From Indicators to Action: Reforming Army Intelligence for Future Conflict
Introduction
Military intelligence (MI) professionals are trained to identify indicators and warnings, with the goal of reducing uncertainty and enabling informed decision-making in complex environments.1 Yet the MI Corps has been slow to apply that analytical rigor inward. This failure is not benign. Persistent structural and training deficiencies, if left unaddressed, risk undermining the Army’s ability to fight and win against peer and near-peer adversaries.
Future conflict will be contested across multiple domains and echelons, demanding intelligence integration from the tactical to the strategic level. Adversaries understand this reality and are actively shaping their forces to exploit gaps in U.S. intelligence processes. The future fight is already emerging. Preparing for it requires the MI Corps to accept near-term institutional friction in order to ensure long-term operational relevance.
The observations that follow are derived from interviews with mid-grade and senior MI officers across the force. These officers continue to execute their missions with professionalism, often compensating for institutional limitations beyond their control. Their collective experiences reveal patterns that merit serious consideration.
Institutional Inertia and the Legacy of Obsolete Models
On 16 March 1956, the U.S. Military Academy finally began converting its indoor equestrian facility into an academic building, more than a decade after World War II had rendered mounted cavalry obsolete. The delay was not caused by ignorance, but by institutional inertia. The MI Corps faces a similar problem. Training models, organizational structures, and evaluation systems designed for earlier conflicts persist despite an operational environment shaped by cyber operations, space-based capabilities, and a contested electromagnetic spectrum. The advent and proliferation of artificial intelligence will add a further dimension. When institutions do not adapt their processes to the realities of the environment, effectiveness erodes—at first gradually, then suddenly.
MI officer training does not reflect operational demands. Intelligence officers are expected to operate across echelons and integrate capabilities beyond their immediate formations. In practice, many are insufficiently trained to do so. Ask a mid-grade MI officer to identify specific national or joint intelligence capabilities, explain how to access them, or describe realistic timelines for intelligence flow, and the answers are often incomplete, reflecting an institutional training gap rather than individual negligence.
Multidomain conflict further compounds the training problem. Intelligence officers must understand adversary capabilities in cyberspace, space, and the electromagnetic spectrum. They must also be able to explain how those capabilities constrain friendly decision-making.2 Too often, exposure to these domains is episodic rather than foundational. If intelligence officers cannot clearly articulate these threats, commanders cannot make informed decisions about where to accept risk or apply combat power.
While the doctrine of intelligence preparation of the operational environment is intended to be holistic, its execution often remains narrowly focused on terrain and maneuver. Against peer adversaries, however, the comparative advantage of MI lies not in templating formations but in integrating national-level intelligence into tactical decision-making under contested conditions. That capability remains unevenly developed.
Training centers do not replicate the intelligence fight. The Army emphasizes realism and repetition under conditions that reflect combat. However, the intelligence environments at major training centers frequently fall short of the conditions MI officers will encounter in conflict.3
Recent conflicts demonstrate that cyberspace operations, electromagnetic warfare, and unmanned systems are decisive factors in shaping battlefield outcomes from the outset.4 These conditions are difficult to replicate, but their exclusion creates artificial training environments that reward procedural compliance rather than operational relevance. While the addition of unmanned systems and some electronic warfare at the National Training Center is encouraging, published observations from the National Training Center focus on maintaining intelligence architecture and collection strategy, with no mention of cyberspace operations.5
As a result, MI officers are evaluated under conditions that mask friction, latency, and denial. The processes refined in these environments often fail when exposed to real-world constraints. If training centers cannot fully replicate the intelligence fight, then warfighter exercises and home-station training must deliberately compensate for it. Intelligence officers require repeated practice integrating national systems, operating with degraded access, and managing contested information flows.
Organizational design structurally disadvantages intelligence officers. Intelligence is expected to provide timely and relevant decision support.6 In practice, many tactical MI officers report that success is measured less by analytical rigor than by personal rapport with maneuver commanders, reflecting a structural problem. Unlike other staff functions whose garrison tasks mirror their wartime functions, intelligence officers often find their roles become indispensable only during crises or conflicts. This dynamic complicates evaluation and distorts career incentives.
Career-minded officers frequently avoid brigade S-2 assignments in favor of higher-echelon positions that offer stronger evaluations but fewer opportunities to develop technical proficiency. Over time, this creates a feedback loop. Officers with limited tactical intelligence experience ascend to leadership roles and reinforce organizational designs that do not reflect how intelligence is actually employed in combat. When structure, evaluation, and career progression are misaligned with operational reality, effectiveness suffers. The MI Corps is not immune to this dynamic.
Mentorship shortfalls undermine technical proficiency. Mentorship is essential to developing expertise and professional judgment. Yet many junior MI officers are mentored by leaders who have never fully developed their own technical intelligence proficiency. These leaders may be effective managers, but they often lack experience integrating joint or national intelligence capabilities. As a result, technical mastery is deferred, frequently until officers assume brigade-level positions under significant pressure.
Compounding the issue, junior MI officers are often encouraged to frame their products and briefings in maneuver language to gain credibility. While communication with commanders is essential, credibility should not come at the expense of the analytical and technical language of intelligence mastery. When mentorship prioritizes stylistic alignment over technical competence, the MI branch erodes its own comparative advantage.
Actionable Insights and Roadmap
Meaningful reform requires deliberate, data-driven action aligned with how intelligence is actually used in modern operations:
- Assess intelligence consumers. Survey brigade commanders and G-2s to determine whether intelligence requirements are being met and where gaps persist.
- Conduct a branch-wide assessment. Collect data on MI officer tasking, training gaps, and technical proficiency to establish a branch-wide baseline of how intelligence officers spend their time and what skills they are expected to employ.
- Execute a top-to-bottom review. Use empirical data to reassess training pipelines, career paths, evaluation criteria, and professional military education.
- Align organizational structure with function. Design units around how intelligence is collected, processed, and integrated across domains and echelons, rather than around legacy paradigms.
- Incentivize technical excellence. Reward demonstrated mastery of intelligence collection, analysis, and integration (particularly in joint and national systems) alongside leadership ability.
Conclusion
Defeat is not inevitable. The United States retains the world’s most capable intelligence enterprise, and the MI Corps continues to evolve through new formations, systems, and concepts. Some of the challenges described here may reflect transitional growing pains; nevertheless, whether transitional or structural, they demand the same response. Continuous assessment and adaptation are professional obligations.7 MI officers are trained to identify indicators and warnings. Those tools must now be applied inward with the same discipline used to assess adversaries. Acting on those indicators will require institutional courage.
Preserving legacy structures because they once worked is inconsistent with the realities of future conflict. War will unfold across domains and at machine speed. The MI Corps must ensure it is not simply refining outdated processes while adversaries contest space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum. Adaptation is not optional. It is imperative.
Endnotes
1. Department of the Army, “Intelligence Support,” chap. 2 in Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 2-0, Intelligence (Government Publishing Office [GPO], 2019).
2. Department of the Army, Field Manual 3-0, Operations (GPO, 2025), 3.
3. Mark Hvizda, Bryan Frederick, Alisa Laufer, Alexandra T. Evans, Kristen Gunness, and David A. Ochmanek, Dispersed, Disguised, and Degradable: The Implications of the Fighting in Ukraine for Future U.S.-Involved Conflicts (RAND Corporation, 2025), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3141-2.html.
4. Matthew Slusher, Lessons from the Ukraine Conflict: Modern Warfare in the Age of Autonomy, Information, and Resilience (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2025), https://www.csis.org/analysis/lessons-ukraine-conflict-modern-warfare-age-autonomy-information-and-resilience.
5. Victor Somnuk, “A G-2’s Observations from the National Training Center and What to Do about Them,” Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin 49, no. 2 (January-June 2023): 6-10, mipb.ikn.army.mil/issues/jan-jun-2023.
6. Department of the Army, ADP 2-0, Intelligence, 2-2–2-3.
7. Department of the Army, ADP 5-0, The Operations Process (GPO, 2019), 1-15–1-16.
LTC George Fust is the G-2 Director of Targeting and Collection and advisor to senior leaders within U.S. Army Pacific Command. He is a graduate of Duke University and an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Texas. He previously taught in the Department of Social Sciences at the U.S. Military Academy and served in the 75th Ranger Regiment. He has multiple deployments to Europe, Africa, and Asia. He also has more than ten rotations at the National Training Center, the Joint Readiness Training Center, and the Joint Multinational Readiness Center.