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What is a Photo Interpreter / Imagery Analyst?

This is a highly skilled profession with many areas of specialization. In performing analysis the IA must bring to bear the cumulative professional skills and knowledge acquired to derive a product that will be responsive to the user’s needs. Background knowledge is extremely important. IAs prepare for their work not only through the more mechanical skills of imagery intelligence production, but also through development of a background in the geographic, cultural, and technical aspects associated with a given area or region. This background is essential to distinguishing what is normal from the unusual. IAs are generally information entrepreneurs and archivists, a person whose external memory store of information is as important as the internal one it supports.

The more successful or “expert” lAs are those who have developed a special motivation for the field, and a genuine curiosity about their work. They find a challenge in recognizing the unusual things that can be detected in the imagery. They are highly individualistic in their methods and techniques, with a balance of the individualism demonstrated in the “team” approach and sentiment. This teaming is best represented where the more senior analysts assist the novice or newly assigned person. One of the more powerful mechanisms present in the IA domain is the information flow that takes place during all phases of analysis. Informal information exchange channels run between IAs performing similar tasks. These information networks are established and sustained based on the credibility of information shared. These channels answer questions, provide clarifications and offer feedback.

The more complex aspects of imagery analysis are essentially passed on through an oral tradition, often as part of a kind of apprenticeship or as spontaneously learned by the individual IA. Training documentation and materials have traditional been very limited, particularly in respect to military imagery analysis tasks.

In my own experience there was the initial training and skill development course, a total of approximately 26 weeks of training, followed immediately by a field assignment. The school had provided the basics, of course, but nothing approaching the reality of 5500 frames of imagery associated with my first actual task in the field. Later, there was the demand to learn to distinguish in detail the differences between the military equipment of potential enemies and those of the friendlier nations. Along with this was the order of battle, meaning we not only had to being able to identify equipment, but know exactly how many of each item a specific kind of unit was equipped with. Along the way, we learned the specific installations in our area of responsibility and a host of other pieces of information. One of the more special skills was being able to identify activity based on signatures, for example when construction was initiate for a military facility associated with a particular weapons system. When the ground is broken, the initial phases of construction get under way, chances are good an IA will identify – with a high probability of accuracy – what system would be there. No guess work – learned technique.

Ideally, a highly skilled military IA of the Cold War period ended up with rote memory recall of the features of some 1200 different items of military equipment, aircraft, missiles, etc. How ? Through training and practice. Simple truth is, you either learned or might as well have fallen on the proverbial sword. For most of us, it was a matter of personal satisfaction and pride.

I think the demands are at least as great for Ias today, perhaps more. Real time imaging demands, for example, the person looking at the image know, without hesitation, the correct identification for the military equipment seen in the image. There’s no time to look at interpretation keys or other references. The IA has to make “the call.” That’s pretty scary stuff when you consider the next step might be to launch a missile at it. Better be right!