground level tactical units. A kill is a kill. A kinetic hit is a kinetic hit. Whether it’s a bazooka attack destroying an armored personnel carriers drive system immobilizing it or whether it’s a timed explosion resulting in the destruction of a combat helicopter in the hangar , the end result is the same….we have lost combat capability. In this fashion attacks on our installations,camps,bases,personnel and information systems/communications are designed to degrade our capabilities, exhaust our ordnance on nonexistent targets or dummy targets / proxy targets (deceptive measures of the adversary) –this realm of Threat to our forces itself while in transit or before deployment or in personnel stations and bases and the Govt. forces actions to thwart these threats with intelligence feeds predicating the plans/COAs design is called Force Protection.

CI supports Command Force Protection efforts by:

∙Identifying the potential threat forces and multidisciplinary threat intelligence

∙Identifying threat capabilities and intent together with the most likely course of action and the most dangerous course of action (keeping all the possible COAs parallel for review)

∙Using deception to mislead the enemy about our capabilities, vulnerabilities and intentions.