The Army uses RC-12s, but I’m not sure if SIGINT falls in the same spectrum as COMINT. Supposedly they have been upgraded to do multi-INT, but I only remember the early ones that looked like porcupines. I do know the past 17 years has been near constant use of them.
Because there’s nowhere for the intel guy to sit.
Ooh a test, I like those!
So how many did I get right? wanna correct 'em? 
Actually, I like your definitions much better…and IMINT is sometimes, unfortunately, more like your definition.
SIGINT - Correct!
HUMINT - Correct!
IMINT - Imagery intelligence - anything that is a “picture”, i.e. an image, collected from a platform such as reconnaissance aircraft like the FA-18 SHARP pod, a U-2, or other platforms. But not imagery taken by a spy, that would be HUMINT, and of course, no selfies.
OSINT - Open SourceIntelligence - a fancy name for surfing the web or using Google. Back in the day, when we had to get Pravda by mail (we did) and had a bunch of folks listening to Radio Moskva this had some other esoteric name that don’t recall. The whole idea is that many times, if you can assemble enough unclassified published pieces of information, you can put together a good picture of an adversary’s activity, or research or new weapons system that you couldn’t get through other “INTs”, or that complements and “fills in” blank areas in information that other INTs have uncovered. This was tedious and time consuming before the “information super highway”. Now we have the opposite problem, separating wheat from the chaff with so much information available, however it is a “growing industry”, producing good results
ACINT - Acoustic Intelligence - The domain of the sonar techs and few others. Remember Jonesy from Hunt for Red October who figured out the low frequency harmonics of Red October’s special quiet drive? If real, that would have been ACINT.
MASINT - According to Wiki, “a technical branch of intelligence gathering, which serves to detect, track, identify or describe the signatures (distinctive characteristics) of fixed or dynamic target sources.”…err…OK. Think signals or other attributes (such as telemetry or heat plume or gaseous emissions) that are particular to and characterize an event or weapons system. So Country X test launches a new missile. Maybe they put telemetry packages on the missile…that would be good to “listen to” if we can, and if we can also figure out what it all means, we’d have the flight characteristics of the missile. Maybe the missile is liquid fueled and when it is filled up a specific combination of fumes spreads out in the atmosphere. Later, when the missile is fielded, if we have some type of sniffer that can detect that combo of fumes, we have an early indication that Country X is about to launch them. That type of thing.
There were department head and squadron CO and XO staterooms on the 3rd deck aft, at least on Reagan and Nimitz, from what I remember. That could very likely vary from ship to ship though.
I’ve heard of all these fancy places on the O-3 level and higher, but we nuke types had to be very gradual in our ascents to those levels, lest we develop nosebleeds or other symptoms of altitude sickness.
Very interesting stuff this. So that gizmo they used in 'nam that sniffed the electronic signature of a truck’s igniters would be a prime example of Measurements And Signature INTelligence, yeah?
Is ACINT always strictly sub stuff, or is it also used to listen for different things like listening for the OPFOR ASW assets banging away on active sonar a convergence zone or three away?
Is OSINT still being done on board? I can imagine the flood of possibly relevant info has become so great and so full of disinformation (China, Russia) that the filtering would be better left to a shop like the NSA…
Never heard of it but yes, a good example of MASINT!
No answer; classified.
Not much on board unless we wanted more info on a port we were pulling into (what are the local papers saying abut the visit? Can we expect demonstrations?) or a foreign naval exercise we were going to be near. It is done at the US Theater Joint Intel Centers which is a good place to do it since they have a specific AOR focus and other INTS are exploited there, plus they have good publication/dissemination capabilities.
I’m sure that at least a couple of the national “3-letter agencies” have thrown OSINT shops
cool, thanks. I feel like a Soviet spy now, having run you into the “can’t comment, classified” wall ;p
(Though honestly I shouldn’t be in that image, I was a low-level DAC and didn’t deal with classified that much.)
