HUMINT in the 22nd Century

OK, more random ramblings:

In the 22nd century, the most common form of ground action involves relatively
small forces (mostly
divisional or smaller--the largest battles in the
official canon that occour outside the core world are, IIRC, the largest force
specifically mentioned was a
two-division corps) inserted onto other planets than
those they are native too. We see a good deal of trouble on Earth when
military units have to operate in areas that differ in terrain, culture, and
other significant factors.

The best way to overcome these difficulties is human intelligence: simply put,
talking to people. But talking to people in such a way that militarily useful
information is extracted is a fairly specialized skill.

One hint of the way this requirement can be met is seen in the way this issue
is handled in the US Army's IBCT.

Source:  CALL Newsletter No. 01-18.  An electronic
copy of this issue can be found at
http://call.army.mil/products/newsltrs/01-18/01-18ch4.htm
All information discussed is public domain.

I'd recommend the CALL website for anyone really interested in how the US Army
solves problem of various kinds.

Anyway, the short version is this: In the
Reconaissance platoon is a built-in human intelligence
capability. There are 3 troops in the Reconaissance, Surveillance, Target
Acquisition Squadron. Each troop has 3 platoons, each platoon having 4 IAVs.
Each IAV
has a two-man crew and 3 dismounts (excepting the
platoon leader's IAV, which has 4 dismounts). In the three squads, each team
has a 97B Counterintelligence agent. The platoon headquarters includes a 97B
NCO. Furthermore, the brigade's military intelligence company has a human
intelligence platoon with four tactical HUMINT teams. Each team consists of 3
97E Human Intelligence Collectors and 1 97B Counterintelligence agent. These
operate with HMMWVs.

Part III of the article discusses what you do with the CI agents in the RSTA
troops. On one hand, you have to make sure your CI agents can hang with the
scouts on conventional missions. On the other, you must ensure your leadership
at the lower levels understands what use these CI pukes are good for.

And what are they good for? Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. CI
Agents have a variety of specific skills, but one of the most important is
called 'Tactical questioning'. It's an abbreviated form of interrogatio or
debriefing used to collect
PIR-related information from human sources.  The
example given is from Somalia, where good tactical questioning allowed CI
agents supporting an infantry
company to locate a well-hidden arms cache.  Another
skill CI agents have is document evaluation and exploitation. They can
categorize, screen, summarize, and report documents of varying values. And the
last major thing the CI agents are trained to do is "source
operations."  This is using non-unit personnel to
provide information of value to the unit.

The HUMINT platoon is a simillar but different case. They do not perform
conventional tactical missions. The focus more on source operations, including
use of recruited sources (spies, in plain language).

Most of these HUMINT activities have previously been carried out at divisional
level and higher. Tactical application of HUMINT is rarely considered outside
of special forces units.

However, in the 22nd century many units will be operating in relatively small
force packages and won't
have division-level support.  Considering that their
mission profiles might not allow for suffient intelligence preparation, units
will have to improvise on the fly, and this requires having the assets to
generate HUMINT, the ability to use those assets, and the ability to analyze
that information.

Now where does this all tie into the tabletop?

Any Stargrunt (and eventually FMA) player who hasn't thought of a dozen
scenarios that involve these missions isn't trying.

The potential for firefights is much higher than with standard recon missions.
To develop HUMINT, units actually have to talk to locals. This leaves them
vulnerable to attack by guerillas, terrorists, or whatever.

One possibility would be to start a scenario with a single recon squad moving
into a town to gather information. The local guerillas have a problem with
this and attack, forcing the team to hole up in a stone building and scream
for help. Meanwhile the guerillas are gathing for an assault, and incidentally
shooting anyone they suspect of telling the team anything. This complicates
things further because preliminary interviews with a particular villaiger
indicated he had extremely useful intelligence and was willing to share it
with the team if they could guarantee his safety.

That's just to get things going.