Intelligence Reporting Basics

Why?

Reporting is by far the most overlooked and underappreciated tasks in the Intelligence Community. Without the Reporting crew, no analyst would have any idea what was occurring in their Battlespace. It certainly is not the sexiest aspect of a SIGINT analysts job but is absolutely necessary to give any sort of assessment for Area Studies and Battlespace updates. Imagine an analyst attempting to remember off the top of their head, every intercepted conversation in the 30 sq mi. Area of Operations. No one, could reliably recall that information. Reporting solves this problem.

There are many techniques to reporting and most are very nuanced to the Military Intelligence Community. Partisans can forego much of the bureaucracy involved with “proper” reporting. Why use reporting? Aside from humans inability to recall innumerable amounts of specific information, reporting gives the analyst an ‘encyclopedia’ of sorts to look up past events and intercepted communications to reference against current analysis. Saving old and seemingly outdated information is a wonderful way to crack open the cold case that has stumped your team for months or even years.

What?

The contents of a report should include at a minimum; the author, date/time group(start & stop of event), category, location of event, contents, and any supporting information. Reports should be completed for one Significant Activity(SIGACT), and one conversation. SIGACTs that have correlating communications should reference the Comms report on the SIGACT and visa versa. This ensures that an analyst in the future does not miss this connection. An example of a simple Report should look like this: Italicized words are meant as notes, not to be included in a real report)

MMALP1(Short for Madman_Actual Listening Post 1, though any sort of standardized nomenclature will work)

05162023 2130(Date/Time Group as: MMDDYYYY 24 hour time)

LP1: 18S UJ 5067 6698 (MGRS Location of collection site to be used to plot Lines of Bearing)

Signal Intercept 462.5625(Radio frequency that was intercepted, if not radio, put what ever mode of comms was used)

Voice 1: Radio Check, how copy?

Voice 2: Good Copy, over

OC(Operator Comment): Broken and Unreadable(letting the reader know that something was said but wasn’t heard/understood)

Voice 1: Green, Yellow, Green, out

Voice 2: Copy all, out

EOT 05162023 2132

LOBs: Voice 1: 276 | Voice 2: 189(Line of Bearing on each voice, though with a quick exchange like this, getting an azimuth on both is not likely)

Operator Notes: (Any context to the communications go here, or any interference)

Significant Activity

SIGACTs are a great way to keep track of different types of events i.e. fires, explosions, robberies etc.. Example:

MMATOC(Short for Madman_Actual Tactical Operations Center)

05162023 2145(Date/Time Group as: MMDDYYYY 24 hour time of when SIGACT was written)

SIGACT: Small Arms Fire(Category, not a media headline description)

Location: Wal-Mart Supercenter, Baltimore, MD 18S UJ 5067 6698 (Named area if able and/or MGRS of location of SIGACT)

Approx 2130L(L stands for Local Time) two MAMs(Military Age Males) began shooting inside a Wal-Mart with small arms fire, killing and injuring multiple civilians. Gunmen escaped in Blue Sedan headed NORTH, no license plates visible. (dry, to the point, again, not a news media piece) NFI(No Further Information)

EOM(End of Message)

This seems like a lot of extra steps to jot down notes, but when you have 100s of notes, staying organized is absolutely necessary. Even if these are saved as NotePad files in a folder. You can use the file explorer to search for keywords(frequencies) to narrow down which Reports to look at when attempting to do long term Pattern of Life analysis for certain actors on the scene in your Battlespace. These examples are not exactly what the IC does, again, there is a lot of nuance to the methods they use, but this is the simplified version. Recording conversations to ensure you catch all of the messages is crucial for reporting. Trying to write as fast as two people can converse is almost impossible, especially when you likely only have a Rite in the Rain book and nice rock for a table/pillow.