Intelligence Support to Personnel Recovery: Is USPACOM Ready for the Unexpected?
Abstract
The United States military is highly-trained and adequately-equipped for conventional personnel recovery operations. However, insurgent groups and adversaries of the United States all over the world use a variety of asymmetric approaches to degrade or negate the military dominance of friendly forces. Kidnapping operations are an example of this type of asymmetric approach. Kidnapping changes a normal operations-centric personnel recovery event into an intelligence-centric effort. Kidnapping operations are one of the few tactical events which can produce highly-detrimental strategic consequences for national-level political and military decision-makers. The United States, especially at the Combatant Commander level, is ill-equipped for this type of mission. A truly one-of-a-kind intelligence analysis cell, solely focused on intelligence analysis in support of PR operations, exists in the Joint Intelligence Center at Headquarters, Central Command. No other United States Combatant Command has this unique capability or experience. It is in the best interest of the United States military to remedy this deficiency across the combatant command spectrum, starting with Pacific Command (USPACOM). USPACOM should establish a dedicated personnel recovery intelligence analysis cell to support combat search and rescue and hostage-taking contingencies.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 04, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA546172
Entities
People
- David T. Barr
Organizations
- Naval War College