Military intelligence

Military intelligence can be defined as the gathering of information regarding the strength, activities, and probable courses of action of other nations, which may or may not be opponents. Much military intelligence is gathered by military attachés during peacetime. During times of war, military intelligence is often obtained from captured equipment and captured enemy forces. Through the production of reports about a nation’s political climate and technological information, the ultimate goal of military intelligence is to help leaders in making decisions in the best interests of their nation.

Before the impact of the industrial and technological revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, military intelligence relied primarily on spies and informers. According to one study by Edward S. Creasy, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo (1851), military intelligence available to commanders between 490 b.c.e. and 1815 c.e. had little effect on the outcome of warfare. The physical and moral strength of an army and its tactical use by a commander won battles. Military leaders did attempt to obtain information about their opponents by interrogating prisoners of war. When the Egyptian ruler Ramses II attacked Kadesh (1288 b.c.e.), he was ambushed by the Hittites because he had wasted pertinent information obtained from prisoner interrogations.

The Roman Republic’s military intelligence, unlike that of the Roman Empire, was weak, but its armies conquered much of the Mediterranean world. In one particular case, intelligence did prove valuable during the Second Punic War (219-202 b.c.e.). In 207 b.c.e., Hasdrubal, the brother of Hannibal who was ravaging Italy, crossed the Alps to join the battle against Rome. His letter to Hannibal, which revealed his military plans, was intercepted by the Romans, who used the information to defeat Hasdrubal at the Metaurus River.

During the Middle Ages, on occasion, information was used effectively. For example, King Richard I, the Lion-Hearted, of England participated in the Third Crusade against the Arabs in the Middle East (1189–1192). After obtaining information about a caravan that was bringing supplies to his enemies, the Saracens, he raided it. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the major vernacular languages of Western Europe produced etymologically similar words for spying. The French fourteenth century chronicler Jean Froissart called spies “the proper men to employ.” Pilgrims, merchants, and clergy were some of these “proper men,” but their activities did not change the outcome of major battles.

Early Modern Period

Between 1500 and 1750, encryptment and decryptment emerged as methods for gathering and disseminating intelligence. The Steganographia, a major first cryptological work by Johannes Trithemius, a Benedictine abbot of Sponheim in the Holy Roman Empire, was written at the end of the fifteenth century but not published until 1606. (A limited edition English translation, The Steganographia of Johannes Trithemius, was published in 1982.) This work used easy vowel-consonant replacements. The appearance of universal grammars and symbols facilitated the creation of codes. Secret communications could be hidden in musical notes, and new mathematical skills permitted complex substitutions for hidden messages.

By the eighteenth century, European states had developed administrative organizations that had the ability to engage in extensive military intelligence. The Prussians and the English probably had the best strategic and operational intelligence. Still, although agents could be found in all courts and camps, few records were maintained and no permanent military intelligence organizations were established. Furthermore, triumph in military intelligence was rarely converted into military success because eighteenth century states could not respond quickly and superior forces were more important for victory than excellent intelligence.

Industrial and Technological Revolutions

During several Napoleonic battles, commanders such as Lord Horatio Nelson (Aboukir Bay, 1799) and Sir Arthur Wellesley (Battle of Assaye, 1803) conducted their own visual observations before making key military decisions. During much of the nineteenth century, traditional military intelligence was still useful. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Confederacy had an effective spy system in Washington, D.C., and the Union army established a professional intelligence section in 1863. At Gettysburg, General James Ewell Brown Stuart’s decision to use his cavalry to raid rather than to scout caused the Confederates to select battle on “unfavorable terms.” By contrast, the Prussian intelligence bureau provided Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the Prussian general staff, with the Austrian army’s battle order in 1866, which guaranteed Prussian victory in the “German” civil war.

Before 1914, expanding rail nets, telegraphs, telephones, cameras, radio signals, and airplanes dramatically changed the nature of war. All the new general staffs in the major European countries eventually established permanent military intelligence departments. By the end of the nineteenth century, military attachés from major powers stationed in the capitals of Europe regularly reported on the performance and equipment of the native armies. Moreover, the military before 1914 attempted to apply the new technology to gathering vital information. The American Union Army Signal Corps used signal flags and the telegraph, which led to more sophisticated codes and ciphers. By 1914, the U.S. Signal Corps received radio trackers to monitor radio communication.

During the U.S. invasion of Mexico in 1916, unsuccessful attempts were made to use airplanes and cameras for intelligence work. Before 1914, airplanes were used successfully for military reconnaissance in the Italian campaign in Tripoli and in the Balkan Wars (1912–1913).

The Era of World Wars: 1914–1945

The German army field regulations of 1908 stated that intelligence was still mostly obtained from visual observations and cavalry operations. Even though both of these techniques were used during World War I (1914–1918), modern signal technology became crucial from the start of operations both on land and on the high seas. For example, in August, 1914, German radio operators in East Prussia monitored uncoded Russian radio communications, which revealed the operational strategy of the opposing Russian army. This information, combined with the effective use of German rail transportation, led to the German victories at Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes in August, 1914. When the Russian military adopted a code for its radio transmissions, the Germans turned to a professor in Königsberg who broke the codes. On only one occasion in the winter of 1916–1917 did a Russian offensive surprise the Germans. Signal intercepts and decoding of messages became part of warfare on other fronts.

Sensing devices using amplifiers were used to tap the enemy’s field telephones in the trenches. In 1916, this method allowed the Germans to learn details of the impending British Somme offensive, which resulted in massive British casualties. In addition, by 1916, both the Germans and the Allies effectively mounted cameras on airplanes to collect military information. One of the most important British intercepts of a German message, which was passed on to Washington, D.C., and played a major part in the United States’ entry into World War I, was the Zimmermann telegram. In this message, the German foreign minister promised the Mexican government the return of all Mexican land annexed by the United States if it joined Germany in the war.

Before World War II (1939–1945), tremendous advances were made in cryptology. The two most successful signal programs, which had a crucial impact on World War II, were conducted by the United States and Britain. The United States broke the Japanese diplomatic code, Magic, which provided it with detailed information about German defensive positions at the Atlantic Wall in November, 1943. The Japanese ambassador to Berlin, General Hiroshi Oshima, had toured the area and then sent detailed reports to Tokyo, which were intercepted by the United States and used effectively to prepare for the invasion of Normandy in 1944. By early 1942, the United States had also broken the Japanese naval code, which was crucial for the U.S. victory at Midway in June, 1942.

The British at Bletchley Park broke the German secret code machine, the Enigma. The British effort also led to the construction of Colossus, the first electronic computer. Information gained from this British Ultra project was valuable during a variety of World War II battles, ranging from the defeat of the German submarines to the Normandy Invasion in 1944.

The Japanese were not as successful in their signal war, but the German navy could read British navy and merchant marine codes for a time. German intelligence failed miserably on the Eastern Front, where it constantly underestimated Soviet manpower and material strength. The Soviets were able to read Japanese codes, but they also obtained much valuable information, including atomic secrets, from British and U.S. spies such as Kim Philby and Klaus Fuchs.

The Cold War

During World War II, the Soviet Union’s spies were engaged in massive espionage operations in Britain, Canada, and the United States. In 1944, U.S. intelligence officers intercepted Soviet messages (Verona material), which revealed these operations. A Soviet defector in Canada confirmed the Verona material in September, 1945. During the Cold War (1945–1991), Western powers and the Soviet Union used various methods to obtain military and technological information from each other. Traditional human intelligence (humint) was complemented by increasingly sophisticated signals intelligence (sigint) and imagery intelligence from satellites (imint). In the West, humint and sigint intelligence are conducted mostly by civilian-controlled agencies.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created in 1947, and by 1955, it employed 15,000 people. During the Korean War (1950–1953), the CIA was responsible for much of the humint intelligence by employing covert operations to discover leaks of classified information. In the Vietnam Conflict (1961–1975), the organization prepared an accurate report on enemy strength in November, 1967, which, if heeded, might have prevented the Tet Offensive of 1968.

Even more extensive were the intelligence operations of the National Security Agency (NSA), established in November, 1952, with a budget larger than that of the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) combined. The agency is responsible for much of the sigint operations. The NSA often works closely with the British counterpart, the Government Communications Head-Quarters (GCHQ), which at one time employed 10 percent of NSA personnel.

Until Francis G. Powers’s U-2 plane was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, such high-altitude flights were important in gathering military intelligence. Until the 1968 Pueblo disaster off the coast of Korea, the NSA managed a secret fleet of sigint ships around the world. After the 1960’s, military intelligence became dependent on satellite surveillance because a satellite one hundred miles in space could see details of the construction of a Soviet sub in a secret Leningrad (later St. Petersburg) naval yard or the deployment of Iraq’s military in the Gulf War (1991). The satellite system is complemented by special planes, Airborne Warning and Communications System (AWAC), carrying sophisticated electronic computer surveillance equipment. Advanced electronic antiradar techniques, first used in the Vietnam Conflict, were used effectively to destroy Iraq’s radar-guided air defense system at the beginning of the Gulf War.

The Soviet counterparts to these organizations were the Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense (GRU) and the Committee of State Security (KGB). Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the GRU was larger than any of its Western rivals, and it ran both human intelligence and signals intelligence. The GRU sigint operations were larger than those operated by the former KGB. Between 1967 and 1987, the Soviet Union sent 130 sigint satellites in orbit, and sigint stations were operating in sixty Soviet embassies around the world. One of the largest facilities was Lourdes in Cuba, which covered twenty-eight square miles of sigint facilities. After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union in 1991, military intelligence was continued primarily by Russia.

Advanced technology at times is neutralized by the human factor. For example, in the early 1980’s, Soviet military leaders became obsessed with the idea that the West planned a surprise nuclear attack. For three years, GRU and KGB agents in North Atlantic Treaty Organization capitols wasted their time collecting information from church leaders and major bankers because communist doctrine suggested that church and bank leaders in a capitalistic society would receive early warnings of an impending nuclear war. Even excellent Israeli intelligence officers failed to interpret signs of the impending Arab attack in October, 1973, primarily because of anti-Arab prejudice. One Israeli officer admitted that “we scorned them [Arabs].”

The CIA had to reorganize after the Cold War and focus on “friendly spies.” For example, in 1987, the CIA estimated that 80 percent of Japan’s intelligence operations were concerned with gathering economic and technical intelligence in the United States and Western Europe. France, the United States, and Israel have also established intelligence operations inside friendly host countries for similar purposes.

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