A Broken Intelligence Information System

The responses to the Flynn paper from various places are quite interesting, and raise a number of interesting questions. I need to start by making something clear. I have a limited understanding of the intelligence community and don't claim to be an expert, although I do believe I am well informed by smart and experienced people. I need to emphasize I have a professional interest in the report being released through CNAS, while the details of the report itself are more of a curiosity. The distinction being the first one relates to my line of work, and the second relates to my personal interests.

Lets examine several responses.

Tom Ricks endorses the paper as "one of the most informative documents I've ever read on contemporary intelligence issues," and goes on to say "the report has the effect of an order from a two-star general -- I believe that's a first in think tank history. As I understand it, the paper was released through CNAS because Gen. Flynn wanted to reach beyond his own chain of command and his own community and talk to people such as commanders of deploying infantry units about what kind of intelligence they should be demanding."

This is an analyst of CNAS making the incredible claim that Gen. Flynn felt it necessary to go through a think tank to give orders to subordinate operational commanders, which implies the chain of command within Afghanistan is systematically broken. Flynn apparently is unable to reach beyond his chain of command and his own community to provide guidance to people such as operational commanders? Hmm... There may be chain of command issues, but this would not be it.

Tom Ricks is the Mark McGuire of the FP blogosphere, he either hits a home run or strikes out. Tom Rick's analysis of the paper itself is good, but his conclusions that the JS needs a think tank to issue orders down the chain of command is just terrible. If there are chain of communication issues, they go up - not down - the chain of command from Flynn (and likely McChrystal).

The dynamic I believe applies to the public release is the question whether there is confusion between the administration and the Generals in the field on strategy. Spencer Ackerman does an excellent job identifying the desired objective of intelligence within the Flynn report.

Flynn says that U.S. intelligence in Afghanistan “overemphasize[s] detailed information about the enemy at the expense of the political, economic, and cultural environment that supports it.” In other words, intelligence in Afghanistan is enemy-centric, when it needs to be population-centric, much like the military operations it supports. Flynn wants intelligence reports on “census data and patrol debriefs; minutes from shuras with local farmers and tribal leaders; after-action reports from civil affairs officers and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs); polling data and atmospherics reports from psychological operations and female engagement teams; and translated summaries of radio broadcasts that influence local farmers, not to mention the field observations of Afghan soldiers, United Nations officials, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).” Instead, U.S. intelligence “seems much too mesmerized by the red of the Taliban’s cape.”

Judah Grunstein identifies a major potential strategic mismatch with the Flynn report and policy.

The recent Afghanistan strategy review, as articulated by President Barack Obama, explicitly prioritized the military targeting component of the Afghanistan war over its nation-building component. Since then, there have been some reports that the former is being taken care of by more shadowy means. But there have also been some suggesting that the military command has not yet renounced its intentions to pursue the COIN tactics that seem to fit more into the latter.

By explicitly calling for a restructuring of the in-theater intelligence apparatus to emphasize the sort of civilian development efforts that characterize nation-building, Flynn's report might fit well into the doctrinal context of COIN. But it muddies the strategic waters, at best.

This is very good analysis, because it highlights the root of the problem - there appears to still be some strategic confusion regarding the objectives in Afghanistan. If the US Army is conducting a COIN operation in Afghanistan, then Flynn's report is a blueprint to build a working intelligence information system for the Afghanistan theater. If the objective is more limited to combat operations, then the Flynn report is a blueprint for how an intelligence information system should be developed by the Army in a COIN environment - but has only limited application for Afghanistan.

Laura Rozen ties in this strategic confusion with her reporting:

A senior Pentagon official says Flynn's report "caught everybody by surprise - his commander, Centcom, and this building."

"Forgetting for a moment the venue in which this was published, and keeping with the caveat that [Secretary of Defense Robert Gates] has not read it yet, I think that he historically has been supportive of people taking very critical looks at themselves," Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

Did Flynn not have outlets within the chain of command where he could convey this information?

"There are many alternatives to disseminate it -- both within the building and outside," Morrell said.

One concern, the Pentagon official said: the report was not vetted for security clearance issues.

Another contact said that it was his understanding Flynn's report was cleared by his commander, "M4" -- Gen. McChrystal.

The reports bottom line is that intelligence is unable to support troops in combat. Many will examine why and what to do about it, particularly now that the report is public - or maybe because the report is public.

If there is a chain of command issue here, it isn't in communicating down to the operational commanders as Tom Ricks suggests, rather it is in communicating up to the White House. Why would Gen. McChrystal support the unclassified public route as opposed to the direct internal route of his chain of command (Gates) towards addressing these problems? One reaches a completely different target audience when distributing information through CNAS as opposed to through the DoD chain of command, and no one in the Army relies on a Think Tank to issue orders to operational commanders. Going through CNAS to issue this report means the target audience is in Washington, DC and the audience is not only inside the Pentagon.

If indeed Gen. McChrystal gave the stamp of approval himself to go through CNAS instead of the traditional DoD route, then maybe Andrew Exum is missing the point. Why did Gen. McChrystal feel it necessary to jump his chain of command (Secretary Gates) with CNAS to reach the White House with this subject? The action of releasing through CNAS doesn't indicate a problem between Gen McCrystal and the Obama administration, rather issues communicating up the normal chain of command channels through the Pentagon. The target audience must in part be the Obama administration, otherwise CNAS wouldn't have been the desired approach.

When one combines the venue chosen for release with the details in the report itself, it suggests there are broad systematic problems with the intelligence information system of the Afghanistan theater beyond the ability of the DoD to address effectively. The report discusses in detail the sense functions of the intelligence community to detect stimuli from the battlespace environment, the decide functions to aggregate (fuse, integrate...) the sensory data and make decisions, and discusses the needed act functions to execute the decisions. When we see the release in the open source, it suggests serious issues exist not only within the communications that link sense, decide, and act together in theater, but link back to Washington as well.

On this blog I have consistently made the case that communications is a principle of war in the 21st century, and without a robust and working information system the US Navy would fail to win control of the maritime battlespace. I believe that position can equally be applied to land forces, and a broken information system - particularly in intelligence - is a weakness that the enemy can defeat us with.

Update: Nathan Hodge with brilliant reporting at Danger Room on how CNAS handled the issue on their end.