Tech-Writer.net > Photography > Aerial Reconnaissance and Imagery Analysis > Photo Interpretation & Imagery Analysis

Photography > Aerial Reconnaissance and Imagery Analysis > Photo Interpretation & Imagery Analysis

What are the "Int's" in Intelligence?

Discipline	…int	Features	Limitations
Imagery Intelligence	PHOTINT/IMINT	Visually recognizable proof to policy makers. Ready availability to fulfill some needs. Can be acquired remotely.	Requires interpretation and analysis by trained personnel. High-cost.
Signals Intelligence	SIGINT	Three componenets: Comint - Communications Intelligence Elint - Electronics Intelligence Telint - Telemetry Intelligence Huge volumes of material, generally requiring exhaustive exploitation and analysis functions after collection.	Signals/communications may be encrypted requiring time to decrypt or break coding. Communications silence, secure lines, spoofing by phony traffic. Very high cost, as evidenced by NSA budget and technical resources.
Human Intelligence	HUMINT	Can be first-hand resource for information about plans and strategy	Risk to lives and potential political confrontation. Requires time to develop agents and recruits.
Measurement & Signatures Intelligence	MASINT	ELINT and TELINT are major contributors. Yet to be fully appreciated as a separate discipline	Very high-cost resource, but beneficial to countermeasure development (SAMs, etc)
Open-source Intellignce	OSINT	Excellent start point for collection	Information overflow. Less likely to offer information available from other sources though there are exceptions.

The SIGINT community and NSA liked to say they have the real time information and until the mid-80s that was probably true. Now, the IMINT community has the real time sensors, offering a direct targeting capability even SIGNINT cannot provide except in very rare cases.

There is an emerging discipline too – COMPINT or Computer Intelligence. As one might expect, NSA is the player in this field.