I read with interest Army Maj. John Ives’ commentary, “They deserve better” [April]. His analysis of the problems facing our collection management system was spot on. As the chief of the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Division at U.S. Air Forces Central Command’s Combined Air and Space Operations Center (CAOC) in Qatar, I’d like to expand on his analysis and note the steps we have taken to address some of the issues.

The problem is not our collection management processing software, the Planning Tool for Resource Integration Synchronization Management (PRISM). The collection management process underlying PRISM is the problem. PRISM was the brainchild of U.S. European Command collection managers shortly after Operation Allied Force, the 1999 air war against Yugoslavia, revealed the total lack of an automated capability to manage imagery requirements beyond Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. PRISM brought discipline and order to what was previously an administrative and disconnected nightmare. However, PRISM also expressly models processes we use in national collection management.

The crux of the problem is that we have expanded ISR flights by orders of magnitude, but we are still using a highly centralized, Cold War-era decision-making process to plan our collections. To use a business analogy, a process that may have worked well when a company was small does not work as well when customers are in the thousands. Once you get to a certain scale, you have to decentralize and trust your lower echelons if you want to remain competitive and agile. That is where we must go with our ISR.

Much progress has been made. Today’s airborne ISR is much more flexible than the static indications and warning collection characteristic of the Cold War. To improve the flexibility of our collection management process, the CAOC, in close coordination with headquarters in Iraq and Afghan-istan, developed and published a concept of operations titled “Synchronizing Theater Airborne ISR with Supported Unit Operations.” It is based on three main themes: apportionment of ISR resources; detailed mission planning with the supported unit; and massing and packaging ISR to provide synergistic effects.

THE CASE FOR DECENTRALIZATION

While this new concept of ISR operations will help, more is needed. Ives highlights the importance of early apportionment, and his recommendations should be given serious consideration. The CAOC’s Air Tasking Order planning process is often highlighted as the primary reason for the failure to apportion or allocate assets early, but it is not the problem. If headquarters in Afghanistan or Iraq tell the CAOC to devote ISR assets to the same units for a month, we will do that. The problem is not with these headquarters either.

The problem with collection management resides in joint doctrine. Simply put, we still operate with an institutionalized historical collection management process that operates in the tactical weeds by design. At least since Operation Desert Storm, the joint collection management process has managed all theater-airborne assets on a 24-hour cycle, with this process sometimes extending down to the individual target level. This may have made sense 20 years ago when there were a couple of U-2, RC-135 and other theater ISR sorties a day. However, today there are so many more ISR platforms in the sky that the amount of information required to effectively manage them at the tactical level is probably beyond the ability of any existing headquarters. What often happens when operational-level headquarters try to operate at the tactical level is that innovation is crushed and keeping the command chain in the loop becomes a de facto set of communication barriers placed between supported ground units and supporting ISR units.

A good portion of joint collection management should be decentralized and reoriented away from an essentially tactical process to a more strategic and operational-level process. As Ives suggests, the collection management process could be more deliberative and could allocate assets over longer periods of time than the current daily cycle.

However, in addition to changing the allocation process, we need to take a hard look at the underlying modus operandi of the entire collection management system, which is both overly tactical and overly centralized. Commands at every level need to ask themselves: “What is our value-added here?” If the answer is simply to “maintain situational awareness,” then the follow-up question should be: “What harm might I be causing to lower-level units in terms of delayed responses, inflexibility and additional man-hours used in meeting higher headquarters’ information needs?”

These can be painful questions to ask, and they certainly have been for the CAOC. In our case, asking them has caused us to make some radical changes in the way we do business, which have been well-received by our joint partners. The joint working group Ives suggests to re-examine collection management should have these questions in the forefront of its deliberations. Comparing the basic philosophical difference between joint intelligence doctrine — centered on J2 staff processes — and joint operations doctrine — centered on orchestrating components — also would be instructive for the proposed working group.

The above should not be construed to mean operational-level headquarters do not have a role to play in detailed planning — far from it. These headquarters are the only echelons of command capable of generating and orchestrating large and complex collection plans. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Air Forces Central spent months developing an ISR plan suitable to that campaign and integrating it with a highly effective time-sensitive targeting process. More recently, our partners in Afghanistan and Iraq built nationwide collection plans that contributed greatly to the success of elections in both countries. Interestingly, U.S. Central Command directed ISR asset moves between the two joint operations areas months in advance to meet the anticipated requirements. Actions like those CentCom took should become routine.

Joint collection and targeting doctrine has also not adapted very well to the fundamental change in operational conditions wrought by the advent of multi-Int, multiweapon-system, remotely piloted aircraft. Anyone who deployed to the CentCom area of responsibility after 2006 has seen some heated debates over remotely piloted aircraft tasking. A fair amount of this heat was generated by the competition for high-demand/low-density assets, but a good portion of it also can be assigned to joint and air component processes that have an inherent tendency to default to either an ISR or strike setting. This causes friction between the intelligence and operations staffs within a component and between joint components. We call this the “2-3” seam — 2 referring to the intelligence staffs and 3 referring to the operations staffs. This seam must be closed. Future joint boards need to be capable of dealing with and prioritizing assets that can deliver both “2” and “3” effects. If joint collection management and targeting boards are going to continue in the future, they should be preparatory to a Joint Effects Board that prioritizes and integrates all joint effects generated by dual-use platforms.

Additionally, Army ground commanders have long registered concerns that they never know if theater-airborne ISR will be there for them, so they are unable to plan for it. The Air Force flip side to that concern is that theater-airborne ISR crews never know which units they will be supporting, so they are unable to effectively plan collection to meet the supported ground commander’s intelligence needs. Advance allocation will set the conditions necessary to enable more integrated mission planning, but allocation will not guarantee integrated mission planning will happen.

Integrated mission planning for ISR in the 21st century requires thinking beyond the assets available in or over an area of operations. It is entirely possible using today’s global intelligence grid to concentrate several battalions’ and squadrons’ worth of intelligence analysts on a single commander’s intelligence problem for a period of time, if required.

Assuming early allocation of ISR, planning staffs need to think beyond organic capabilities if they are going to bring the power of what is possible to their command’s mission, irrespective of the command’s command-and-control relationship with the supporting ISR. Too often, detailed ISR planning for nonorganic assets is an afterthought.

However, unfamiliarity with theater-airborne ISR capabilities and planning factors also inhibits effective planning. Recognizing this problem, the CAOC has placed a minimum of two ISR liaison officers at every division-level equivalent command in Afghanistan and Iraq. Typically, a captain is paired with a technical or master sergeant with extensive experience in ISR operations. Their tasking from the CAOC is straightforward: Figure out ways to integrate theater-airborne ISR into the supported commander’s ground operations and train and educate the supported unit’s personnel to assist them in making theater-airborne ISR relevant and effective in the fight. For larger operations, the CAOC has sent and will continue to send ISR planning teams consisting of experts from every ISR platform we task to assist the supported commander’s staff in detailed ISR plan development when requested.

Additionally, we have directed the 480th ISR Wing, which is the lead wing for the Air Force Distributed Common Ground System, to assign specific units to specific division-equivalent headquarters in Afghanistan and Iraq to facilitate habitual relationships and improve analyst familiarity with particular areas of operations. The 480th and other Air Force exploitation organizations also have pushed more of their analysts forward as part of the ISR Exploitation Cell construct. These cells not only have the benefit of providing direct support, but they also provide a much-needed boost in analyst knowledge of forward requirements when these analysts rotate back to their home units that are providing reachback support.

SYNERGISTIC EFFECTS

It is important to bring greater stability to the ISR allocation process to enable more effective planning and execution; however, we should not do so at the expense of the ability to mass ISR platforms in support of the main effort. Although ISR capacity is growing, by all accounts, it remains a scarce commodity. Predictability should not become a byword for a “salami slice” approach to ISR allocation that simply leaves everyone ISR-poor and inhibits the ability to generate cross-platform synergistic effects. Multiple recent events in southern Afghanistan have demonstrated the power that comes from the synergy of multiple ISR platforms refining a situation in coordination with a supported commander who then acts on the high-fidelity intelligence generated. However, high-fidelity intelligence does not just happen. It requires the extensive and detailed mission planning between supported and supporting units noted above, as well as a shift away from the technical, requirements-based aspects of collection management toward more focus on the supported commander’s intent.

Conceptually, commander’s intent should drive collection, but due to the sheer scale and complexity of ISR operations, we all have to rely on collection management systems to a degree. Unfortunately, over the years collection management has evolved to a point where process has often driven ISR operations more than commanders’ intent.

To facilitate a more commander-oriented and effects-based collection system, the ISR concept of operations introduced the “mission type order” or MTO. MTOs are simple in concept. They identify the supported unit; the mission-controlling agency; how communications are to be conducted; and most critical of all, the purpose, intent and objective of the assigned collection mission. MTOs can guide single missions or multiple collectors operating at a designated time and place. Rather than simply flying the collection deck — which is probably outdated — collectors work closely with the supported unit and other collectors during mission execution to gather what is required and adjust the mission to meet the stated objectives of the MTO. MTOs have the effect of pulling the collectors out of the weeds and giving supported commands the tools they need to direct changes in real time as required.

MTOs will not replace the need for the technical aspects of formal requirements, which remain essential for exploiters and their associated systems. However, MTOs inject flexibility into the system and assist in keeping us from losing track of the forest while counting the trees.

While there are some positive developments with regard to the current state of the C2 for ISR operations, there is also a trend working against synergy, which is the imagery intelligence-signals intelligence seam. “Most of the newer airborne ISR platforms are multi-Int capable and are best employed when combining both ImInt and SigInt sensors to accomplish a specific mission directed by a single team. Unfortunately, most of the associated exploitation is conducted in different locations by analysts who are anything but a cohesive team by way of prior design. Synergy is obtained by sheer force of effort in chat rooms and e-mail, which is incredibly difficult to sustain with constant force rotations. Intelligence planners at all levels need to consider the benefits of multi-Int synergistic effects to be gained through co-location and make deliberate plans to achieve it.

In his seminal work, “Essence of Decision,” analyzing the Cuban Missile Crisis, political scientist Graham Allison notes that organizations have repertoires of historically based procedures that, while initially developed for good reasons, can severely limit an organization’s effective response to new situations. Good insight. It is time for the joint community to update its collection management playbook.

U.S. Air Force Col. Kevin Glenn is chief of the ISR Division at the Combined Air Operations Center, Al-Udeid Air Base, Qatar. He leads a team of 144 intelligence professionals responsible for analysis and ISR planning for air and space operations in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.