The Air Intelligence Agency

The Air Intelligence Agency, headquartered at Kelly AFB, Texas was activated Oct. 1, 1993.

An Air Force field operating agency, AIA's mission is to exploit and defend the information domain. The Agency's 16,000 people worldwide deliver flexible collection, tailored air space intelligence, weapons monitoring and information warfare products and services.

"AIA's vision is to be the Air Force leader in integrating and conducting information operations that shape the international security environment, and when necessary, the battlespace," said AIA/SC Col. James M. (Marc) Enger.

"By securing and maintaining information dominance for the decision maker, technology will play the central role in achieving this vision from the warfighter to the commander-in-chief."

Several organizations make up the AIA. One of them is the National Air Intelligence Center, at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.

The NAIC is the Air Force's single all-source aerospace intelligence center. Its mission is to support the warfighter, the acquisition community and the national policy maker by acquiring, collecting, analyzing, producing and disseminating foreign aerospace intelligence to the Air Force, the unified commands, sister services, other members of the intelligence community, and our allies.

The Air Force Information Warfare Center at Kelly is the Air Force's single center dedicated to providing a broad spectrum of information warfare products and services.

Its mission is to develop, maintain and deploy Information Warfare/Command and Control Warfare capabilities in support of operations, campaign planning, acquisition and testing. It acts as the focal point for defensive counter information operations, and is also the Air Force focal point for Tactical Deception and Operations Security training.

The 497th Intelligence Group is located at Bolling AFB, Washington, D.C.

The 497th provides specialized intelligence services to headquarters Air Force and other Air Force units worldwide. The group provides tailored intelligence assessments in support of Air Staff planning and policy formulation such as monitoring, analyzing and reporting on hostile action against the U.S. and its allies.

The organization also provides functional management for all Air Force targeting issues and for all U.S. Air Force Sensitive Compartmented Information security functions.

The 544th Intelligence Group is headquartered at Peterson AFB, Colo.

This organization was activated Sept. 7, 1993, to provide a single focal point for AIA involvement in worldwide space issues and to posture AIA to better support national agencies. It directs, manages and supports units worldwide in the collection, refinement and delivery of wholesale intelligence.

Personnel operate C4I systems, providing space surveillance, threat warning and technical analysis to Air Force Space Command, U.S. Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

The group acts as an interface in working infrastructure issues between collocated and associated AIA units.

The 67th Intelligence Wing at Kelly manages the agency's global mission.

As the only intelligence wing in the Air Force, the 67th manages the planning of all source intelligence. It assists Air Force components in the development of concepts, exercises and employment of AIA forces to support contingency, low-intensity conflict, counter-drug and special operations as AIA's integrated wing.

Subordinate to the wing are four intelligence groups located in the continental U.S., Hawaii and Germany.

With more than 9,600 personnel assigned, the 67th is one of the Air Force's largest wings, and it's the only wing with people and resources permanently located around the world providing continuous coverage to fulfill its global responsibilities.

Finally, the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center, a Joint Chiefs of Staff organization, collocated with Headquarters AIA, was formed from the nucleus of the former Joint Electronic Warfare Center.

The Joint JC2WC provides direct C2W tactical and technical analytical support to operational commanders. It also supports the integration of elements like operations security and military deception throughout the planning and execution phases of operations.

Direct support is provided to unified commands, joint task forces, functional and service components, and subordinate combat commanders.

They also provide support to the Joint Staff, other services and other government agencies. The AIA commander also serves as the JC2WC commander.

The number one priority of AIA/SC is to build the infrastructure required to press onward into the 21st century. Without the necessary planning, budgeting and programming necessary to do so, AIA will be unable to support the requirements for Information Warfare, Modeling and Simulation and increased intelligence support for our nation's weapon systems.

AIA has three external sets of customers: decision makers, warfighters, and weapons systems builders.

AIA/SC's major set of customers are those internal to AIA, providing the pipelines and automated capabilities so AIA members can provide the essential products and services to their external customers. The SC directorate is the communications computer systems "backdrop" allowing its customers to support the external folks.

AIA/SC continues to capitalize on improvements in C4 technology by making a concerted effort to plan, program and budget for those innovations allowing them to move more, better, and faster, while at the same time, ensuring they fit into the architecture established by Headquarters AF/SC.

These innovations include Asynchronous Transfer Mode, commonly referred to as ATM, and Direct Broadcast Satellite.

The evolution of World Wide Web technologies and collaborative virtual work space enable geographically separated individuals to work together in ways that were previously restricted to the domain of science fiction.

For example. AIA/SC will pioneer ATM switches and WWW technology in partnership with the Air Force C4 Agency's experiments with DBS to aid in moving INTELINK to the warfighter.

Advanced data warehousing technologies will enable the creation of vast storehouses of information linked by a common user interface allowing access to the information using natural language queries.

Additionally, AIA has a planned program to upgrade comm-computer hardware and software systems at the desktop level. There are also plans to use Multilevel Security/Fortessa technologies, as they become available, to solve the very difficult problem of transferring information across different classification platforms.

AIA/SC is the facilitator for the AIA Technical Demonstration Center, which was formed during Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan's tenure as AIA commander. Technologies like voice recognition, ATM, collaborative workstations and dissemination of intelligence through the WWW technology are evaluated in the TDC.

Support for these services has been provided, during the last three years, by the former AIA/SC Col. Chandler Mapes and AIA/ISG Commander Col. James Shaffer. The current support is now assumed by Enger and AIA/ISG Commander Col. Lawrence Cardinal.

The TDC was created to meet the AIA goal stating, "AIA will create leading edge concepts and technology applications."

The TDC is headed by Capt. Richard Flemming.

His manning is made up of three Computer Science Corporation contractors along with part time assistance from AIA/SGD/SD and AIA/SCM. The TDC remains a showcase for visiting VIPs.

Within the past 15 months, AIA folks have linked the AIA commander with all of his major centers and units in a Wide Area Network. In the next six months, all AIA units worldwide will be connected using WWW technology.

These are the first steps to creating the "paperless" environment, said Enger. In industry, the WWW has become the information dissemination standard.

AIA and the intelligence community have not stood still. WWW technology makes information readily available to all customers who have access to a wide area network, whether it's Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System, Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or the Air Force Internet formerly known as MILNET.

By using point-and-click technology, the information desired by a customer is quite literally just a click away. INTELINK uses standard WWW software, thus leveraging commercial development efforts.

AIA is developing the AIA Web on the Headquarters AIA Network. When finished, it will provide an efficient means to exchange information such as manpower requirements, funding projections and intelligence products among the headquarters, centers and subordinate units worldwide.

"Advances in technology change what highly motivated and trained people need to know," said Enger.

"For example, I don't need highly trained librarians if I can bring automated search tools to everyone's desk, but now I need those same highly motivated and trained people to act as System Administrators for my client server environment to ensure the data integrity and to keep connectivity in place.

"With this same number of people trained, in other skills, I can provide far greater capabilities than ever before."

AIA/SC sees the common focus among all DOD communicators as, "How do I project the technological changes, which are progressing so quickly in the civilian world, into providing an integrated interoperable framework within DOD and providing more, better and less expensive services for our users, while assuring data integrity and availability?"

AIA/SC takes pride in its interaction with other communications organizations. They partner with the Air Force C4 Agency at Scott AFB, Ill., by expanding their effort involving the use of intelligence dissemination systems, as well as DBS, and developing security policies.

NSA's communications efforts are supported through AIA sites worldwide.

Direction received from the Defense Information Systems Agency is considered when it comes to long-haul communications. Being that "INTEL" is such a bandwidth "hog," AIA must value the uniqueness of every collocated base level communication squadron. AIA correlates with DIA in regards to the JWICS Network.

Enger sees his greatest challenge as finding the money to finance the technology needed to carry the AIA into the 21st century.

"In an era of declining budgets, it's extremely difficult to justify long-term investment in infrastructure when there are so many other immediate problems at the moment," he said.

"The biggest challenge AIA communicators will face is information warfare. It's a revolutionary change in the art of warfare, and the AIA is right in the thick of it."