Lt. Col. Duston Ashton and Maj. Nichole Oliver, both of Air University’s LeMay Center at Maxwell AFB, Ala., on Nov. 13 received Bronze Star Medals for their meritorious service during deployments to Iraq. Ashton, an instructor in the LeMay Center’s warfighting education directorate, served for a year in Baghdad as a training program manager. His efforts resulted in Iraq’s first three student pilot training classes and the commissioning of 275 Iraqi cadets. Oliver, the joint intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance doctrine branch chief in the LeMay Center’s doctrine development directorate, was the chief of operations to the intelligence director in a joint task force in Iraq. Her intelligence support led to decisive combat operations against enemy leadership. (Maxwell report by Capt. Jenny Lovett)
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.