Special operators seek new social media tools.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

As terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State embrace social media, government entities are seeking to exploit open-source information to improve their own operational tactics.

U.S. Special Operations Command is researching how it can use social media to mine critical intelligence data, said Army Gen. Joseph Votel, who at the time was serving as the commander of SOCOM.

"SOCOM is currently carrying out a series of technology demonstrations to assess innovative tools designed to detect previously unseen patterns in complex social media data; integrate and visualize vast information; and allow warfighters to sense, understand and respond to changes in the information environment in real time," he said during a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee in March.

Additionally, the command could also use social media to attempt to undermine the Islamic State's propaganda, he said.

"The ability to conduct effective messaging, as well as counter-messaging, will only grow in importance, given the evolving nature of conflicts," he said.

Industry is ready to help SOCOM better sift through social media posts to distill nuggets of information, said M. Shands Pickett, director of applied research and technology at Visual Awareness Technologies and Consulting Inc., a Tampa, Florida-based small business that focuses on training and operational solutions for special operations forces and other government organizations.

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Social media offers the military, and particularly SOCOM, a way to gauge how certain operations affect a local population, he said.

"What we saw throughout conventional forces, special operations forces and partner forces [in Afghanistan] is an inability to really understand how their operations were having an effect on the local population," he said.

During conventional operations, it is obvious when a military has won--tanks leave and soldiers surrender, he said. But "when you're operating in a... counterinsurgency environment or in a irregular warfare environment... the only way you know that is if the local population thinks that you've won... because they are determinant of your victory.

"With the proliferation of cell phones, even in areas like Afghanistan, you can get a pretty good sense of what people think about what you're doing," he said.

Earlier this year, VATC launched a special operations variant of its simulated intelligence training environment platform, or SITREP, to help SOCOM train its...