Who’s The Boss? A Real World Lesson In Intelligence Collection

A picture, so they say, is worth a thousand words.

And as I cover in class, the goal of intelligence is exploitation, and intelligence begins with observation and how we interpret that which is observed.

Imagery intelligence (IMAGINT), a fancy term for pictures, does a number of things for us – can give estimates of equipment status, enemy posture, enemy readiness (and fitness), levels of capability, and generate new requests for information (RFIs) on other intelligence domains. Could be signals intelligence (SIGINT), human intelligence (HUMINT), etc. Each of these generate paths to potential exploitation.

Chief among those however is mapping the human terrain. Who’s in charge? Who’s the boss? The street boss is mid level management (at best) but he’s the target of interest when circumventing the larger action cell. You’re not going to roll them all up, but taking out key leadership creates chaos up and down the insurgent chain.

So we have a public show of force on display at a drag queen story time hosted by Anderson Distillery in Roanoke TX. This is the self identified local chapter of the John Brown Gun Club.

We’ve got weapons – AR15s, some with optics, some not, nothing standardized, and no night vision capability present. Based on their posture towards the camera its pretty easy to infer they’re there for a show and not much else. Its a reaction this crowd is actually looking for – not a fight. We can assess their level of capability as low during the day, likely non-existent at night.

They have communications capability which is outward facing for the world to see, and should a fight break out those radios are going to get smashed up quick. But it would be a good opportunity to snag up those operating frequencies with a communications receiver or a scanner equipped with close call.

But I wanna know who’s in charge, and I want to be able to explain why.

One thing that’s universal in insurgent groups, from Kandahar to Kansas and everywhere in between, is that the guy in charge is going to be wearing something of distinction. Sometimes its subtle, in which case we have to observe the human interaction between the observed group, in other cases, they way they’re dressed and configuring of equipment.

Here’s your guy. The first flag is his clothes – he can downgrade his gear and fit into the crowd in the background. He’s not so into the whole anarchist black block attire, and that’s likely because he’s also a local and has a relationship with the distillery in question. His stance indicates a level of training and he’s not focused on the cameras, he’s actually pulling security, at least somewhat, which is another indicator of training. His bag is slung low to rapidly index it and it likely contains medical gear for the group. The gear loadout doesn’t match the others and looks just a little more squared away.

Last, look at his feet. Feet tell us the whole story. Those comfy slipper shoes are great for what he’s doing here and completes the look – he can take them off quick and throw on a pair of Justin’s and he’s right back in the crowd.

If you want to shut this crowd down, that’s your target.

And there’s going to be a lot more of this in the near future. Two things – get training and don’t be the same example for the opposition.