U.S. special operations forces (SOF) are successfully collecting valuable operational intelligence materials in the field, but they lack the capability to quickly process, exploit and disseminate those materials, the House Appropriations Committee said in its recent report on the 2010 defense appropriations bill (excerpts).
“Ongoing SOF operations demonstrate the ability to collect significant amounts of pocket litter, hard copy documents, hard drives, cell phones, and other important hard copy and electronic media with significant intelligence value. However, without specialized expeditionary processing, this information becomes inaccessible and of no value to SOF in immediate urgent operational missions, and over the longer term to the war fighter, the intelligence community and others in need of access.” The Committee recommended additional resources to remedy this deficiency.
Intelligence policy-related excerpts from the Committee report on the 2010 defense appropriations bill are posted here.
The public rarely sees the quiet, often messy work that goes into creating, passing, and implementing a major piece of legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act.
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