The Nature of Future Intelligence Organizations

This monograph identifies the essential characteristics and capabilities of intelligence organization structures for an army force that is global, rapidly deployable and capable of executing full spectrum military operations in joint and combined environments. It identifies these characteristics and capabilities by tracing the evolution of military intelligence organization structures over the past decade. It examines lessons learned from deployments to Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti as well as observations from Division Advanced Warfighting Experiments (DAWE) to determine causes of recurring problems related to intelligence organizational design. This monograph proposes a traditional, matrix and virtual models as potential intelligence organization structures. It analyzes each model’s strengths and weaknesses, identifies essential characteristics, and assesses applicability of each relative to future environmental influences specific to offense, defense, stability and support operations. These environmental influences are stability, complexity and diversity. They are important considerations because they often necessitate changes in organizational design. Intelligence staffs are resources as much as military units with specific capabilities. As such, commanders should task organize, design and reconfigure their intelligence staffs within the context of environmental influences. This requirement is more important in the 21st Century as the Army continues to wrestle with its role within the changing face of battle. Army leaders must understand the importance of organizational dynamics and design because “cookie cutter” solutions for future intelligence staff organizations are obsolete. This monograph asserts that organizational restructuring can alleviate some recurring problems. It recommends that the matrix organization is best suited to cope with future environmental influences because it appropriately balances requirements for organizational flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness relative to the range of environmental stability, complexity and diversity. Each model is intended to provide a framework for building intelligence teams for future military operations.