HUMINT in the 22nd Century

OK, more random ramblings:

In the 22nd century, the most common form of ground
action involves relatively small forces (mostly
divisional or smaller--the largest battles in the
official canon that occour outside the core world are,
IIRC, the largest force specifically mentioned was a
two-division corps) inserted onto other planets than
those they are native too.  We see a good deal of
trouble on Earth when military units have to operate
in areas that differ in terrain, culture, and other
significant factors.

The best way to overcome these difficulties is human
intelligence:  simply put, talking to people.  But
talking to people in such a way that militarily useful
information is extracted is a fairly specialized
skill.

One hint of the way this requirement can be met is
seen in the way this issue is handled in the US Army's
IBCT.  

Source:  CALL Newsletter No. 01-18.  An electronic
copy of this issue can be found at
http://call.army.mil/products/newsltrs/01-18/01-18ch4.htm
 All information discussed is public domain.

I'd recommend the CALL website for anyone really
interested in how the US Army solves problem of
various kinds.	

Anyway, the short version is this:  In the
Reconaissance platoon is a built-in human intelligence
capability.  There are 3 troops in the Reconaissance,
Surveillance, Target Acquisition Squadron.  Each troop
has 3 platoons, each platoon having 4 IAVs.  Each IAV
has a two-man crew and 3 dismounts (excepting the
platoon leader's IAV, which has 4 dismounts).  In the
three squads, each team has a 97B Counterintelligence
agent.	The platoon headquarters includes a 97B NCO.  
Furthermore, the brigade's military intelligence
company has a human intelligence platoon with four
tactical HUMINT teams.	Each team consists of 3 97E
Human Intelligence Collectors and 1 97B
Counterintelligence agent.  These operate with HMMWVs.


Part III of the article discusses what you do with the
CI agents in the RSTA troops.  On one hand, you have
to make sure your CI agents can hang with the scouts
on conventional missions.  On the other, you must
ensure your leadership at the lower levels understands
what use these CI pukes are good for.  

And what are they good for?  Now we're getting to the
heart of the matter.  CI Agents have a variety of
specific skills, but one of the most important is
called 'Tactical questioning'.	It's an abbreviated
form of interrogatio or debriefing used to collect
PIR-related information from human sources.  The
example given is from Somalia, where good tactical
questioning allowed CI agents supporting an infantry
company to locate a well-hidden arms cache.  Another
skill CI agents have is document evaluation and
exploitation.  They can categorize, screen, summarize,
and report documents of varying values.  And the last
major thing the CI agents are trained to do is "source
operations."  This is using non-unit personnel to
provide information of value to the unit.

The HUMINT platoon is a simillar but different case. 
They do not perform conventional tactical missions. 
The focus more on source operations, including use of
recruited sources (spies, in plain language).

Most of these HUMINT activities have previously been
carried out at divisional level and higher.  Tactical
application of HUMINT is rarely considered outside of
special forces units.  

However, in the 22nd century many units will be
operating in relatively small force packages and won't
have division-level support.  Considering that their
mission profiles might not allow for suffient
intelligence preparation, units will have to improvise
on the fly, and this requires having the assets to
generate HUMINT, the ability to use those assets, and
the ability to analyze that information.

Now where does this all tie into the tabletop?

Any Stargrunt (and eventually FMA) player who hasn't
thought of a dozen scenarios that involve these
missions isn't trying.	

The potential for firefights is much higher than with
standard recon missions.  To develop HUMINT, units
actually have to talk to locals.  This leaves them
vulnerable to attack by guerillas, terrorists, or
whatever.

One possibility would be to start a scenario with a
single recon squad moving into a town to gather
information.  The local guerillas have a problem with
this and attack, forcing the team to hole up in a
stone building and scream for help.  Meanwhile the
guerillas are gathing for an assault, and incidentally
shooting anyone they suspect of telling the team
anything.  This complicates things further because
preliminary interviews with a particular villaiger
indicated he had extremely useful intelligence and was
willing to share it with the team if they could
guarantee his safety. 

That's just to get things going.

John 

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