Sarajevo - Peace support operations are very demanding in intelligence. Perhaps this is the reason CJ2 Intelligence is the biggest military division in HQ SFOR. Up to 75 intelligence professionals serve in this, maybe not so well-known division.
Col. Pat McNiece, of the US Army and Chief of CJ2, thinks that intelligence is very important.
“Without a proactive focus provided by good intelligence, our forces are reacting to the situation instead of shaping it,” he explained.
CJ2 has, as the other branches, an admin cell. But this is slightly different due to the amount of people to administrate for.
“It is a challenge to give admin support to the Intelligence Branch, because there are a lot of people from many countries working in specialised tasks. Working in an executive office and admin cell, one can get to know different procedures of different nations,” said Spanish Maj. Emilio Atienza.
Working in Direction and Dissemination, another cell of CJ2, Maj. Jose Zuleta, Spanish Army, commented the intelligence work is always ongoing.
“But the outstanding people and the nice environment you find in our division makes it easier,” he said.
CJ2 is comprised of two major sections. McNiece explained the way they work.
“The two sections do yeoman's work everyday, insuring the right information is collected and making sure that it is properly analysed in order to provide intelligence to subordinate divisions and timely answers to COMSFOR's important intelligence questions,” he said.
The Collection Section directs SFOR collection assets to answer COMSFOR's priority intelligence requirements. German Lt. Col. Frank Richter is the Chief of Collection. He said those requirements break them down thus translating them in general and specific collection plans.
“Force protection issues always rank prominent among the collection effort. Additionally the branch manages the numerous Requests for Information,” explained Richter.
“The scope of the collection assets encompasses collection means that are employed in any military operation - aerial reconnaissance and surveillance, signal intelligence and, most important in peace support operations, HUMINT (human intelligence),” he said. The task of geographic support also falls here.
CJ2X puts together HUMINT, Counter Intelligence (CI) and Theatre Security.
“In HUMINT, we gather information from the population to find out what's going on and what's going to happen. In CI, we try to keep others from learning what we intend to do. This goes hand-in-hand with our theatre security mission. We want to keep all SFOR members safe from harm,” said Maj. Al Human, US Army and chief of this element.
The other section is Production. It takes the information provided by collection assets and turns it into intelligence. The Analysis element of Production uses this information to produce daily intelligence summaries.
Italian Capt. Giorgio Cipolloni is an analyst.
“The multinational environment makes you evaluated for what you really are, more than for your rank or position. Here we work more or less like that of a newspaper. Brainstorming is the basis of our work,” he said.
The summaries they produce not only describe recent activities, but also predict likely future actions.
“It's like looking into a crystal ball in order to see what the future could bring,” joked Cipollini.
The Collation element takes the intelligence, formats it, and enters it into a database that allows analysts to easily access it. French Maj. Andre Belenguer is the chief of this element.
“Our way of working has to be based on a real team spirit and permanent dialogue between us. My job is mainly a team leader one more than an intelligence one,” he said.
In Collation, changes of personnel are a major problem because the quality and decisiveness diminishes in a proper turnover.
“But we are improving the internal working organisation by putting up with a realistic and stabilized structure and with a concrete and clear working organisation, in order to face that inconvenience,” explained Belenguer.
“Running a division like this requires daily attention to COMSFOR's requirements, good situation awareness, and close co-ordination with national intelligence centres, the rest of the SFOR staff and command group. The CJ2 staff exists to answer COMSFOR's intelligence questions. The soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines from 11 nations devote many hours a day to do this important work,” added McNiece.

Related link:
Nations of SFOR: US, Spain, Italy, France