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Air & Space Power Journal - Summer 2008

A House Divided

The Indivisibility of Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

With these words, the chief of staff of the Air Force points out a radical transition in the Air Force view of the relationship among intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). Just as the operational construct of global vigilance, reach, and power denotes the indivisibility of airpower, so can we best understand its foundation through the inherent interdependence of its parts—ISR is indivisible.¹

How can one make such an assertion? Certainly, throughout Air Force history the service has always experienced some degree of separation among intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance— organizationally, programmatically, and culturally. Indivisibility has to do with principles, not feasibility. In our Pledge of Allegiance, when we assert the indivisibility of our nation, we address the cultural memory of a catastrophic Civil War. Indivisibility does not mean that division is not conceivable; instead, it is the realization that division destroys the synergistic effects that unity provides.

ISR is indivisible because the effects it provides depend upon the synchronization and integration of the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance activities. That is the principle. Intelligence relies on surveillance and reconnaissance for its data and information. Conversely, we do not know what to surveil, where to reconnoiter, or when to do either without intelligence. The data collected depends upon processing and exploitation common to all three activities. Decision makers do not care much about the who and how behind their intelligence. No one is asking for separate “I,” “S,” and “R” streams on different displays or in different formats—they are expecting integrated products on identical timelines.

In a speech delivered in 1858, Abraham Lincoln cited a New Testament verse: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”² This is true of the internal Air Force’s view of ISR, and, to cite Lincoln once again, we cannot wait for it to “cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed” (emphasis in original).³ As an Air Force, we need to get our own house in order if we wish to optimally present ISR capabilities to decision makers. To do so, Airmen must realize, accept, and act on the principle that ISR is indivisible. Such indivisibility rests on four tenets: first, ISR is operations; second, ISR denotes synchronization and integration; third, ISR is domain neutral; and fourth, ISR is about capabilities and effects, not personnel, platforms, and culture. This article addresses each tenet in turn, but first we would do well to review how we came to be where we are now.

Why Intelligence, Surveillance,
and Reconnaissance?

The indivisibility of ISR is reflected in the definition of the component terms. The collective term ISR first came into common usage in the mid-1990s. Coined by Adm William Owens, who at the time served as vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, integrated ISR was presented as a vital component of the revolution in military affairs, defined by the information age, and implemented through the concept of net-centric warfare. Early in 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld allegedly asked, “What is ISR?” When someone explained the abbreviation to him, Rumsfeld supposedly summarized it in his own unique way: reconnaissance is find it; surveillance is keep in touch with it; and intelligence is why you give a damn in the first place.⁴ Although this is a pithy way of putting it, accurate understanding requires more detail.

As it turns out, the definitions are easy to find. Joint Publication (JP) 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, defines “intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance” as “an activity that synchronizes and integrates the planning and operation of sensors, assets, and processing, exploitation, and dissemination systems in direct support of current and future operations.”⁵ These words contain much nuance. Some of the subtleties are positive. For example, “activity” in joint parlance implies a function, mission, or action, as well as the organization that performs it; thus, ISR is functionally and organizationally indivisible.⁶ Other subtleties foster misperceptions. “Direct support” accurately reflects the fact that, like all operations, ISR exists to advance the achievement of national security objectives; however, it also implies subordination of ISR to other missions.⁷ “Operations” include any national security objective, at any level of conflict, so the term is appropriate; but to many readers, it connotes and perpetuates an artificial distinction between intelligence personnel and those who conduct operations.⁸ JP 1-02’s definition of ISR as a synergistic whole highlights the interdependence of its components, yet for full understanding, it further defines intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance separately to illustrate their distinctive capabilities and different purposes.

Thus, “intelligence” is “the product resulting from the collection, processing, integration, evaluation, analysis, and interpretation of available information concerning foreign nations, hostile or potentially hostile forces or elements, or areas of actual or potential operations. The term is also applied to the activity which results in the product and to the organizations engaged in such activity.”⁹ The art of intelligence involves rapidly and systematically analyzing data and information gathered through surveillance and reconnaissance and synthesizing it with existing contextual knowledge to produce accurate assessments needed for informed decision making. The essence of intelligence is improved situational awareness for decision makers. “Effective . . . intelligence results when actionable information derived from a detailed understanding of adversary systems, capabilities, and intentions is delivered in time to make germane planning and operational decisions on how, when, and where to engage enemy forces” to achieve the desired effects.¹⁰

“Surveillance” is “the systematic observation of aerospace [air, space, and cyberspace], surface, or subsurface areas, places, persons, or things, by visual, aural, electronic, photographic, or other means.”¹¹ “Loosely, another variable in the all-encompassing term reconnaissance,” surveillance is usually broken out as “a specific function.”¹² Surveillance is a sustained process, often passive and not oriented to a specific target. Rather, it is designed to gather information by a collector or series of collectors having timely response and persistent observation capabilities, a long dwell time, and clear, continuous collection capability. Surveillance observations provide data for updated intelligence assessments of enemy activities and threats, thus allowing the detection of changes in enemy operations over time.

Finally, “reconnaissance” is “a mission undertaken to obtain, by visual observation or other detection methods, information about the activities and resources of an enemy” or a potential enemy.¹³ Reconnaissance operations are transitory in nature and generally designed to actively collect information against specific targets for a specified time by a collector that does not dwell over the target or in the area. Reconnaissance generally has a time constraint associated with the tasking. Because it seeks to collect information about an adversary, reconnaissance is a fundamental tactic that helps to build an intelligence picture.

Clearly, as defined in the modern context, ISR is an operational function with the goal of providing accurate, relevant, and timely intelligence to decision makers; it is the lifeblood of effective decision making. Together, ISR operations provide decision makers the intelligence and situational awareness necessary to successfully plan, operate, and preserve forces; conserve resources; accomplish campaign objectives; and assess kinetic or nonkinetic effects across the range of national security operations. They are integral to gaining and maintaining decision superiority. Why, then, does the indivisibility of ISR need explanation?

The Roots of Division

ISR has never been quite what it is today. The importance of the principle of indivisible ISR reflects how the information age has altered the strategic landscape. The nature of ISR has not changed, but the character has. Information-age warfare differs distinctly from its industrial-age predecessor. Precision has supplanted mass, timing has become compressed, and service interaction has increased. Twenty-first-century demands require that what we once tolerated as related tasks now become a single, integrated process. Battlespace awareness is the effect sought by national-security decision makers. Coordination and interoperability are no longer good enough.

Knowledge is of no greater value today than in the past. Intelligence, gleaned from reconnaissance, has existed since the dawn of warfare. What has changed in the information age is the capability—the realistic expectation—of how data can be assimilated, synthesized, and delivered in time to be useful. As capabilities increase, the inefficiencies of the past are no longer sufficient for the task.

Both of the world wars and the Cold War exemplified industrial-age warfare. The American view of intelligence springs from this legacy. In the industrial-age model, intelligence was a massive, personnel-intensive operation aimed at supporting national and military decision making. Specialization and differentiation followed the demands of technology and a monolithic adversary. Accordingly, in true factory-like, assembly-line form, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance were each individually organized around very specialized inputs and outputs: take a photograph, process the film, interpret the information, create a picture, write a report, deliver it to the relevant decision maker; intercept a radio transmission, decode it, interpret its meaning, write a message, deliver it. The intelligence cycle was sequential.

In an age when airpower itself was artificially divided between strategic (supporting national or nuclear policy) and tactical (supporting local or conventional combat operations), it comes as no surprise that ISR was similarly divided. Legitimate divisions between the strategic and tactical levels of war became artificially (and incorrectly) synonymous with platforms and weapons. This artificial division of ISR had three consequences: first, it marginalized so-called strategic ISR as irrelevant to tactical military operations; second, we perceived ISR missions as support activities; and third, at the so-called tactical level, it drove a wedge between intelligence on the one hand and surveillance and reconnaissance on the other. Tactically, unit-level intelligence personnel briefed background information from finished intelligence products. Surveillance and reconnaissance personnel reported relevant, updated information of immediate value in raw form not as intelligence, but rather euphemistically as combat information.

Radar surveillance of the air domain represents an extreme example of the division of labor typical of industrial-age, task-based organizations. Originally conducted using ground-based radars and revolutionized by the EC-121 Warning Star in Vietnam and its progeny, the E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), radar early warning located enemy aircraft, warned friendly forces of the threat, and dispatched friendly fighters to engage them. Application of the intelligence gleaned from radar surveillance became known as air battle management (ABM), which provides aircrews enhanced situational awareness, enabling them to plan in advance what tactics they will employ. ABM is decision making at the tactical level; the currency of ABM is intelligence.

Categorizing the product of radar surveillance not by its function (intelligence) but more narrowly by its specific application (ABM) had two effects. First, classification by application ignored the onboard processing and interpretation inherent in determining the information’s relevance; somehow, since intelligence personnel did not do the analysis, some did not consider it intelligence. Second, ignoring the core function increased the likelihood of overlooking other potential uses for the information. Put another way, the industrial-age model created artificial distinctions between the intelligence “ends” and surveillance and reconnaissance “ways” of collecting its necessary data.

A compounding factor during the Cold War was the strategic nature of that conflict and the relative “luxury” of squaring off against a monolithic and predictable adversary. After the early decades of the Cold War, strategic surveillance and reconnaissance missions mostly flew periodically on catalogued routes. We had built up a good intelligence knowledge base of the adversary; we knew where he lived; and we knew how he intended to fight. The relatively static nature of strategic surveillance and reconnaissance missions created a perception of intelligence as strategic. For tactical airpower, intelligence for aircrews stopped at the premission brief. Direct, tactical situation updates came from aircrews on the surveillance and reconnaissance mission; they were operators because they flew.

Though seemingly trivial, one cannot overstate the institutional importance put on flying. Organizational culture is powerful in large institutions such as the Air Force. Over time, Cold War separatism cemented the perceived organizational bias between strategic intelligence support and tactical surveillance and reconnaissance operations. What Airmen wore and where they did their work outweighed the intrinsic, functional relationship among intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

ISR Is Operations

The paradigm of industrial-age warfare defines operations as putting iron on a target. Attrition is the focus. Accordingly, the Air Force spent most of the last century perfecting precision—the technology, tactics, techniques, and procedures necessary to put iron accurately on any target, anywhere. In the information age, operations have to do with effects. The 1990s evidenced this evolution in a clear elucidation of the kill chain—find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess. At least two-thirds of kill-chain operations are ISR; increasingly, the target and engage steps are non­kinetic. Knowledge comes before power, and our asymmetric ISR capabilities are able to achieve effects all on their own.

This is the changed character of ISR. In the modern context, the find and fix links of the kill chain are much more difficult than the engage link, particularly for kinetic operations. The character change is reflected in the first-ever Air Force doctrine for ISR—Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 2-9, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Operations, 17 July 2007. The truth resides in the title—ISR is operations. The Air Force did not lump ISR together for its own purposes; in the intended spirit of joint doctrine, AFDD 2-9 uses the ISR definition in JP 1-02.¹⁴

ISR efforts today make up the vast majority of the operations required to achieve our security objectives. Operations range from finding the enemy, to deconstructing his network and intentions, to putting weapons or other effects on target, to subsequently assessing the results. In Iraq, to eliminate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Predator unmanned aircraft executed over 600 hours of reconnaissance and surveillance operations to build sufficient intelligence for about 10 minutes of F-16 kinetic operations.

Increasingly, a single platform executes the entire kill chain. Aircraft normally associated with strike operations have excellent sensors on board, and in many cases their sensor data can be networked to others who can turn it into actionable intelligence. Armed unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) offer another approach to this hunter-killer combination. In fact, the al-Zarqawi incident involved an armed Predator, though ultimately an F-16 executed the strike. Air Force UAS pilots are very competent and comfortable with the responsibilities of finishing the kill chain when called upon to do so, yet a subculture in the Air Force does not feel comfortable with using so-called sensor platforms as shooters. The US Navy provides one example of a different cultural perspective.¹⁵ Perhaps because of the traditional need for immediate prosecution of targets in antisubmarine warfare, the Navy arms manned ISR assets, putting AGM-65 Maverick and AGM-84 Harpoon missiles on the P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft.

ISR is the linchpin of an effects-based approach to operations (EBAO). One cannot accurately predict the effect of operations on an enemy system without good intelligence; nor can one assess the effects without detailed surveillance and reconnaissance. Intelligence requirements for an EBAO and effects-based assessment (EBA) are much more demanding than the old attrition-based “bean-counting” model. The increased intelligence detail necessary for EBAO/EBA makes focused reconnaissance and persistent surveillance operations increasingly crucial.

ISR Denotes Synchronization
and Integration

There is nothing new about the nature of intelligence—Sun Tzu spoke extensively of its importance around 500 BC in The Art of War. Likewise, reconnaissance is as old as combat itself: “It is hard to imagine that the first two combatants in war, whoever they might have been, embarked upon conflict without attempting to gain some knowledge of the capabilities of their enemy.”¹⁶ On the industrial-age battlefield, scout reconnaissance teams reported what they saw “over the hill” to their commander. Airborne reconnaissance was effects based from its beginnings with the use of balloons by the French against Austria in 1794. The balloons not only collected valuable intelligence data but also reportedly had a demoralizing effect on the Austrian troops.

Conversely, only “surveillance” is a relatively modern term, truly gaining its distinction in World War I, when indirect artillery fire proved key to many battles. Accurate, timely reconnaissance over time—surveillance—became necessary for targeting beyond the commander’s line of sight. Effective surveillance emerged from the nexus of airpower and radio communications and was among World War I Airmen’s original core missions. From this nexus we also see the genesis of the cultural distinction between intelligence ends (missions) and the surveillance and reconnaissance ways (tactics) by which it was collected.

Technology can exacerbate the conflation of ways with ends. The inherent link between intelligence on the one hand and surveillance and reconnaissance on the other continues to be analysis. Collection through surveillance and reconnaissance provides the input to the ISR enterprise—intelligence is the tangible output. Confusion about the nature of this link emerges when the intelligence need is simple or has been automated to such a degree that it is discernable without specialized analysis or interpretation. Airborne full-motion video (FMV), the prevalent modern example, provides the intelligence that every ground commander has desired since the dawn of warfare—the ability to see what the enemy is doing over the next hill. Simple FMV surveillance fills the intelligence requirement, but when we don’t need dedicated intelligence analysis and production, it can easily be misinterpreted as a stand-alone surveillance capability. This is still the intelligence cycle, only executed in parallel rather than the sequential mode common to industrial-age warfare. In this misinterpretation, we lose any notion of how much all-source intelligence analysis we need to get that FMV-collection capability in the right place, the automated processing necessary to provide a formatted data stream, and the dissemination architecture required to provide that feed in such a way as to have significance to the untrained eye.

Balloon reconnaissance during the French Revolutionary Wars and airborne artillery spotting in World War I may have established the basis of the cultural distinction between intelligence support (staff) and reconnaissance and surveillance operations (fliers). FMV is a proximate example in the current conflict. The prevailing cultural distinction, however, is the result of efforts to distinguish airborne early warning from intelligence. It is the classic case of the confusion of personnel and platforms with purpose. In this case, the personnel are Airmen with air-battle-manager Air Force specialty codes (AFSC) 13B (officer) and 1A4 (enlisted), and the platforms are the E-3 AWACS and E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS). The combination of multiple purposes is the point of contention. Airborne early warning (in the case of the AWACS) and ground early warning (JSTARS) are both surveillance missions. Both are subsets of ABM, which, in turn, is a subset of command and control (C2).

Like ISR, C2 is a foundational operational function inherent to effective operations. C2 is the end (purpose), ABM is the way (method/tactic), and radar surveillance is the means (sensor/system). In the case of ISR, intelligence is the end, surveillance and reconnaissance are ways, and radar is a means. Such a view clearly reveals that situational awareness is the common thread. Effective C2 is based on accurate, up-to-date intelligence of the adversary’s air and ground situation, provided through surveillance. In other words, air battle managers are interpreting the surveillance data to make sense of it—interpreting its intelligence value—for the purpose of C2.

Ultimately, though we have many ways of drawing the distinction between surveillance and reconnaissance, in all cases we see that they are means of gathering data, from which, through analysis and synthesis, we derive intelligence. Such intelligence fuels decision making—whether for the ground commander, the air battle manager, the counterair mission commander, or the commander in chief.

ISR Is Domain Neutral

Just as ISR is indivisible by mission, neither can it be segregated by domain without diminishing its effects. To repeat General Moseley’s pronouncement, ISR is “the foundation of Global Vigilance, Reach, and Power.” ISR is the one major mission area in the Air Force that truly cuts across all domains and affects almost every other mission area. Air, space, cyber, and surface ISR capabilities are tailored to provide the flexibility, responsiveness, versatility, and mobility required by the strenuous demands of fluid, global taskings.

We use the information collected through surveillance and reconnaissance and converted into intelligence by exploitation and analysis to formulate strategy, policy, and military plans; develop and conduct campaigns; guide the acquisition of future capabilities; and protect, prevent, and prevail against threats and aggression aimed at the United States and its interests. Air Force ISR operations are not inherently strategic, operational, or tactical in nature; rather, they gather information and provide knowledge to meet requirements at all levels of warfare. ISR operations cut across all domains and are conducted throughout the range of military operations from peace, to war, to conflict resolution.

Today, Air Force ISR is undergoing an actual revolution in effects-based application rather than simply evolving to meet increasing demands. The revolutionary view of effects-based application of ISR points instead to the role that Air Force intelligence plays as a global, data-bridging function among all domains as well as assets. Truly efficient ISR effects demand integration of all air, space, and cyber feeds into the Global Information Grid. Still, the demonstrated importance of ISR in modern warfare has made it a cross-domain battle­space. Everyone wants a piece of this hot growth area. Even those who accept the indivisibility of ISR as a mission have a tendency to divide ISR organizationally by domain. In practice, such advocates are interested in ownership of the parts of the ISR mission that operate in, to, or from their domain.

The space and cyber domains exemplify this phenomenon. When Air Force Space Command stood up as a major command (MAJCOM) in 1982, it took a certain amount of control of ISR within the space domain. The command’s core missions include space surveillance and early warning. From a domain-neutral perspective, these missions are both surveillance. Space surveillance involves surveillance of space—satellites and debris—from the surface. Early warning is surveillance of the air and surface—mostly warnings of ballistic missile launches—from space. In both cases, we do the surveillance for the purpose of situational awareness—filling intelligence gaps. Conflating ways, means, and ends creates barriers and rivalries among domains, commands, career fields, and information channels, ultimately diminishing the effectiveness and credibility of ISR.

Today, some are applying similar logic to the stand-up of Air Force Cyber Command, but to an even greater extreme. These people have advocated subordinating all of the Air Force’s ISR under this new command. Such a move would quickly flesh out an organization chart at minimal cost to existing MAJCOMs, as the intelligence community funds large portions of ISR capabilities. This line of thought, however, misses the fact that, although we conduct parts of the Air Force’s ISR mission in the cyber domain, those parts are no more or less significant than those in the air, space, and surface domains.

No specific domain can or should lay claim to a monopoly on the Air Force’s ISR mission. Although our service flies and fights in the commons of air, space, and cyberspace, it does not confine its ISR to a specific medium. ISR capabilities in one domain share a complementary role with those in another, and to optimize the benefit of information access, we must employ them in a completely synergistic manner. This was the rationale behind establishing the Air Force ISR Agency as an Air Force–wide enterprise and changing it from reporting to one MAJCOM to having it report instead to the Air Force deputy chief of staff (DCS) for ISR.

ISR effectiveness is determined by its utility to decision superiority; thus it serves as a balance among accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and accessibility. Stovepiping ISR by domain produces needless duplication and rivalry, creating the need for convoluted coordination and cross-checking between organizations to make up for the dysfunction that such artificial separation introduces into the intelligence cycle. Ultimately, decision makers care about the so what of intelligence. The where of collection—from surface, air, space, or cyber, or of surface, air, space, or cyber—is of little consequence. ISR is an operational mission, interdependent with other operations of all the services and commands and across all domains.

ISR Is About Capabilities
and Effects, Not Personnel, Platforms, and Culture

A key barrier to realizing the inherent indivisibility of ISR is the way the Department of Defense (DOD) collectively manages ISR as individual program elements within a defense-budget process that one can at best describe as Byzantine. Where is not the only misguided question that affects the recognition of optimum ISR operations in the Air Force. Too often, advocates of divided ISR focus on questions of who and how. Who improves the situational awareness of the decision makers? How does the information flow? Who owns or controls the systems or assets? How was the system or asset funded?

From the previous tenets, it follows that the Air Force should effectively manage ISR with a capabilities- and effects-based approach. General Moseley recognized this when he established the new Air Staff A2, elevating the position to a DCS responsible for ISR collectively as an Air Force–wide enterprise. The consolidation of ISR under a DCS is consistent with strategic guidance in the Quadrennial Defense Review of 2006, which directed that each “Department will work to re-orient its processes around joint capability portfolios.”¹⁷ The capabilities-based construct dictates that for all actions—from planning, to programming, to acquisition, to employment—ISR effects and capabilities must drive and shape the effort to satisfy the needs of joint decision makers. Effective ISR simply cannot be driven by numbers of platforms or pots of money.

Under the program-based construct, too often the narrow focus of program optimization results in missed opportunities to integrate, analyze, and interpret information of value to war fighters and decision makers. Most combat aircraft in the US military have some type of sensor on board, yet virtually all of that potential ISR data is figuratively left on the floor of the cockpit. In the current program-centric budgetary world of the DOD, narrowly focused optimization of individual platforms, sensors, and systems is the norm. Absent a clear definitive strategy, the big picture is lost to a collection of kluged-together widgets. In the current environment, why would the AC-130 program-element manager spend the program’s funds on seamless integration of the aircraft’s sensor data into the Global Information Grid if doing so doesn’t put more rounds on target? Conversely, why would the intelligence community contribute funds to a program outside its control, knowing that the funds could be redirected?

By converting to a capabilities-based construct, we will seek to close the existing Air Force cultural rifts in ISR by aligning the service’s ISR capabilities with Joint Capability Areas. As previously illustrated with FMV and space early warning, artificial distinctions can confuse who accomplishes the process with what effect the process achieves. An Airman with AFSC 14N (officer) or 1NX (enlisted) need not necessarily be involved in the process for the effect to be correctly considered intelligence.

Providing imminent threat warning to a pilot in combat illustrates this point. An intelligence Airman (officer or enlisted), either at the air operations center or even at a wing operations center, could process and analyze incoming information, recognize a threat to an ongoing mission, and relay that intelligence to the threatened pilot through various C2 nodes. Although this happens, it is cumbersome, time consuming, and unlikely to enjoy broad success. We routinely use a streamlined version of this process when RC-135 Rivet Joint mission-crew Airmen pass imminent threat warning. Receivers on board the jets collect various electronic signal data in the environment, onboard systems process the data into usable information, and crew members interpret which information constitutes a threat requiring action. The AFSC of the analyst and disseminator is immaterial—the effect is enhanced situational awareness for the combat pilot through the input of timely, accurate, and relevant intelligence.

We see a further simplified version of this process when aircraft are equipped with radars, radar warning receivers, and other systems designed to collect, process, and interpret many threats without outside intervention, depending on the aircrew to decide which inputs require action. Although a radar warning receiver may lack the fidelity and accuracy of more refined techniques of signals-intelligence analysis, the need for timeliness of intelligence in threat-reaction situations drives the acceptance of greater risk. Untold ISR goes into the development and programming of these systems to allow the aircrew to make the final interpretation of the provided intelligence and act accordingly. In all of these cases, however, the increased situational awareness of the pilot results from intelligence based on reconnaissance, surveillance, or both.

The Flight Plan

The lines between intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance are the product of historical and institutional biases. Today, our EBAO and joint UAS operations demand a transformed mind-set and new organizational construct. The Navy made this leap years ago. Submarines have always been hunter-killers—armed ISR platforms. Conversely, antisubmarine platforms are in a constant state of doing ISR. Submarines, the original stealth assets, are among the hardest things in the world to find. The Navy learned the hard way in two wars against submarines that if the kill chain is not nearly immediate, the probability of a submarine kill drops precipitously. There are parallels today in hunting for terrorists, which will carry into future air warfare against armed, hostile UAS and hostile stealth aircraft.¹⁸

Our service must embrace cross-domain ISR as a major Air Force mission that enables and optimizes the effects of every other mission. In the information age, the intelligence gleaned from surveillance and reconnaissance also has effects all its own. To fully recognize all the effects of ISR requires that we change parts of our organizational culture.

ISR is a mission set and must be prioritized on par with other Air Force missions. No longer can we treat ISR missions as support to operations. ISR is operations and is foundational to everything the Air Force does.

ISR is about synergy. Integration and synchronization make the effects of collective ISR far exceed their potential when they are separated. All of the data and information required for the production of intelligence are the result of reconnaissance and surveillance collection; conversely, the sole purpose of surveillance and reconnaissance is to collect data and information for the production of intelligence.

ISR deals with knowledge, regardless of where its effects are (to, from, in, or through) and regardless of who produces or receives it. We must view ISR in terms of capabilities and effects. It has to do with decision superiority—not platforms, sensors, and AFSCs. The US military must ensure that strategy guides and informs the programming of budgets—not the reverse. A coherent cross-domain ISR strategy must underpin budgetary decisions.

Moving forward on these tenets of indivisible ISR starts with doctrine. By definition, doctrine is the body of fundamental beliefs about guiding principles. Thus, the principle of indivisible ISR as discussed herein is in fact an Air Force doctrine for ISR and should be included in AFDD 1, Air Force Basic Doctrine, 17 November 2003, which currently does not define ISR collectively. As such, it is out of synch with joint doctrine and the more recent AFDD 2-9.

The nature of ISR has not changed, but its character has. The challenge before us is to transform today to dominate an operational environment that has yet to evolve, and to counter adversaries who have yet to materialize.

The transformation of Air Force ISR is in progress. The Air Force DCS for ISR is crafting a unified ISR strategy for the service—an instrument to connect ends, ways, and means to maximize the synergy of ISR capabilities in air, space, and cyber beyond the scope of our current program plan. It will look out more than three budget cycles in order to break the programmatic bonds that currently tie us to an old culture of systems, platforms, and programs. It is the difference between conceiving of “the son of JSTARS” (a marginally better airplane with evolutionary sensors) and “the future of surveillance” (a seamlessly integrated, network-centric collection capability).

At the employment level, we have provided to the Joint Functional Component Command for ISR the core for a global ISR concept of operations that reflects the optimal integration of ISR operations, manned and unmanned, across all domains—air, sea, land, space, and cyber. The intent is to provide a basis for combatant commanders to address ISR in a holistic and joint fashion. To institutionalize this kind of approach inside the Air Force and to develop and execute integrated, holistic ISR tactics, techniques, and procedures, the Air Force is forming an ISR Center of Excellence at Nellis AFB, Nevada.

Parceling out ISR capabilities breeds inefficiency; promotes multiple, overlapping concepts of operations and tactics, techniques, and procedures; and desynchronizes processes. Capability hubs—centers of excellence—offer a more efficient means to present integrated ISR capabilities consistently and effectively, while maximizing capacity.

For example, the Air Force chief of staff recently directed consolidation of the Air Force Distributed Common Ground System—the first global network-centric weapon system—into a single wing. Where previously five key system nodes belonged to three different MAJCOMs, now the 480th Intelligence Wing will be the focal point for all Air Force airborne ISR processing, exploitation, and dissemination.

Furthering this tenet, my plans for Air Force ISR include establishing an analysis center of excellence at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, which will exhibit the domain-neutral tenet of indivisible ISR by integrating air, space, and cyber analysis in a single reach-back node. Likewise, targeting is a recognized Air Force intelligence analytic competency that currently consists of pockets of expertise spread across the MAJCOMs. I also intend to recommend to the chief of staff that we establish an Air Force Targeting Center of Excellence to reinforce the Air Force as the DOD’s targeting focus, provide a single point of contact, and enhance the discipline by consolidating expertise.

The magnitude and speed of change are the twenty-first century’s defining features. The information-age world is increasingly interconnected, and knowledge of crises around the world reaches global audiences as they happen, lowering flashpoints and decreasing margins for error. As with every other aspect of the information age, victory will go to those who create and exploit knowledge faster than their opponents—and increasingly in ambiguous and uncertain situations. Meeting this challenge requires a shift from a Cold War mind-set that treats ISR as a supporting function to a new understanding that in the twenty-first century, ISR will perhaps become the key mission set in achieving our national security objectives. Accordingly, we should more appropriately view ISR as the key integrating element for effective national security policy and operational design, planning, and execution. This will require adjusting concepts and processes to allocate, plan, and employ ISR as a cohesive entity. Doing so may result in a synergy of ISR much greater than we have ever experienced in the past, which will make ISR—like airpower writ large—one of America’s asymmetric advantages.

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Notes

1. The indivisibility of airpower was the tacit argument behind the secretary of the Air Force’s white paper The Air Force and U.S. National Security: Global Reach—Global Power (Washington, DC: Department of the Air Force, June 1990).

2. Abraham Lincoln, “House Divided Speech” (Springfield, IL, 16 June 1858), Abraham Lincoln Online, http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/house.htm.

3. Ibid.

4. Rich Haver, “Why ISR? The Significance of an AF DCS for ISR” (prepared comments for the 55th Wing ISR Symposium, Omaha Hilton, 24 May 2007).

5. Joint Publication (JP) 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 12 April 2001 (as amended through 17 October 2007), 271, http://www
.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp1_02.pdf.

6. Ibid., 5.

7. Ibid., 163.

8. Ibid., 392.

9. Ibid., 268.

10. Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 1, Air Force Basic Doctrine, 17 November 2003, 54, https://www. hqafdc.maxwell.af.mil/afdcprivateweb/AFDD_Page_HTML/Doctrine_Docs/afdd1.pdf.

11. JP 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary, 525.

12. David Jordan, “Surveillance and Target Acquisition,” in The Oxford Companion to Military History, ed. Richard Holmes(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), 887–88.

13. JP 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary, 453.

14. See ibid., 271. Conversely, the acronym RSTA (reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition) offers an example of how nonjoint terminology occludes productive dialogue; target acquisition is simply a specific intelligence product or outcome, not a mission in and of itself.

15. Fifty-seven percent of targets engaged by the US battleships Missouri and Wisconsin were located from the air by UASes. Jordan, “Surveillance and Target Acquisition,” 887–88.

16. David Jordan, “Reconnaissance/Reconnoiter,” in Oxford Companion to Military History, 760–61.

17. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 6 February 2006), 68, http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/QDR20060203.pdf.

18. Haver, “Why ISR?”

Contributors

Lt Gen David A. Deptula (BA, MS, University of Virginia; MS, National War College) is deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, Headquarters US Air Force, Washington, DC. General Deptula completed ROTC at the University of Virginia as a distinguished graduate. He has flown more than 3,000 hours (400 in combat), including multiple assignments to operational fighter commands. He has significant experience in combat and leadership in several major joint contingency operations. General Deptula has twice been a joint task force commander, a joint force air component commander, and director of a combined air operations center. He also served as the principal attack planner for the air campaign during Operation Desert Storm. He has served on two congressional commissions charged with outlining America’s future defense posture: the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces and the National Defense Panel. Prior to assuming his current position, he served as commander of the General George C. Kenney Warfighting Headquarters in the Pacific. General Deptula is a graduate of Squadron Officer School, US Air Force Fighter Weapons School, Air Command and Staff College, Armed Forces Staff College, and National War College.

Maj R. Greg Brown (BA, University of Oklahoma; MS, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; MS, Air Force Institute of Technology; MS, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies) is an ISR strategist for the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, Headquarters US Air Force, Washington, DC. Major Brown was commissioned through ROTC at the University of Oklahoma as a distinguished graduate. He has served as chief of intelligence for the B-1B Formal Training Unit, intelligence weapons officer for a composite wing and the provisional wing supporting Operation Southern Watch, and instructor at the USAF Weapons School. He has also served twice on the Air Staff. Major Brown deployed as the intelligence duty officer in the combined air operations center during Operation Enduring Freedom and again as deputy director for intelligence, Air Force forces, in the immediate aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom’s major combat operations. He was the director of operations for the 609th Air Intelligence Squadron and has been selected to command the 547th Intelligence Squadron. Major Brown is a graduate of Squadron Officer School, USAF Weapons School, the Air Force Institute of Technology, and the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University

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