AURORA, Colo.—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 combatant commanders, combined forces air component commanders (CFACCs), and their subordinates need to make decisions about the battlefield.
The first two attempts failed. But Greg Ryckman, deputy director for global integration for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said March 4 at the AFA Warfare Symposium that things are different today: Technology had improved, cultural barriers had eroded to an extent, and there is a new sense of urgency.
“We can’t afford not to do this, right?” Ryckman said, a nod to the looming 2027 deadline that China has set for being ready to invade Taiwan.
CIP vs. COP
A common intelligence picture, or CIP, is not the same as a common operating picture (COP), explained retired Air Force Col. Frederick “Trey” Coleman III, the former commander of the 505th Command and Control Wing.
“The CIP is fusing intelligence sources,” telling the commander everything that’s known about a particular enemy unit, he told Air & Space Forces Magazine on the sidelines of the event. “It is very qualitative.”
By contrast, he said, a COP is more geospatial, like a map showing the location of enemy and friendly units, “a very quantitative/defined depiction of where blue and red forces are located in a given area,” said Coleman, now chief product officer for military AI outfit Raft.
Both CIPs and COPs “are only as good as the data behind them,” said Coleman, “This is a data problem.”
Ryckman said that currently, different intelligence providers are each producing their own CIP, which is contrary to the spirit of the enterprise. “The most important thing about the common intelligence picture is that it is common—everyone should be looking at the same picture.”
Uncommon Intelligence Pictures
Despite the name, there has been little in common between different intelligence pictures, retired Col. Jon “BigDogg” Rhone, former commander of the 505th Test and Evaluation Group, said during a different session.
“The people that make the decisions are making decisions based on multiple panes of glass. It wasn’t too long ago that we were looking at anywhere from six to 13 different panes of glass, different information systems that the human brain has got to process, and that brain has to be the integrator,” said Rhone, who now works for SAIC.
Ryckman said the multiplicity of sources is the problem that CIP is designed to solve.
“What we have right now is a whole bunch of uncommon intelligence pictures out there, as everybody tries to solve this problem from where they sit. We can’t afford that anymore,” said Ryckman, “We cannot inject confusion into the [battlefield] situation.”
Ryckman spoke on a panel with Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback and Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, the top intelligence officers in the Air Force and Space Force, respectively.
The objective of the Department of Defense, explained Gagnon, “is to deliver unified action. That requires a unified set of understandings about where the enemy is and what their intent is. So this [common intelligence picture, or CIP] is a very important initiative.”
A potential high-end conflict with the likes of China is “really all about speed and scale,” said Lauderback. Targeting is about speed, she said, “but I think our intelligence problems are more concerned with the scale, the number of objects that we think that we are going to have to track.”
Drowning in Data
The danger, Lauderback said, is that analysts could find themselves “drowning, almost, in data.”
Ryckman agreed, noting the explosion of sensors and intel sources. “If you’d asked me five years ago, I’d have said our analysts need more data. Today, I would tell you that they’re swimming in data, and they have to figure out how to make sense of the data.”
Given all that, he continued, “no human has the ability to be an all-source analyst. If you don’t use machines to augment your human skill set, you’re a some-source analyst, because there’s no way for you to personally read every message that pertains to the problem you’re trying to solve,” he said.
In October 2024, the DIA was given the lead role in coordinating action on a CIP between the four Pentagon combat support agencies and set up a joint program management office with elements from the other three agencies—NRO, NGA, and NSA. Now, the office is working to bring the services in as well.
The CIP would enable data about enemy positions, capabilities, and intentions to be pushed down and out to the CFACC and their team in the AOC, to the wings and even beyond, said Lauderback. “We have to still get those commanders on the ground the intelligence that they need, so they can understand the battle space in those tactical moments, that will happen on an hourly basis in conflict,” she said.
Advances in Technology
Advances in technology could make a CIP possible this third time around, Ryckman said. Such a system requires an object-based approach, which brings together all the information about that object. For instance, a tank object would bring together all the data about its weapons capabilities, armor, electronic signature, and more. Being able to scale that to thousands of objects in a battlespace is impossible without new technology.
In previous efforts, Ryckman said, the different intelligence agencies within the Department of Defense “all looked at it from our independent contributions to building a CIP, as opposed to building an enterprise CIP, and figuring out what piece of that each of us could individually bring to the fight. So in terms of culture, we probably weren’t where we needed to be.”