Advisory board says military must define role in homeland defense.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold
• Position: Up Front

The Pentagon needs to improve and integrate its maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets with those of the Departments of Homeland Security and Transportation, CIA and FBI, according to a recent Defense Science Board study.

Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities, cited the study as evidence that the Defense Department has failed to articulate its role in homeland security.

"There are many gaps that need to be filled and many new organizational relationships that must be exercised and refined," Saxton said at a committee hearing.

"There are so many assets to protect, so many modes of attack available to adversaries and so many organizations involved, that--understandably--both the conceptual framework and the capabilities required are still immature," the DSB said.

Among its recommendations:

* Improve information gathering, assurance and collection. The department should establish a more robust human intelligence capability. The Pentagon's human intelligence service "must be reinvented to provide clandestine battlefield support and augmented technical collection," the report said. The department needs to place operatives in areas where terrorists are known to exist.

* Upgrades are needed in all areas of intelligence collection. The analytic component of intelligence needs to be more highly integrated with collection and domestically derived intelligence needs to be more effectively integrated with foreign intelligence.

The DSB urged the Pentagon to do more to protect defense-related, mission-critical infrastructure. While some good work is being done, the DSB said, the Pentagon must do more to address the problem, particularly in areas outside its direct control.

The assistant secretary for homeland defense and Northern Command should rake the lead in identifying and redressing mission-critical infrastructure vulnerabilities. The undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics should address defense-industry weaknesses.

Cyber security needs to be better integrated into the Defense Department's protection efforts, which traditionally have focused on physical attacks, the DSB said. It recommended assigning cyber security to the U.S. Strategic Command, supported with research by the Defense Advanced Research...