https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_assessment
Intelligence assessment is the development of behavior forecasts or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organisation, based on wide ranges of available overt and covert information. Assessments develop in response to leadership declaration requirements to inform decision making. Assessment may be executed on behalf of a state, military or commercial organisation with ranges of information sources available to each.
An intelligence assessment reviews available information and previous assessments for relevance and currency. Where there requires additional information, the analyst may direct some collection.
Intelligence studies is the academic field concerning intelligence assessment, especially relating to international relations and military science.
Intelligence assessment is the development of behavior forecasts or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organisation, based on wide ranges of available overt and covert information. Assessments develop in response to leadership declaration requirements to inform decision making. Assessment may be executed on behalf of a state, military or commercial organisation with ranges of information sources available to each.
An intelligence assessment reviews available information and previous assessments for relevance and currency. Where there requires additional information, the analyst may direct some collection.
Intelligence studies is the academic field concerning intelligence assessment, especially relating to international relations and military science.
Process
The Intelligence Cycle
Intelligence assessment is based on a customer requirement or need,
which may be a standing requirement or tailored to a specific
circumstance or a Request for Information (RFI). The "requirement" is
passed to the assessing agency and worked through the intelligence cycle, a structured method for responding to the RFI.
The RFI may indicate in what format the requester prefers to consume the product.
The RFI is reviewed by a Requirements Manager, who will then direct
appropriate tasks to respond to the request. This will involve a review
of existing material, the tasking of new analytical product or the
collection of new information to inform an analysis.
New information may be collected through one or more of the various collection disciplines; human source, electronic and communications intercept, imagery or open sources.
The nature of the RFI and the urgency placed on it may indicate that
some collection types are unsuitable due to the time taken to collect or
validate the information gathered. Intelligence gathering disciplines
and the sources and methods used are often highly classified and compartmentalised, with analysts requiring an appropriate high level of security clearance.
The process of taking known information about situations and
entities of importance to the RFI, characterizing what is known and
attempting to forecast future events is termed "all source" assessment, analysis or processing.
The analyst uses multiple sources to mutually corroborate, or exclude,
the information collected, reaching a conclusion along with a measure of
confidence around that conclusion.
Where sufficient current information already exists, the analysis
may be tasked directly without reference to further collection.
The analysis is then communicated back to the requester in the
format directed, although subject to the constraints on both the RFI and
the methods used in the analysis, the format may be made available for
other uses as well and disseminated accordingly. The analysis
will be written to a defined classification level with alternative
versions potentially available at a number of classification levels for
further dissemination.
Target-centric intelligence cycle
Target-centric intelligence cycle
This approach, known as Find-Fix-Finish-Exploit-Assess (F3EA),
is complementary to the intelligence cycle and focused on the
intervention itself, where the subject of the assessment is clearly
identifiable and provisions exist to make some form of intervention
against that subject, the target-centric assessment approach may be
used.
The subject for action, or target, is identified and efforts are initially made to find
the target for further development. This activity will identify where
intervention against the target will have the most beneficial effects.
When the decision is made to intervene, action is taken to fix
the target, confirming that the intervention will have a high
probability of success and restricting the ability of the target to take
independent action.
During the finish stage, the intervention is executed, potentially an arrest or detention or the placement of other collection methods.
Following the intervention, exploitation of the target is
carried out, which may lead to further refinement of the process for
related targets. The output from the exploit stage will also be passed
into other intelligence assessment activities.
