Key Takeaways:

• Military intelligence involves the production of information by the armed services that identifies and helps mitigate threats to the nation.
• The mission needs of the military intelligence community include analyst training, safeguarding sensitive information, and accelerating solutions development.
• Collaboration and customer-centric efforts are important to develop solutions and capabilities that lead to better mission outcomes for military intelligence analysts.

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What is military intelligence? An introduction

Military intelligence is a field among the U.S. armed services that includes gathering, analyzing, processing and disseminating information to identify adversarial threats, provide situational awareness for defense planners, and target and mitigate those threats in military operations. There are many moving parts in this critical and complex area of work, ranging from human specialists who research, analyze and convert collected information into intelligence products to machines and technologies that assist in gathering and filtering information along with automating tasks and processes.

The military intelligence (MI) field is also a military occupational specialty, and whether MI is conducted by intelligence specialists in the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force or Coast Guard, getting accurate information to the right people at the right time is critical to the mission of ensuring our nation’s safety. Our warfighters on the front lines rely on intelligence to do their jobs and remain out of harm’s way, and our defense leaders use MI products to learn about enemy forces and their capabilities while strategizing and planning operations to minimize risks.

As a technology integrator with defense mission expertise, SAIC understands the importance of military intelligence, and we are proud to support our customers and warfighters with MI solutions and capabilities that translate to battlefield advantages. As the program manager for an SAIC task order that is at the forefront of global MI-related projects, I’m thrilled to play a part in the work that we do to help Department of Defense (DOD) customers design, build and operationalize those solutions. My goal here is to raise awareness of the role SAIC plays in the MI mission, whether you are new to this field or an established expert.

SAIC’s number-one priority is customer mission success. Regular customer engagements and reporting, as well as open lines of communication with our customers, enable us to obtain feedback on our performance and inform everything we do. We know that we are expected to make technical improvements to solutions, implement cost-saving mechanisms, improve time and resource efficiencies, and introduce process improvements, as a close partner. The road to success in military intelligence is paved by a laser focus on customer-centric efforts that lessen contractual workloads and initiate work quickly, which is critical when the safety of service members is at stake.

Broadening the reach of military intelligence training

Adversaries are constantly adapting and changing their patterns, habits and communication tactics against our ability to gather information. Military intelligence can be gathered anywhere and everywhere, and since active and reserve MI analysts are spread out across the globe and adversaries are engaging in unpredictable ways, it is essential that they undergo ongoing training. MI specialists typically gain skills and knowledge in the classroom, and training in the field isn’t always easy to come by, especially for Army National Guard and Army Reserve members, who don’t train as frequently or with the same training systems that their active counterparts have on hand.

Meeting our customers where they are, SAIC has made significant strides toward solutions that enable anytime, anywhere training from any Internet-connected device. We are working with them to integrate a cloud-based virtual training environment into their training networks, which will help MI analysts keep sharp with their information analysis and delivery of clear and actionable intelligence products. The virtual environment ensures that our customers' end users receive training in an effective and timely manner and addresses the challenge of providing widespread access to training — whether in the classroom or in the field.