It's not what you do, it's how you do it.

The growing controversy in both Britain and the United States over Iraq's Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) has highlighted the difficulties of both gathering and assessing intelligence. The picture remains obscure but it appears that the intelligence on Iraqi WMD was at best extremely limited.

During the Cold War the two superpowers relied extensively upon satellites for intelligence gathering and this provided many coups, indeed by the time of the Cuba missile crisis American satellite intelligence had discovered the Soviet Union was heavily outnumbered in intercontinental ballistic missiles. But in the post-Cold War world, over-reliance upon satellites can be counter-productive and it is clear that greater emphasis needs to be given to alternate sources of data gathering.

Satellites will certainly remain a valuable part of the intelligence gathering process by 'cueing' interest in certain areas. But the fact they appear over an area at a regular time provides a counter-measure; indeed while preparing for the Son Tay prison camp raid in 1971, US special forces used to dismantle their dummy camp every day to prevent Russian satellites taking compromising images which might then alert the North Vietnamese.

Aerial imagery continues to be a major source of complementary intelligence from the strategic to the tactical level, and has been ever since the French were able to deduce where the Germans would attack by locating their fighter bases and hospitals during the First World War. In the Second World War, the Americans could deduce the strength of island garrisons by counting the number of latrines knowing that the Japanese were very strict about the number of men who could use each facility.

This form of imagery is even sharper than satellite imagery and excellent results may be obtained from products such as the Recon/Optical KS-146A long-range oblique camera, which is one of many products having benefited from the electro-optic revolution. A visual system using 305 metres of photographic film with each image carrying a note of the location for post-mission analysis, this camera can be converted for electro-optical use by installing a charge coupled device focal plane array to produce images of 12,000 pixels x 32 lines with the data recorded on an image sensing unit.

Conventional photographic or 'wet' film requires time to be removed from the camera, developed and dried before it can be exploited. Videotape, on the other hand, can be used instantly and has proved useful when storing images in the infrared spectrum. BAE Systems (formerly Lockheed Martin IR Imaging Systems), Sagem, Thales Nederland, Thales Optronics, Thales Optronics (Vinten) and Zeiss Optronik are among companies which produce or are developing infrared line scanners that collect images from the ground for recording upon annotated video tape.

These sensors are not only installed in aircraft but are increasingly available in podded systems such as the Terma Modular Reconnaissance Pod which can accept wet film or video-tape recording of images from photographic cameras, electro-optic cameras or infrared line scanners. But the next generation of podded systems can go a stage further, this having been demonstrated in the Tornado. Computing Devices (now General Dynamics United Kingdom) and W. Vinten (now Thales Optronics [Vinten]) exploited video tape recording to manipulate images allowing stand-off data to be processed. These are monitored in flight and targets of interest are highlighted in a special file that can be inspected, like the remainder of the tape, immediately upon landing. Eads has produced similar systems for German Tornados and the concept has been further refined by Elop, with its Long-Range Oblique Photographic System. In this system the images can be transmitted through a data link to a ground station for exploitation before the aircraft has even landed.

Enter the Drone

Complementing manned reconnaissance aircraft are unmanned aerial vehicles. These use similar sensors to the manned aircraft, although television cameras remain an important sensor in the drone world. The US Air Force used derivatives of Teledyne Ryan (now Northrop Grumman) BQM-34 Firebee aerial targets for long range reconnaissance over eastern Asia during the 1960s, although a premature turn by one failed to provide late images of the Son Tay camp which would have shown it had been abandoned.

Medium-range (200 to 600 km) reconnaissance drones with autonomous or radio-controlled guidance are gradually being accepted for reconnaissance and a variety of systems are in service including, the General Atomics RQ-1 Predator, the IAI Heron, the Meteor Mirach 150, Northrop Grumman's BQM-74C and BQM-145, the Sagem Sperwer HV and LE as well as the Silver Arrow Hermes 1500. They have the advantage of being difficult to detect and expendable if they are.

However, High Altitude Long Endurance (Hale) UAVs are emerging which are capable of conducting surveil lance for very long periods. The Northrop Grumman RQ-4A Global Hawk, for example, is capable of remaining on station for up to 36 hours or has a range of more than 22,200 kilometres. The sensor package is the usual combined electro optic camera and infrared sensor, but this is augmented by a synthetic aperture radar and the combined sensors can cover an area of 137,300 square kilometres in 24 hours from an altitude of more than 65,000 feet.

An alternative package being developed by Eads for the Euro Hawk would have electronic intelligence sensors. The sheer endurance of unmanned vehicles such as the Global Hawk or the General Atomics Gnat permit sustained surveillance; other nations are therefore becoming interested in the family of drones concept, which Dassault and Sagem plan to develop.

Patrollers Help

Aerial platforms can contribute to intelligence gathering in other ways. Maritime patrol aircraft can monitor shipping movements with their radar while their electronic warfare systems can be used to monitor traffic not only over water but also over land. For example, the US Navy's P-3C Orions have been used for electronic warfare missions over the Balkans. Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft (AEW&C), such as the Boeing E-3 Sentry or Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye, can provide information on air and vehicle movements. This was demonstrated during Operation 'Desert Storm' by the Northrop Grumman E-8A Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Jstars), which detected the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait as it happened. Raytheon Systems is leading a British team aiming to provide a similar capability with the Airborne Stand-Off Radar (Astor) while Europe is considering an international response to its Airborne Ground Surveillance (AGS) requirement.

The monitoring of communications (comint) and radar signals (sigint) are vital means of intelligence gathering, and aircraft are used extensively in this field. Several American aircraft engaged in this activity were shot down by Soviet air defences during the Cold War and recently a US Navy Lockheed Martin EP-3E Airborne Reconnaissance Integrated Electronics Suite (Aries) II was forced to land in Hainan Island, China after colliding with a Chinese fighter.

The Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules provides the platform for a number of electronic warfare 'spy' equipment sets, although usually for sigint, such as the US Air Force's 'Senior Scout' and 'Senior Troupe' but occasionally for such comint systems as the 'Furnish Breeze'. Some half-dozen air forces operate sigint Hercules and the Egyptian Air Force is reported to have a pair of EC-130H for comint. Some air forces, such as Argentina, Israel, India and South Africa, use platforms based upon the Boeing 707, including the US Air Force (RC-135). The Royal Air Force has long used the BAE Systems Nimrod R.1 for sigint while the German Navy operates a significant electronic reconnaissance capability which includes the Breguet Atlantic 'Peace Peak'. Even Sweden, neutral in the Cold War, has maintained an airborne sigint capability and is currently using the S.102B Korpen based upon a Gulfstream Aerospace IV business jet.

Spy ships have also been used, notably by the former Soviet Union, which kept trawlers off American B-52 bases in the Pacific and alerted Hanoi whenever the bombers took off. In theory ships provide a valuable intelligence platform capable of carrying a wide variety of sensors and operating with impunity in international waters. But they are slow and with little more than token armament so if the country under surveillance decides to ignore diplomatic niceties the vessels can be subjected to attack like the USS Liberty, which was bombed and torpedoed in 'error' by Israel in 1967, and the USS Pueblo, which was seized by North Korea some six months later. Yet this has not prevented Germany from replacing its 'radar trials ships' with three Oste class vessels, their predecessors being sold to Greece and Turkey.

Hullo?

The interception of communications has been a major source of intelligence since the appearance of radio at the beginning of the last century and it has become an even more valuable tool with the development of microwave relays that has extended interception to telecommunications. Encryption was quickly used in radio communications to conceal the contents of messages but any shield can be penetrated, especially if devised by a human being. In the First World War the British decryption of the German diplomatic code in the Zimmerman Telegram led to the entry of the United States on the Allies' side.

One solution was one-message pads, which are almost impossible even today to break, but the other was to use electromechanical encryption. The most famous was the German Enigma (title picture by Eric H. Biass, Gatow Air Museum), but even that was not perfect and although several versions of the machine existed, the codes were broken by a combination of copying the decrypting machine (Ultra) or on occasion by realising that operators repeated certain phrases or words in the encryption process. Consequently, by 1943 the Allies could eavesdrop not only on most of the enemy's diplomatic and strategic communications in both the European and Pacific theatres and receive their preparations for major operations, but could often monitor the enemy logistics network.

Electro-mechanical means of decrypting messages have been replaced by electronic means; indeed the first electronic computer was developed specifically for this purpose. Undoubtedly, computerbased decryption systems remain major tools of comint gathering at all levels, but the problem of overcoming radio interception still remains. The most effective is to remove the radio operators, each of whom has a unique method of transmitting. When the Japanese carrier fleet set off for Pearl Harbor it left its radio operators in its home base sending spurious messages to convince the US Navy that the Imperial Navy's strike force was out of harm's way.

An alternative is not to use the airwaves at all. After the Battle of Stalingrad in the spring of 1943, the Soviet Army drove westwards towards Kharkov. The Germans under Field Marshal von Manstein prepared a counter-offensive, but the Russian comint organisation failed to detect preparations because the Germans relied upon messengers and landlines, whereby achieving complete surprise. The same means were used to prepare the German Ardennes Offensive in 1944 with the same results.

Nowadays, telecommunications rely less upon landlines and more upon microwave relays, which are vulnerable to interception. Telecommunications are not only used for business and administration but for personal contact, and the users often feels they are within their personal space and become indiscreet revealing not only useful data, such as the Iraqi officer who asked what he was to do about 'special weapons', but also about personal character, which can prove useful for understanding or manipulating influential people. In Nazi Berlin a perk for telephone interceptors was to listen into a heatedly amorous conversation between a prince of the church and a lady of negotiable affection, while in modern Britain the heir to the throne must deeply regret publication of a conversation of extremely intimate nature with his maitresse en titre. Yet it can lead to misinterpretation. The story of US Army 'heroine' Jessica Lynch firing at the Iraqis was reportedly due to an intercepted message about the last fight of a brave blonde but reviewers later discovered the message referred to a man.

On a more serious note much of the planning for '9/11' was conducted on mobile telephones and while millions of them exist an automatic watch can be organised thanks to modern computers monitoring either specific frequencies or specific words or phrases. The National Security Agency (NSA) and the (British) Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) as well as their allies are not only able to intercept communications but, thanks to the construction of mobile telephones, they can also triangulate the location, a feature which has sent many criminals to jail recently. GCHQ's headquarters in Cheltenham is being rebuilt at a cost equivalent to $1.65 billion and employs 4500 people including fluencies in 67 languages, while the code breakers include dyslexics and mathematicians, the former because they are intelligent and their 'word blindness' gives them a different approach to decryption.

However, this means of intelligence does have its weaknesses. The target can pass messages using pre-arranged innocuous phrases or can use the mobile telephone only once. It is reported that as US forces closed in upon Osama Bin Laden in 2001, so he knew from a media report that his telephone might give away his location, he passed it to a follower who was ordered to set off and use it. The suspected terrorist leader then fled in the opposite direction and was well away from danger when the telephone's new owner was captured.

A Man in the Loop

Human intelligence (humint) remains important; indeed it is the most prized form of intelligence either through voluntary or induced recruitment. Not only can assets provide the most secret data but often valuable background information as well. Kim Philby neutralised Western attempts at creating anti-Communist guerrilla forces while Oleg Penkovsky provided valuable information about Soviet weapons developments and capabilities. Yet people can also be used for other means of intelligence; the CIA and the US Army Special Operations Group were able to install automatic telephone interception devices on landlines in Laos and the intercepted messages were then recorded by special aircraft for later analysis. During the Cold War the leading Nato powers would often task personnel to go through rubbish dumps and even cesspits searching for any useful low-grade documents.

Yet the most difficult task in intelligence is not acquiring information but assessing it. Contrary to popular opinion the CIA was not heaving with spies but with analysts, whose activities, in retrospect, appear to have been more successful than many believed at the time.

The problem is that intelligence is not an exact science but an art in which interpretation is subjective. During the Second World War Britain's most senior scientist refused to believe the Germans were developing long range missiles because he was focused only upon solid rather than liquid-propulsion. Military success in 1966 meant Israel's political leaders in 1973 refused to believe until it was almost too late that Egypt and Syria would attack" on Yom Kippur.

Intelligence chiefs answer to political masters. Systems are being developed to compile, compare and display intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information, indeed Thales displayed such a system at a recent Paris Air Show, while El-op has also developed such a system. Data remains the cats-paw of subjective analysis.

An intelligence expert has noted that the higher the security classification the greater the authenticity ascribed to the data--whether or not this is appropriate remains speculation, as data is often subject to interpretation by people who may have rigid pre-conceived ideas. In the weapons of mass destruction issue there was no doubt whatsoever that Iraq had chemical weapons in the late 1980s and used them promiscuously against Iran and its internal opponents. There was also interest in developing a nuclear weapon, for documents were taken at gunpoint from International Atomic Agency officials in the early 1990s.

Overcoming pre-conceived notions is difficult because intelligence chiefs rarely have more than part of the jigsaw and hard evidence may have to be supported by detailed analysis. Despite the public impression given before Operation 'Iraqi Freedom', the evidence for weapons of mass destruction was limited and certain elements within some governments appear to have decided to interpret it in a way which would support pre-determined action (it must also be said that such weapons are very difficult to dispose--of as proved by the Russian plea for financial support in the destruction of its Soviet-era stocks--Iraq has asked for none, and could not document any disposal).

The only way to overcome this problem is a political one. It requires a leadership willing to take an objective analysis of the data to develop a response. This was followed in the Cuban Crisis of 1963 with spectacular success but it is questionable whether or not it was followed in Washington and London over Iraq, although intelligence organisations in both cities have since been heavily criticised. Certainly the background to Operation 'Iraqi Freedom' should lead to some searching questions about the political interpretation of intelligence in future crises.