Espionage or spying is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information without the permission of the holder of the information. Spies help agencies uncover secret information. Any individual or spy ring, in the service of a -government, company or independent operation, can commit espionage. The practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome and in many cases illegal and punishable by law. Espionage is a method of intelligence gathering which includes information gathering from non-disclosed sources.
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether communications between people or from electronic signals not directly used in communication. Signals intelligence is a subset of intelligence collection management.
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the aerial and space warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the five branches of the United States Armed Forces, and one of the seven American uniformed services. Initially formed as a part of the United States Army on 1 August 1907, the USAF was established as a separate branch of the U.S. Armed Forces on 18 September 1947 with the passing of the National Security Act of 1947. It is the youngest branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, and the fourth in order of precedence. The USAF is the largest and most technologically advanced air force in the world. The Air Force articulates its core missions as air and space superiority, global integrated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, rapid global mobility, global strike, and command and control.
Electronic warfare (EW) is any action involving the use of the electromagnetic spectrum or directed energy to control the spectrum, attack an enemy, or impede enemy assaults. The purpose of electronic warfare is to deny the opponent the advantage of, and ensure friendly unimpeded access to, the EM spectrum. EW can be applied from air, sea, land, and/or space by manned and unmanned systems, and can target humans, communication, radar, or other assets.
Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program against an opposition's intelligence service. It likewise refers to information gathered and activities conducted to counter espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted for or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons, international terrorist activities, sometimes including personnel, physical, document, or communications security programs.
Aerial warfare is the battlespace use of military aircraft and other flying machines in warfare. Aerial warfare includes bombers attacking enemy installations or a concentration of enemy troops or strategic targets; fighter aircraft battling for control of airspace; attack aircraft engaging in close air support against ground targets; naval aviation flying against sea and nearby land targets; gliders, helicopters and other aircraft to carry airborne forces such as paratroopers; aerial refueling tankers to extend operation time or range; and military transport aircraft to move cargo and personnel. Historically, military aircraft have included lighter-than-air balloons carrying artillery observers; lighter-than-air airships for bombing cities; various sorts of reconnaissance, surveillance and early warning aircraft carrying observers, cameras and radar equipment; torpedo bombers to attack enemy shipping; and military air-sea rescue aircraft for saving downed airmen. Modern aerial warfare includes missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles. Surface forces are likely to respond to enemy air activity with anti-aircraft warfare.
Measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) is a technical branch of intelligence gathering, which serves to detect, track, identify or describe the distinctive characteristics (signatures) of fixed or dynamic target sources. This often includes radar intelligence, acoustic intelligence, nuclear intelligence, and chemical and biological intelligence. MASINT is defined as scientific and technical intelligence derived from the analysis of data obtained from sensing instruments for the purpose of identifying any distinctive features associated with the source, emitter or sender, to facilitate the latter’s measurement and identification.
In the military of the United States, strikes and raids are a group of military operations that, alongside quite a number of others, come under the formal umbrella of military operations other than war (MOOTW). Ex-military authors Bonn and Baker describe them as "nothing more than the conduct of conventional combat missions on an individual or small-scale basis", and what they mean, specifically, depends on which particular branch of the military is using them. However, they do have formal, general, definitions in the United States Department of Defense's Joint Publication 1-02:
Operations security (OPSEC) is a process that identifies critical information to determine if friendly actions can be observed by enemy intelligence, determines if information obtained by adversaries could be interpreted to be useful to them, and then executes selected measures that eliminate or reduce adversary exploitation of friendly critical information.
Targeting is the process of selecting objects or installations to be attacked, taken, or destroyed in warfare. Targeting systematically analyzes and prioritizes targets and matches appropriate lethal and nonlethal actions to those targets to create specific desired effects that achieve the joint force commander’s (JFC’s) objectives, accounting for operational requirements, capabilities, and the results of previous assessments. The emphasis of targeting is on identifying resources (targets) the enemy can least afford to lose or that provide him with the greatest advantage, then further identifying the subset of those targets which must be acquired and engaged to achieve friendly success. Targeting links the desired effects to actions and tasks.
Battlespace is a term used to signify a unified military strategy to integrate and combine armed forces for the military theatre of operations, including air, information, land, sea, cyber and space to achieve military goals. It includes the environment, factors, and conditions that must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force, or complete the mission. This includes enemy and friendly armed forces, infrastructure, weather, terrain, and the electromagnetic spectrum within the operational areas and areas of interest.
Command and control or C2 is a "set of organizational and technical attributes and processes ... [that] employs human, physical, and information resources to solve problems and accomplish missions" to achieve the goals of an organization or enterprise, according to a 2015 definition by military scientists Marius Vassiliou, David S. Alberts and Jonathan R. Agre, The term often refers to a military system.
Coercive diplomacy or "forceful persuasion" is the "attempt to get a target, a state, a group within a state, or a nonstate actor-to change its objectionable behavior through either the threat to use force or the actual use of limited force". This term also refers to "diplomacy presupposing the use or threatened use of military force to achieve political objectives". Coercive diplomacy "is essentially a diplomatic strategy, one that relies on the threat of force rather than the use of force. If force must be used to strengthen diplomatic efforts at persuasion, it is employed in an exemplary manner, in the form of quite limited military action, to demonstrate resolution and willingness to escalate to high levels of military action if necessary".
National intelligence programs, and, by extension, the overall defenses of nations, are vulnerable to attack. It is the role of intelligence cycle security to protect the process embodied in the intelligence cycle, and that which it defends. A number of disciplines go into protecting the intelligence cycle. One of the challenges is there are a wide range of potential threats, so threat assessment, if complete, is a complex task. Governments try to protect three things:
According to JP 1-02, United States Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, a military journalist is "A US Service member or Department of Defense civilian employee providing photographic, print, radio, or television command information for military internal audiences. See also command information. "
An advanced persistent threat (APT) is a stealthy computer network attack in which a person or group gains unauthorized access to a network and remains undetected for an extended period. The term's definition was traditionally associated with state sponsorship, but over the last few years there have been multiple examples of non-state sponsored groups conducting large-scale targeted intrusions for specific goals.
Information Operations is a category of direct and indirect support operations for the United States Military. By definition in Joint Publication 3-13, "IO are described as the integrated employment of electronic warfare (EW), computer network operations (CNO), psychological operations (PSYOP), military deception (MILDEC), and operations security (OPSEC), in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own." Information Operations (IO) are actions taken to affect adversary information and information systems while defending one's own information and information systems.
Counter-IED efforts are done primarily by military and law enforcement with the assistance of the diplomatic and financial communities. It involves a comprehensive approach of countering the threat networks that employ improvised explosive devices (IEDs), defeating the devices themselves, and training others. Counter-IED, or C-IED, is usually part of a broader counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, or law enforcement effort. Because IEDs are a subset of a number of forms of asymmetric warfare used by insurgents and terrorists, C-IED activities are principally against adversaries and not only against IEDs. C-IED treats the IED as a systemic problem and aims to defeat the IED System.
