Mark Pomerleau
April 22, 2015
With the world becoming a more volatile place and certain high-threat environments becoming too dangerous to send personnel, the lack of human intelligence has placed a greater stress on signals intelligence to provide military commanders with greater knowledge of dangerous actors and potential threats.
Technology has allowed the military to rely less on human intelligence, or HUMINT, which puts the lives of spies and operators on the ground at risk, and procure aerial systems that provide myriad levels of intelligence. Unmanned aerial vehicles have been invaluable in gathering several types of intelligence from the air, such as SIGINT and image intelligence.
The United States is continuing to invest in these proven platforms for intelligence collection. The Defense Department said in February, when each branch released their budgets for the next year, that the Air Force would be purchasing 29 additional remotely piloted Reaper drones and the Army would be purchasing additional Gray Eagle drones, the service’s version of the Predator. Recent operations in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and continued operations in Afghanistan have forced Washington to continue to procure these vital systems for ISR purposes.
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