Army trying to get better grasp on war zone intelligence.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Upfront

Seeking to improve soldiers' intelligence-gathering skills and cultural awareness, the Army is introducing a number of changes to its training and education programs.

Under the banner of "every soldier is a sensor," the Army is pushing the notion that ground troops are primary sources of valuable battlefield intelligence.

Throughout the occupation and counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, an Army team of intelligence experts observed that during routine patrols, U.S. soldiers would interact with Iraqis and other local people, collecting potentially valuable data. But the Army has no established process to capture that data quickly enough to turn it into practical intelligence.

During a three-month period last year, for example, of 400,000 patrols in Iraq, only 6,000 reports were generated. "That's not good," said Lt. Col. Steve Iwicki, Army deputy director for actionable intelligence. Although a division commander may have up to 15,000 sensors on the battlefield, human intelligence prove to be the most helpful in complex war zones such as Iraq, be explained.

Starting with basic training, all Army schools, including non-commissioned officer and warrant officer courses, will teach the "every soldier is a sensor" concept, Iwicki told reporters. "The goal is to make soldiers better observers and reporters of information."

While the Army Training and Doctrine Command updates the school curricula, units preparing for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan are trained by "mobile teams" from the Army Intelligence School, based in Fort Huachuca, Ariz. "They train forces in the field to do better tactical questioning and reporting," said Iwicki. "We trained all units before they deployed." The next step is to prepare soldiers as they go through the Arrays education system.

The 25th Infantry Division, while deployed in Afghanistan, came up with a commonsense technique to help improve the intelligence collection process. A battalion typically has an intelligence shop of five to seven people, which quickly gets overwhelmed by the amount of intelligence that is collected and processed. So the division set up "battalion intelligence liaison teams" composed of two soldiers who were not necessarily intelligence specialists, but rather "motivated guys who wanted to help," Iwicki said.

Every day, the liaison team would make the rounds to every company headquarters and collect reports on patrols or reconstruction activities, for example. "They bring the...