Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [50]
Primarily in the military, collection is sometimes spoken of as ISR: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The term covers three different types of activities.
1. Intelligence: a general term for collection
2. Surveillance: the systematic observation of a targeted area or group, usually for an extended period of time
3. Reconnaissance: a mission to acquire information about a target, sometimes meaning a one-time endeavor
OVERARCHING THEMES
Several themes or issues cut across the collection disciplines and tend to drive many of the debates and decisions on intelligence collection. These themes point out that collection involves more than questions like. “What can be collected?” or “Should that be collected?” Collection is a highly complex government activity that requires numerous decisions and has many stress points.
BUDGET. Technical collection systems, many of which are based on satellites, are very expensive. The systems and programs are a major expenditure within the U.S. intelligence budget. Thus, costs always constrain the ability to operate a large number of collection systems at the same time. Moreover, because different types of satellites are employed for different types of collection (imagery versus signals, for example) or may be equipped to carry multiple sensors, policy makers have to make difficult trade-offs. Significant costs are also associated with launching satellites. The larger the satellite, which is driven in large part by the nature of its sensor package and the equipment needed to power the satellite and to transmit the data, the larger the rocket required to put it into orbit. Finally, the costs of processing and exploitation (P&E), without which collection is meaningless, should be factored into the total expense. Builders of collection systems often ignore P&E and launch costs as part of their estimates for collection.
During the cold war, cost issues for technical collection rarely surfaced. The sense of threat, coupled with the fact that no better way existed to collect intelligence on the Soviet Union, tended to support the high costs of the systems. Also, decision makers placed greater emphasis on collection systems than on the processing and exploitation needed to deal with the intelligence collected. In the immediate post-cold war period, given the absence of any large and potentially overwhelming threat, collection costs became more vulnerable politically. The terrorist attacks in 2001 raised additional questions about the utility of these systems, as terrorist targets are less susceptible to collection via technical means and may require greater use of human intelligence.
There have been several recent decisions that underscore the increased difficulty in sustaining the costs of technical collection. In June 2005, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R.-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, argued that too much money was being spent on satellites and not enough on human collectors and on analysts with language skills. Advocates for both views exist, but this is the sort of argument that rarely would have been made during the cold war. One of director of national intelligence (DNI) John Negroponte’s major collection decisions came in September 2005, when he ordered the Boeing Company to stop work on a system known as the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA), widely thought to be the next generation of imagery satellites. FIA had fallen way behind schedule and had also incurred cost overruns. (According to detailed press accounts, FIA had gone from a program bid at $5 billion to more than $18 billion and was still $2 to $3 billion short.) This move was also seen as an attempt by the DNI to have a greater say in satellite decisions, which have customarily been dominated by the Department of Defense (DOD). Two years later, in August 2007, National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) director Donald Kerr testified publicly (during his nomination hearings to be the new principal deputy DNI) that he had recommended terminating two other satellite collection