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By Root 645 0

flood of collected intelligence. TELINT and ELINT offer valuable information on weapons capabilities that would otherwise be unknown or would require far more risky human intelligence operations to obtain. However, as the United States learned from its efforts to monitor Soviet arms, the weapons tester can employ many techniques to maintain secrecy. Like communications, test data can be encrypted. It can also be encapsulated—that is, recorded within the weapon being tested and released in a self-contained capsule that will be recovered—so that the data are never transmitted as a signal that would be susceptible to interception. If the data are transmitted, they can be sent in a single burst instead of throughout the test, greatly increasing the difficulty of intercepting and reading the data. Or the data can be transmitted via a spread spectrum, that is, using a series of frequencies through which the data move at irregular intervals. The testing nation’s receivers can be programmed to match the frequency changes, but such action greatly increases the difficulty of intercepting the full data stream.

One issue that arises in SIGINT, especially in COMINT, is risk versus take. This refers to the need to consider the value of the intelligence that is going to be collected (the take) against the risk of discovery—either in political terms or in the collection technology that may then be revealed to another nation.

The war against terrorism has underscored a growing concern for SIGINT. As with the other collection disciplines, SIGINT was developed to collect intelligence on the Soviet Union and other nations. Terrorist cells offer much smaller signatures, which may not be susceptible to interception by remote SIGINT sensors. Therefore, a growing view is that future SIGINT will have to rely on sensors that have been physically placed close to the target by humans. In effect, HUMINT will become the enabler for SIGINT. Signs also are evident that terrorist groups have increasing knowledge about U.S. SIGINT capabilities and therefore take steps to evade SIGINT detection by such means as using cell phones only once or avoiding cell phones and faxes.

Another SIGINT weakness is found within COMINT—foreign language capabilities. During the cold war, the United States emphasized the need for Russian speakers through a series of government-sponsored educational programs. Today, different languages are at issue: Arabic (which has many spoken varieties), Farsi, Pushto, Dari, Hindi, Urdu, and other languages common to the Middle East and South Asia. None of these languages has much academic support in the United States, and they all have the added difficulty of not being written in the Roman alphabet (which is also true of Russian, Chinese, and some six thousand other languages). It takes about three years (full time) to train someone to the desired capability in a non-Roman language. The United States suffers in its language capabilities because of the decline in language requirements in colleges and universities. According to the Modern Language Association, only 8 percent of schools have language requirements, down from 87 percent in the 1950s through the early 1970s. The United States, being an immigrant nation, has among its citizens speakers of most languages. But they need to be recruited, cleared, and trained. Clearing such candidates is a major motivation in DNI McConnell’s efforts to improve the security clearance process. In some cases, the native language skills of these people are very good but their ability to translate into English, which is the required outcome, is poor. For the foreseeable future, language skills will be a major problem for COMINT and for all intelligence activities.

A more fundamental issue for SIGINT collection in U.S. intelligence has been the capability of NSA to keep pace with the technological changes. It is important to understand that NSA has two roles: offense and defense. NSA intercepts foreign communications but also acts to prevent the interception of U.S. communications. These two roles are