REQUIREMENTS AND ASSET MANAGEMENT SUBUNIT
Description of process in collection management

The  Intelligence  Collection  Management  System  comprises  of  a  Collection  Management Officer and CI/HUMINT specialists and the CI/HUMINT collectors.The CMO takes charge of the collection plan and tasks his specialists with constantly keeping an eye on current intelligence requirements as well as intelligence requirements that surface as tactical situations changes rapidly during combat due to the highly fluid nature of the latter.This tracking of all intelligence  requirements is extremely important as collection operations  are  driven  by  intelligence  requirements—the  correct  IRs.Hence  the  CMO  ensures  that  the collectors are properly focusing on the prioritized intelligence  requirements.That  also includes the passive HUMINT collectors like Civil Affairs,Military Police,Medical units,Psychological ops and Information ops.During combat operations,tactical intelligence systems develop problems.ISR Ops during combat MUST be synchronized.But as tactical situations change during combat rapidly forcing development of more different intelligence  requirements  the  ISR  assets  need  to  be  retasked  and  synchronized  again  and  that  too in  pace with the changing scenario and that proves to be very difficult.Intelligence  exploitation  operations  too  suffer.During  operations  pulling  intelligence  from  higher headquarters  or  feeding  intelligence  inputs  as  per  requests  from  subordinate  units  again  proves difficult.Proper  dissemination  to  the  maneuver  division  Commander  and  subordinate brigades,battalions,units  suffers  due  to  inadequate  communication  systems  and  database management/processing capability.The commander,the staff, and the higher and lower headquarters across the depth and width of the battlefield must coordinate with the CM section while formulating plans for future operations  and  to support ongoing missions.Variations in enemy actions or changes in perception of the enemy’s movements give rise to new sets of intelligence requirements and the CM section should take this into account.The battlefield is an area of  high  fluidity  and  hence  changes  must  be  expected  and  Requirements  Management  must  be  flexible enough to incorporate these changes.The  two  most  critical  steps  in  collection  management  is  identifying  and  prioritizing  the  intelligence requirements.To  this  end  6  areas  of  interest  must  be  considered  and  they  are  force  protection,situation development,targeting,battle  damage  assessment  BDA,indications  and  warning  and  IPB.The  intelligence requirements  stems  from  these  areas  and  all  of  the  competing  requirements  needs  to  be consolidated,.Thereafter  the  collection  plan  is  created  and  the  scarce  IEW  resources  are  tasked  more efficiently.Requirements  Management,Mission  Management  and  Asset  Management  constitute  the  Collection Management process.They are  treated  separately but together constitute integrated  operations  as a whole.The six steps in the CM process are:

1.  Develop Requirements,
2.  Develop a Collection Plan,
3.  Task/Request Collection,
4.  Disseminate,
5.  Evaluate Reporting,
6.  Update Collection Planning

While  devising  the  Collection  plan,the  intelligence  officer  in  charge  of  designing  the  plan  (henceforth known as Collection Manager CM) takes into account the following:
 Commanders Priority Intelligence Requirements
Low Priority Intelligence Requirements
 Requests from subordinate units,
 Taskings from higher HQ’s
 Intelligence requirements for targeting purposes
Now,he  prioritizes  these  keeping  in  mind  the  Commands  intelligence  needs  and  the  commanders  priority intelligence needs.When BICCE study was initially conducted with the development of possible enemy COAs , the intelligence analyst  attempts  to  develop  all  indicators  of  these  COAs.(Indicators  are  those  details  of  enemy action/inaction that may suggest an enemy COA.COLLECTION FORMATThere are two collection plans.One designed for conventional battlefield operations whereas the other caters to a LIC  environment.LIC  battlefield operations tend to be dispersed.The PIR and IR’s  are  highly diverse and collection becomes a tough task.In the latter case the following steps are followed:
 List the PIRs and IRs,priotize  them  and enumerate them using control numbers and  alphabets.This helps in prioritization.
 Now ascertain the indicators
 Determine potential indicators-prioritize those that will answer the PIR and IR.
 Delete all indicators that do not answer the intelligence requirements.
 Develop specific intelligence requirements.These are the requirements as stated by the commander, prioritized and general,broken down into manageable specific requirements.A PIR may have several specific intelligence requirements.
 Analyse these SIRs and the target characteristics keeping all the indicators in perspective.
 Finally prioritize the SIRs and determine the suitable collection discipline/platform/agency keeping its  capabilities,limitations,backlog  of  collection  taskings  allotted  to  it  and  whether  adjacent units,lower units are also using it.
 Prepare the tasking list by creating a prioritized SIR list and deploy the collectors.

CM’S need a thorough knowledge of the threat,the characteristics of the AO and the general capabilities of collection assets before they can translate the commander’s PIR and IR into indicators.This includes a detailed knowledge of the—
 Threat organization, equipment, and doctrine.
 Biographical data on major personalities.
 Present and past performance of units and organizations.
 Terrain and weather constraints.
 Patterns of current operations.
 Degree of popular support.AGENCIES AND AGENCYCOLLECTION PRIORITY.The  collection  manager  decides  on  the  agency/agencies/assets  to  be  tasked  with  the  collection.To  this  he must  judge  the  capabilities  ,  availability  and  constraints  of  the  assets  with  regard  to  the  collection priorities(the intelligence requirements,PIR,IR,SIRs). These include factors such as—
 Frequency ranges for intercept radios.
 Aircraft mission durations.
 Number of flights.
 Mobility.
 Linguistic capabilities.
 The assets may be organic or external
The  collection  manager  then  compares  all  the  agencies  or  assets  who  can  answer  a  particular  SIR  and chooses the best one depending on the 3 factors.Then he selects the next best one and so on thus creating a prioritized assets/agencies listing. Next, he determines which agencyor asset can best answer the SIR and prioritizes them.(EX: CI Team=1,CA Team=2,HUMINT Team =3 in answering SIR-4 which is ‘’Report strangers movement in NAI-alpha

THE TASKING LISTThe CMO prioritizes the SIR and tasks appropriatesources to answer them. The list of taskings for eachsource also should be prioritized.SIRs 1 to 10 are prioritized as follows:
1=3
2=6
3=1
4=7
5=5
6=2
7=4
8=10
9=9
10=8
Team (Support ops team)is tasked with SIR 3,5,8,10.
We see the prioritized tasking becomes: SIR3,SIR5,SIR10,SIR8
The team will report about SIR3 first,then SIR5,then SIR10 and finally SIR8.
Example:
This means the CMO must providethe SOT-A (1) with a prioritized tasking list as follows:
1 — Report time, frequency, and location ofinsurgent radio traffic or EW activity (SIR 28).
2 — Report the number, size, equipment,composition, route, and time of suspected insurgentpatrols in the area (SIR 6).
3 — Report the location, quantity, and type ofunexplained firings in the area (SIR 1).

Interrogators
Interrogators must know exactly,  verbatim,the PIRs  so that they can rephrase the SIRs in various  ways  to extract  information  from  sources  who  may  or  may  not  be  acquainted  with  the  required  information.If  the main PIR  (which  the  interrogator  knows verbatim)is  ‘’Report  on the  existence  of  enemy  camp in  NAI6’’  the source might not know anything at all of insurgent exfiltration or entry to the area,might not have seen any vehicular traffic etc
.Indicator Examples
Indicators can be broken into three categories:• Immediate threat indicators.• Preparatory indicators.• Secondary indicators.All three categories appear at strategic, operational, and tactical levels.

Immediate Threat Indicators.  Imminent threat activities or a threat which is already in progress give rise to  indicators  known  as  Immediate  threat  indicators.We  take  into  consideration  all  factors  possible  like activities,tactics,movemernts,current  dispositions,propaganda,and  any  preparations  indicating  a  dangerous course of action.The following might be good indicators:Recovery of huge cache of arms and ammunition in close proximity to any objectiveIncreased troop movement towards objectiveVery aggressive rhetoric by the military leadership of the enemy nation.

Preparatory indicators: Before the decided course of action/s is/are undertaken there are preparations to be made.Indicators  of  such  preparations  are  termed  Preparatory  threat  indicators.We  must  analyse multidimensional  threat  intelligence,planning,training  activities  and  logistics.Examples  of  such  indicators could be:
Diplomatic support by other countriesIncreased media rhetoric
Very aggressive TV discussions
Increase in training tempo
Lightly armed reconnaissance who engage and break contact quickly
MockOvert/covert weapons shipments
Regional countries showing support for the enemy government’s policy
UN embargos/sanctions ignored by countries who support the policies of the enemy nation
Increased media support for the enemy country
Secondary indicators: The local population is affected by any threat activity.The population is affected by tactical  preparatory  indicators  of  the  enemy  and  we  can  thus  observe  reflections  in  the  economy, commodities and population to infer the preparations.We might observe that:A fear psychosis has developed among the population, most schools unattended,and locals avoiding contact with the authorities and streets deserted before eveningHuge purchases of rations by locals, stockpiling of medicines and emergency stuff at home.Shortages reported in non-lethal material.Very  less  presence  of  their  community  members  in  festivals,places  of  entertainment.Cinema  theaters reporting huge losses in revenue as very low attendance.
Now the CM in collaboration with the intelligence analyst attempts to assign a set of specific information requirements  to  address  each  of  the   indicators   --  the  overall  focus  being  to  answer  each  prioritized intelligence requirement. These SIRs go into making the collection plan.The CM unit must constantly keep a track  of  the  progress,and  any  incoming  information  may  also  part  a  play  in  outstanding  information requirements or in any future information requirement tabled for tasking to the collection platforms.The CM section continuosly evaluates the collection/reporting processes and disseminates the required intelligence to the Commander.
SIR is a direct function of enemy Order of Battle and the gaps in intelligence.We can have a huge number of SIRs as each PIR can generate several SIRs /SORs(A division can have upto 12 PIRs for current operations and  envisage  an  equal  number  or  more  for  future  operations.Note  here  that  we  have  several  intelligence collection platforms—HUMINT,SIGINT,IMINT,MASINT.Now the collection manager will assign different SIRs/SORs    to  each  collection  platform.Thus  overall  we  have  a  huge  task  at  hand  as  now  the  collection manager  unit  may  have  to  handle  hundreds  of  information  requirements  while  combat  operations  are underway.Each  PIR  may  have  a  number  of  SIRs.  This  number  would  also  include  the  intelligence  requirements  to support targeting, lower priority information requirements, requests for information from subordinate units, or  taskings  from  higher  headquarters.Hence  proper  synchronization  with  operations  and deconfliction(particularly in case of HUMINT/CI collection processes) is a prime necessity.Thereafter the step of preparing the collection plan is undertaken by the collection manager.The collection plan is created using the PIRs,indicators,SIRs,SORs and all the collection assets at his disposal. Regarding the available assets for collection ,factors such as accuracy,range,platform type and technical capabilities-- these are matched with the target characteristics in question and the most appropriate collection resource/s is/are  allocated.Redundancy  is  important  here  and  the  assets  need  also  to  be  integrated  and  if  there  is  an admixture of assets then that has to be carefully planned.
Mission management   is about  how  the  collection  task  will  have  to  be  executed.A  collection  strategy  is formed  keeping  in  perspective  collection  taskings  to   subordinate  units,support  requests  to  higher  and adjacent units  and exploitation  of all  intelligence  inputs  available from  other agencies  at the  corps,theatre and national levels. The important objective guiding the strategy formation is synchronization of collection and dissemination schedule with the PIR.Here again it is critical that operations be synchronized with the collection plan.The taskings must be issued to  the  collection  platforms  as  quickly  as  possible.  This  also  involves  specific  intelligence  exploitation operations and systems management.A Sample of the ProcessIf  the  commander’s  PIR  and  JR  demand  to  know  ifthe  enemy  will  attack,  focus  on  those  enemy activities and preparations which will confirm or deny the enemy’s capabilities and probable COA.Steps:Immediately  first  focus  on  ‘’immediate  threat  indicators’’.Thus  during  prioritizing  immediate  threat indicators  translated  into  SIRs  must  be  given  high  priority.It  is  important  to  not  waste  time and  create and deliver the SIRs quickly to the collection teams.That is don’t delay in tasking out to the teams.At the same time when immediate threat indicators are being looked into go ahead with   deciding on SIRs for preparatory  and  secondary  indicators.The  same  SIR  may  have  to  be  specified  differently  to  different collection platforms in accordance with the nature of the latter.For example we need information about insurgent hideout.Now the SIGINT unit may be given this SIR: Report on any radio intercept in named area beta.The  same  requirement  has to  be  put forth to the HUMINT team as ‘’Report on  any frequent  insurgent  movement  in  to  the  named  area  beta’’  or  to  the  IMINT  team  ‘’Report  on  any  camouflaged structure , cleared foliage area.foot tracks in named area of interest beta’