Document Exploitation as a New Intelligence Discipline
A recent article in the Army’s Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin argued that Document and Media Exploitation, or DOMEX — which refers to the analysis of captured enemy documents — should be recognized and designated as an independent intelligence discipline.
“Without question, our DOMEX capabilities have evolved into an increasingly specialized full-time mission that requires a professional force, advanced automation and communications support, analytical rigor, expert translators, and proper discipline to process valuable information into intelligence,” wrote Col. Joseph M. Cox.
“The true significance of DOMEX lies in the fact that terrorists, criminal, and other adversaries never expected their material to be captured,” Col. Cox wrote. “The intelligence produced from exploitation is not marked with deception, exaggeration, and misdirection that routinely appear during live questioning of suspects.”
See “DOMEX: The Birth of a New Intelligence Discipline” which appeared in the April-June 2010 issue (large pdf) of Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, pp. 22-32.
The last six issues of Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, the U.S. Army’s quarterly journal of intelligence policy and practice, are newly available through the Federation of American Scientists website.
Although the Bulletin is unclassified and approved for public release, the Army has opted not to make it publicly available online. Instead, it was released under the Freedom of Information Act upon request from FAS . The latest issues address topics such as HUMINT Training, Cross-Cultural Competence, and Intelligence in Full-Spectrum Operations.
Not all of the articles in the Bulletin are of broad interest or of significant originality. But many of them are informative and reflective of current issues in Army intelligence.
An Intelligence Community Directive (ICD 302) on “Document and Media Exploitation” (pdf) was issued by the Director of National Intelligence on July 6, 2007.
The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons, and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987.. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]
On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]
A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.
In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]