Historical Context for Defining MASINT

MASINT was first formalized as a subcommittee under the DCI SIGINT Committee. In 1986 the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) declared MASINT a separate, formal intelligence discipline and established the MASINT Committee. In 1993 DCID 2/11 and DoD Instruction 5105.58 created the Central MASINT Office (CMO) under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), largely funded through DIA's General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP). In 1998 the DCI further strengthened the management of MASINT by recasting CMO as the Central MASINT Organization (still "CMO"). The new CMO had greater responsibility, as evidenced by the DCI's Strategic Objectives for MASINT, but was still embedded in DIA without the requisite budget oversight and authority necessary to truly manage an intelligence discipline. In 2003 the Director, DIA merged CMO and other elements of DIA into a new Directorate of MASINT and Technical Collection.

Historically, the MASINT discipline has gone through three eras:

• Strategic Era - prior to the end of the Cold War
• Support to Military Operations (SMO) Era - early 1990s to the Millennium
• Asymmetric Era - Current phase

During the Strategic Era, the emphasis was on the strategic threat - mostly aimed at the former Soviet Union (FSU). This was Scientific and Technical Intelligence (S&TI). We needed to know the lethality of their nuclear forces and conventional systems. Major investments were made in the 60s, 70s and 80s to build highly sophisticated "capital" MASINT systems (even though they weren't called MASINT in those days) to collect the metric and signature information necessary to understand the Soviet threat (primarily) and help our weapons designers build appropriate weapons and countermeasures. We studied the phenomenologies and developed sensors to exploit the photons and electrons and materials we could access. These activities were largely independent (decentralized), being managed wherever the intelligence capability was initially envisioned. MASINT was not one big stovepipe - it was a whole pile of pipes.

The Central MASINT Office  was created about the time the Strategic Era ended and the SMO era began.

At the end of the Cold War the newly formed MAISNT Community was charged with examining it's old strategic capabilities and figuring out how they could be applied to the new mission of SMO. There was residual interest in continuing to monitor the FSU for "treaty compliance' as well as an extension of the strategic S&TI to the Rest-of-the-World (RoW) and proliferation. But, the real push was on SMO. "Operationalize MASINT" was the mra. Support the warfighter was the cry! Of course MASINT practitioners had spent the previous 3+ decades supporting the "strategic" warfighter, but that wasn't the same. By the end of the SMO Era (late 90s) CMO (Office or Organization), together with the Services and other agencies, could say they largely succeeded in refocusing the Cold War capabilities to support SMO. They had "operationalized" MASINT. Four things made this possible: desire, computer processing speed, communications bandwidth, and people.

Desire:  CMO, agencies and the Services worked to "operationalize" MASINT. CMO established the MASLO's at the Commands. Everyone shifted scarce resources to focus on SMO capabilities. MASINT practitioners developed new techniques, procedures and algorithms. We got close to the operator - to understand their real needs, figure out how they operated, and work to get them the answers they needed, tailored in the way they were needed, in the timeframe they needed them.

Computer Speed/Communications Bandwidth:  Operators needed answers fast. The MASINT Community's S&TI systems worked at PhD thesis speed. It took a lot of number crunching to get an answer. The MASINT data sets were huge and up until now there hadn't been a need (nor the real capability) to communicate these data sets from one side of the world to the other in anything approaching near-real-time. As desktops achieved capabilities of older mainframes and high-end workstations and communications went from 9.6 kbaud to T-1 speeds and beyond - and the right algorithms were put into place - it finally became possible to put timely, relev MASINT answers in the hands of operators. Increased data storage densities contributed equally to operationalization of MASINT.

People:  Getting MASINT to the warfighter required an increased number of practitioners. As MASINT demonstrated its value in some of the closing conflicts of the 90s, the "success catastrophe" led to greater and greater demand for product. The Army's National-to-Theater initiative is a very successful example of growing the cadre of MASINT practitioners.

During the SMO Era CMO was the central figure for the MASINT Community. This era of centralized management for MASINT was probably critical to the refocusing of the S&TI capability to SMO (while retaining the capability to do much of the strategic and RoW mission). It is interesting to note that during this era, there was almost no investment in any major new capability. What funding was available in the base and slightly augmented R&D programs throughout the community was reprogrammed or redirected to accomplish what was done. It was arguably not accomplished fast enough, or robust enough, or consistently enough. MASINT is even today not as interoperable or accessible as users desire. But it ultimately did happen, in large part due to the heroic efforts of a small number of people.

9/11 changed the playing field. The intelligence community had started to worry the asymmetric threat prior to 9/11 - terrorists, cyber warriors, rogue states, weapons of mass destruction - but 9/11 brought it home. The MASINT Community's newly-honed SMO capabilities were highly tasked and remarkably successful during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom - and continue so today. Since 9/11 there has been a signific investment in the operational MASINT capabilities - largely to capitalize on our SMO successes. There has also been a signific increase in the number of MASINT practitioners.

Customer understanding, application of MASINT to both SMO and difficult intelligence problems are exponentially increasing. With the continued pursuit of advanced technology, the efforts to mainstream MASINT as a normalized intelligence capability, and the focus on net-centric, horizontally integrated solutions, the general understanding of MASINT will evolve and greatly improve.

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