Combined go team transformation in the republic of Korea - military intelligence

Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, Jan-March, 2003 by Alan G. Rogers

Transformation--the core of the Army Chief of Staffs initiative to redefine the way our Army will meet future challenges--is driving military intelligence visionaries to rethink our current force modernization and force structure in the continental United States and abroad. Recent Army counterintelligence (CI) and human intelligence (HUMINT) initiatives in Korea have pushed our current doctrine to the limits in terms of identifying new and creative ways to furnish critical and timely information to theater warfighters.

The 524th Military Intelligence (MI) Battalion provides operational CI and HUMINT support to the Korean theater of operations. Subordinate to the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command's (INSCOM) 501st MI Brigade, the 524th Headquarters and Headquarters Company and its two operational line companies have the mission under armistice and in wartime to supply timely CI and HUMINT support to the theater's warfighters. One of the Battalion's transforming methods has evolved into the combined tactical "Intelligence Go Team" concept.

Admittedly, the concept of Go Teams is not a unique one. Army CI/HUMINT teams have deployed to various locations across the globe, from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia to Thailand and Southwest Asia. These teams traditionally deploy with a warrant officer as the team leader, a noncommissioned officer (NCO), and a small "slice" of CI agents; required linguist support comes from organic HUMINT collectors or Defense Language Institute-trained CI agents. However, the 524th MI Battalion is experimenting with the next logical progression: fully combined Go Teams (see Figure 1). The augmented team will contain its full contingent of U.S. Army CI agents and HUMINT collectors, but will also include their Republic of Korea (ROK) counterparts. The intent is to integrate wartime CI and HUMINT operations fully into the combined campaign plan. The hope is that this broader, combined effort will provide a more complete picture of the battlespace.

The 524th has transformed the tenets of CI doctrine to meet the armistice and hostilities threat across the Korean Peninsula. Under armistice, each CI resident office (recently termed Military Intelligence Detachment or MID) provides direct support to its host installation and its respective area of operations. The MIDs conduct the full spectrum of the CI and HUMINT mission:

* Robust liaison program with our ROK counterparts.

* All personnel security investigations.

* Threat statements and assessments coupled with conducting security awareness briefings.

* CI investigations and force protection (FP) reporting.

In wartime, the MIDs continue their FP mission but take on an additional responsibility of deploying integrated tactical CI-HUMINT Go Teams in support of the three Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) commands. The 524th MI Battalion command and ROK-U.S. combined staff planners developed the Go Team concept jointly to better meet the mission capabilities required by the theater operations plan.

The South Korean Peninsula comprises three distinct military areas. The First ROKA (FROKA) and Third ROKA (TROKA) cover the northern area while the Second ROKA (SROKA) covers the combined rear area. The Capital Defense Corps is responsible for providing coverage to the greater Seoul area where more than 25 percent of the Peninsula's citizens reside. The 524th MI Battalion's operational line companies strategically align with their respective ROKA counterparts. Over the past year, the Battalion has successfully validated the tactics, techniques, and procedures of this transforming Go Team vision in a proof of concept demonstration in April 2001. That Ulchi Focus Lens (UFL) exercise demonstrated a robust combined, Go Team operation across the entire Peninsula further validating the Go Team vision.

Figure 2 depicts the architecture of the Battalion's Go Team. The Team is a CI-HUMINT incident response element that can deploy on short notice from its MIDs located across the Peninsula. The teams are tailorable to meet different mission requirements and deploy rapidly to any threat area. When a terrorist or Special Operating Forces (SOF) incident occurs on the Peninsula, the Combined Forces Command (CFC) CI-HUMINT control element will notify the Brigade and subsequently the Battalion to deploy a Go Team to a given location where the team would link up with its ROK counterparts. Within a short period, the designated MID can supply a rapidly deployable Go Team in support of the operation.

Once the Operational Team (OT) arrives at the incident site, the team members quickly set up security, assess the on-the-ground situation, set up the CI/HUMINT Automated Tool Set (CHATS) and provide timely information to the Operations Management Team (OMT) cell via satellite communications (SATCOMs). The SATCOMs give the OT the capability to transmit and receive spot reports via both secure and unsecure means. Perhaps the most significant feature of the 524th MI Battalion's Go Team is that they require no external power source to conduct satellite and CHATS operations. Each team has commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) generators that run for a long time and quietly for extended operations. The Team quickly and easily transports this equipment in a small suite of transit cases.