What is Strategic Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance?

Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) is a critical piece of any military capability to understand an adversary. The use of aircraft, satellites, or even people can help gather information to determine the status and disposition of any target. This process ranges from different types of intelligence, like GEOINT and SIGINT.

Types of Intelligence

GEOINT or Geospatial-Intelligence is the collection and exploitation of human activity on the Earth. There are different subsets to GEOINT, such as IMINT and MOVINT. MOVINT or Movement Intelligence is a newer term to break apart Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) from other GEOINT disciplines. Another Subset is IMINT or Imagery Intelligence. IMINT uses the Earth's imagery to try and figure out what is happening on the ground through pictures.

Imagery Intelligence uses different types of imagery. These images can range from regular pictures taken by cameras that look like your cell phone or radar images, as seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1. EO and SAR Imagery from Digital Globe

MOVINT and Movement Intelligence is the use of radar to scan the ground, looking for moving objects. This type of intelligence can determine where vehicles are driving to identify areas that meet intelligence requirements. Various sensors are capable of MTI, but very few specialize in the collection of MTI.

Figure 2. GMTI from MITRE

Signals Intelligence or SIGINT is the collection of signals emitter from equipment. SIGINT breaks down further in ELINT and COMINT. SIGINT can be collected using theater aircraft to try and determine the type of transmitter and its location. This is common when building an Order of Battle (OB) of and adversary or to simply determine the congestion of the electromagnet spectrum.

Figure 3. RC-12 SIGINT collection aircraft from Military & Aerospace

Strategic Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

Strategic ISR can roughly translate to repetitive pattern of life collection missions using ISR assets. To ensure a full understanding of an adversary, it is vital to see what a typical pattern in a specific area may look like throughout the day. It is common to monitor the same area for a considerable amount of time to understand what a typical day looks like.

Once a pattern of life has been established, we can begin to understand the area more clearly. Using this pattern, we can find any outliers or abnormalities that don't make sense compared to the typical life pattern. Strategic ISR allows us to keep an eye out for outliers and take a closer look when identified. Though this mission can be boring to the ones flying it, strategic ISR is extremely important in the bigger picture of intelligence.

Strategic vs Tactical ISR

A common misconception in the ISR community is that a platform is either strategic or tactical ISR. The reality is, every platform performs both roles. The platform is agnostic to the collection. The collected intelligence is what defines strategic or tactical ISR. An example of this might be an MQ-9 watching the same area for days and days. This is strategic as the platform is determining the pattern of life for the region. If the MQ-9 determines they have found a target that will be struck, they begin to surveillance the target in a tactical nature until the eventual strike.