U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Directorate of Intelligence sought RAND Corporation assistance in developing a repeatable process to measure the effectiveness of its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations to evaluate current performance and plan for, influence, and resource future operations. The authors identified measures of effectiveness and of performance to gauge the value and success of ISR support and requirements.

Cover: Measuring Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Effectiveness at the United States Central Command
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Measuring Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Effectiveness at the United States Central Command

by David Luckey, Bradley M. Knopp, Sasha Romanosky, Amanda Wicker, David Stebbins, Cortney Weinbaum, Sunny D. Bhatt, Hilary Reininger, Yousuf Abdelfatah, Sarah Heintz

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Research Questions

  1. What methodology can be used to measure the performance and effectiveness of ISR operations and activities?
  2. Can such a methodology provide a repeatable, reproducible performance management process and framework that captures and monitors how CENTCOM ISR performs throughout its lifecycle of planning, tasking, execution, and reporting?

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Directorate of Intelligence sought RAND Corporation assistance in developing a repeatable process to measure the effectiveness of its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations to evaluate current performance and plan for, influence, and resource future operations. The authors of this report used a mixed set of methodologies for the analysis. They linked the effect CENTCOM wishes to achieve with its customer base to the five major roles assigned to ISR assets at CENTCOM. For each role, the authors identified CENTCOM-unique measures of effectiveness (MoEs) and measures of performance (MoPs) to evaluate the value and success of ISR support and requirements. They assessed the sufficiency of available data sources and identified new data required to complete the metrics, finding that MoPs must focus on outputs (quantitative) and MoEs on outcomes (qualitative) and that both sets of metrics must be defined in the context of their uses. Consideration of currently available data and databases uncovered issues with data heritage, curation, and volume that must be addressed to ensure that analytic outcomes using the data are reliable. Researchers provided an associated visualization tool to display the assessment results, which they determined to be the best way to allow analysts and other stakeholders to use the data to support decisionmaking.

Key Findings

  • Higher-level assessment strategies usually require inputs from multiple stakeholders, while system-level assessments might require the support of only a few personnel.
  • Assessments that aim to inform either equipment acquisition or resource planning will require a different set of forward-looking metrics than the metrics used to assess current operations.
  • Similar data elements may inform a variety of assessments across organizations and operations, but how those data elements are used will vary.

Table of Contents

  • Chapter One

    Introduction

  • Chapter Two

    Literature Review Results

  • Chapter Three

    CENTCOM ISR Roles, Sub-roles, and Activities

  • Chapter Four

    Assessment Development

  • Chapter Five

    Data Visualization

  • Chapter Six

    Observations, Findings, and Conclusions

  • Appendix A

    Literature Review

  • Appendix B

    ISR Metrics: Sample Assessment Framework and Rating System

  • Appendix C

    CENTCOM ISR Mission and Metrics Assessment

  • Appendix D

    Metrics Visualization

Research conducted by

This research was sponsored by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Directorate of Intelligence (J2) and conducted within the Cyber and Intelligence Policy Center (CIPC) of the RAND National Defense Research Institute.

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