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Military Intelligence

Military intelligence includes information on other countries' military forces, plans, and operations gained through a variety of collection methods. RAND analyzes this intelligence to help civilian policymakers and military leaders understand political and military trends around the world, the sources of potential regional conflict, and emerging threats to the global security environment, and provides recommendations on how best to employ information-gathering techniques and technologies.

Research Brief

Improving Intelligence Support for Operations in the Information Environment

Challenges to effective intelligence support for operations in the information environment (OIE) can be addressed by improving processes, prioritizing support for OIE, training and educating personnel, and optimally allocating personnel.

Dec 9, 2020
Report

Intelligence Support for Operations in the Information Environment: Dividing Roles and Responsibilities Between Intelligence and Information Professionals

Operations in the information environment require close coordination between intelligence and information operations personnel, but this does not often occur in practice. A review of these challenges highlighted a range of potential solutions.

Dec 9, 2020
Report

Operationally Relevant Artificial Training for Machine Learning: Improving the Performance of Automated Target Recognition Systems

The authors explore whether an object-detection model trained on artificial images could evaluate real images as an automated target recognition system, an important advancement in artificial intelligence and machine learning for the U.S military.

Nov 18, 2020
Report

Why America Fails in Irregular Warfare

A memoir drawn from four decades of experience in the U.S. Army explores the strengths and limitations of America's irregular warfare capability. The author, who often saw success at the tactical level only to be followed by strategic muddling and eventual failure, offers ideas on how to develop a world-class way of irregular war.

Jul 29, 2020
Report

Frameworks for Assessing USEUCOM Efforts to Inform, Influence, and Persuade

Campaigns to inform, influence, and persuade a range of foreign audiences are critical to achieving key U.S. national security objectives, but it can be challenging to assess the effectiveness of these efforts. How can assessment design and planning support U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) efforts?

Jul 2, 2020
Commentary

South Korea Should Consider Sticking with Intelligence-Sharing Pact with Japan

South Korea announced its intent to withdraw from an intelligence-sharing arrangement with Japan. There are four reasons that Seoul should strongly consider reversing course.

Nov 5, 2019
Blog

Roberta Wohlstetter: A Military Analyst Ahead of Her Time

RAND researcher Roberta Wohlstetter is known for her theory about why the attack on Pearl Harbor took the United States by surprise. Her book was later used as a lens for analyzing the Cuban Missile Crisis and the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Mar 7, 2019
Report

Science-Based Scenario Design: A Proposed Method to Support Political-Strategic Analysis

How can nonmilitary factors be used in defense planning? The authors distinguish between political-strategic and military decisions and discuss recent findings regarding crisis and war variables to create science-based structured scenarios.

Feb 18, 2019
Commentary

Intelligence Losses Pose Large Risks as U.S. Troops Head Home

Departing theaters such as Syria and Afghanistan carries a host of associated risks, challenges and potential benefits. Leaders would be well served to factor into the debate the importance of U.S. intelligence collection capabilities, its connection to U.S. presence overseas and its role in anticipating current and future threats.

Jan 24, 2019
Commentary

Explaining the Defense Intelligence Agency's (DIA) Critical Role in National Security

Despite its varied roles and responsibilities, the DIA can be boiled down to just two core missions: intelligence analysis and intelligence collection. Having a better understanding of these core missions could help to properly frame the agency’s value to the intelligence, military, and policymaking communities.

Jan 11, 2019
Report

Strategic Warning on NATO's Eastern Flank: Pitfalls, Prospects, and Limits

Russian military modernization raises concerns about the Intelligence Community's (IC's) ability to warn of Russian aggression, particularly on NATO's eastern flank. Using themes from past events, the report makes recommendations to improve warning.

Mar 7, 2018
Commentary

Presidential Intelligence Briefings: The Process Is Working. But Is Trump Listening?

President Trump receives intelligence briefings on a fairly regular basis and he appears engaged in discussions with senior staff and the intelligence community about content. Ideally, this process is informing his national security decisionmaking.

Feb 15, 2018
Blog

Mert Davies: All-Star Pioneer of the Cosmos

Merton Davies spent his early years using satellite imagery to spy on terrestrial targets. His work led to the first successful reconnaissance satellite, Corona. Later, he used deep-space photographs to map the planets in our solar system.

Jan 5, 2018
Report

Assessing Competencies and Proficiency of Army Intelligence Analysts Across the Career Life Cycle

This report describes the development and implementation of a process to assess key analytic competencies and proficiency of the U.S. Army's analysts in the 35F military occupational specialty and the design of a protocol for ongoing evaluation.

Jul 27, 2017
Report

Reimagining the Character of Urban Operations for the U.S. Army: How the Past Can Inform the Present and Future

Provides a historical analysis of how militaries have deployed light and mechanized infantry with armored forces during close urban combat, to identify the comparative advantages and costs of this warfighting approach and lessons learned.

Mar 13, 2017
Commentary

Adapting the President's Daily Brief to Trump

President-elect Trump is receiving President Obama's version of the daily briefing; it has yet to be tailored to his preferences, to which every president is entitled. The intelligence community should seek to adapt the briefing to maximize its interest and relevance to the president-elect.

Jan 6, 2017
Report

Defining the Roles, Responsibilities, and Functions for Data Science Within the Defense Intelligence Agency

This report addresses and recommends potential methods for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to identify, hire, and organize data scientists.

Nov 18, 2016
Report

Preparing for the Future of Air Force Intelligence Analysis

Given the recent focus on irregular warfare, it is essential that the United States Air Force has the capability to provide intelligence analysis in support of a broader range of operations. Past operations offer key lessons to help prepare for USAF intelligence in the future.

Apr 27, 2016
Commentary

ISIS vs Special Ops

However critical to the fight against ISIS, using special operations forces for raids represents only half of the needed military adjustment. The other half is the effort to build indigenous forces capable of taking and holding territory in Iraq and Syria.

Dec 8, 2015
Journal Article

Assessing and Evaluating DoD Inform, Influence, and Persuade Efforts: Guidance for Practitioners

This article aims to establish effective principles and best practices for the assessment of IIP efforts from across sectors and distill them for future application in DoD.

Oct 22, 2015

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RAND Topic:
Military Intelligence

Topic Synonyms:
MI

Research conducted by

Researcher Spotlight

Edmund J. Burke

Senior International Defense Researcher

Ed Burke is a senior international defense researcher at RAND and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Burke’s work at RAND focuses primarily on military and security issues in East Asia including vulnerability methodologies and assessments, regional security competition in the…
Eric Landree

Associate Director, Cyber and Intelligence Policy Center, National Security Research Division

Eric Landree is an associate director of the Cyber and Intelligence Policy Center within the National Security Research Division, a senior engineer at RAND, and a faculty member at Pardee RAND Graduate School. He was previously associate research department director for the Engineering and…

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