ARTICLES

Source: Combat Camera
Members of the Arctic Response Company Group offload equipment from a Coast Guard vessel near Iqaluit
in August 2013
gone wrong in Afghanistan.” 13 However, the article then noted, “we continue to believe that the
insights of science have much to offer strategies in a war zone—not least through training
combat troops to understand the local cultures within which they operate.” Thus, the U.S.
experience demonstrated that HTA and HTM could add value to operations but required proper,
careful development.
The more traditional method, Encyclopedic Country Studies, is typical of the routine staff
work done within Canadian, U.S. and British army staffs in preparation for operational
overseas deployments. Geographic studies are begun by mining all available published sources
for a variety of geographic and cultural details (e.g., population density, small-scale
ethno-cultural laydown, industrial activities, the locations of key cultural features and critical
infrastructure). While those country studies end up forming a significant foundation for
all-source intelligence analysis, the skill of GEOINT personnel on this work is typically at what
can be described as an apprentice trades training level. It needs to be taken to the next level:
advanced GEOINT analysis as described in the following paragraph.
Advanced GEOINT Analysis is the next stage. It seeks to build upon the GEOINT analysis
conducted during the encyclopedic country study process. The method includes a detailed
examination of the various themes and layers of available geographic information to determine
how they interact. There is no formal doctrinal foundation for this method at present. However,
my previous paper did include a proposal using sources of geospatial data not typically
122 THE CANADIAN ARMY JOURNAL VOLUME 16.2 2016