The Defense Intelligence Agency, responsible for providing the US military with all-source intelligence, will celebrate its 50th birthday on Saturday. “We are more forward-deployed than ever, operating alongside our combat troops in harm’s way,” said DIA Director Army Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess. “DIA has an entire generation of intelligence professionals who know only wartime service. . . . They are very good at what they do, they’re committed to the mission, and they’re the best we’ve ever had.” The agency has become “pretty adaptive” since its start on Oct. 1, 1961. In its first major challenge, DIA in 1962 played a key role in finding Soviet nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in Cuba. Most recently, it’s been supporting NATO’s air campaign in Libya. (AFPS report by Cheryl Pellerin)
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.