The Military Intelligence Warrant Officer of the 21st Century

Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, Oct-Dec, 2000 by Rex A. Williams

Changes in both the Army and Military Intelligence over the past 30 years have been dramatic. Only three decades ago we were embroiled in the Vietnam conflict while at the same time trying to ensure the containment of communism. Manual typewriters with onionskin carbon paper were the closest many of us got to automation. We accomplished dissemination of intelligence by typing forms using an optical-character reader (OCR) font that we took to the communications center for transmission. Our ability to get intelligence into the hands of our supported commanders was measured in hours or, depending on the product, sometimes days. Hard copy imagery from OV-1 Mohawks or RF-4Cs took hours to process through a photo lab before an imagery analyst could even view it. This was MI in the 1970s. It evolved in the 1980s with a larger budget and a focus on the Soviet Union and North Korea. Does anyone remember the multi-volume Soviet Battlefield Development Plan? Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo simply were not on the screen in the 1980s. This short history gives a backdrop of how far and how fast we have evolved in MI. Most of our senior warrant officers are products of the 1970s and 1980s, and have witnessed these changes. The changes of the past 30 years were remarkably slow compared to the expected changes of the 21st century.

Our MI warrant officer management evolved along with the Army--perhaps more slowly than it should have. We continue to access warrant officers much the same as we have for decades. The major change in the mid-1980s was the shift from direct appointments to the requirement to attend the Warrant Officer Candidate School and the Warrant Officer Basic Course before the first assignment. With the merger of military occupational specialties (MOSs) 352D (Emitter Location/Identification Technician) and 352H (Morse Intercept Technician) into Communications Interceptor/Locator Technician (352H) on 1 October 1999, we have only one less MI warrant MOS than we have always had. The ability to adapt and embrace new missions and functions will be crucial to the future success of MI warrant officers. We must have a vision to keep our focus on operating in that environment.

Vision

MI warrant officers provide the technical leadership and advice to ensure successful intelligence support across the entire spectrum of operations. They focus on--

* Adapting to rapidly changing environments and technologies.

* Managing intelligence systems and processes.

* Integrating intelligence architectures and communications.

* Developing and maintaining the technical proficiency of their soldiers.

By keeping a steadfast focus on this vision, we can ensure the evolution of MI warrant officers to provide relevant support across all disciplines. As a young noncommissioned officer (NCO) once said to me as he noticed my hesitancy to use the All-Source Analysis System, "Chief, don't make us drag you kicking and screaming into the 21st century." His point was valid. Our warrant officers must embrace change and be the leaders in managing the integration into and operation of technological advances in our intelligence units. Warrant officers have always been the recognized technical experts; they must now add technological expertise to that resume.

The MI warrant officers of 2010 will require all of the skill sets they need today to include communicative skills; tactical, technical, and technological skills; and a solid base of ethics and values. How will we train warrant officers to maintain their traditional roles as technicians and teach the adaptive skills necessary to support new organizations such as the Initial and Interim Brigades (I-Brigades)?

Training and Managing Warrant Officers

The Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca (USAIC&FH), directed a review of all warrant officer training in the Intelligence Center to put emphasis on training the right skills at the right time. Emphasis on assignment-specific training will be critical to future success. The diversity of jobs we now expect MI warrant officers to perform does not lend itself to the "one size fits all" training strategy. To better focus training resources, USAIC&FH developed a pyramid of roles we expect warrant officers to fill (see Figure 1). Each level builds on those beneath. As warrant officers achieve CW5, they should be able to perform all of the roles in the pyramid.

The Army Development System XXI Task Force is addressing the overall training and management of warrant officers. Discipline-specific missions and training are a more difficult area to address. The intelligence-specific aspects are complex, with varying requirements for signals intelligence, human intelligence, counterintelligence, imagery intelligence, analysis, and maintenance. We must also integrate intelligence support to information operations and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) into our training. Training warrant officers to keep pace with known and projected changes in structure, missions, and equipment will remain one of our biggest challenges.