What is military Intelligence? Intelligence is the subject of many myths and misunderstandings. It is not the same thing as "spying", but it may use information from spying. It is not even just about "secrets", but most of what it does will be secret. So if that is what military Intelligence is not, then what is it? Personally I feel that the Duke of Wellington (famous for defeating Napoleon at Waterloo) said it best:
'All of the business of war, and indeed all of the business of life, is to endeavor to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called guessing what was on the other side of the hill.'
The Webster dictionary describes Intelligence as "information, news; collecting information, esp. that of military value". In short, Intelligence is just the process for finding out what needs to be known.
Decision makers need knowledge that is focused on the decisions they have to make, accurate, and tells them what they need to know.
Wellesley in India, wearing his major-general's un...
English: A daguerreotype portrait of the aged Arth...
Reverse sideIntelligence is all about - gathering information, sorting through the resulting data, piecing it together, drawing out the right conclusions, and feeding it to others. To do all of these things, over the years intelligence professionals have developed what is called the intelligence cycle.
Over the past 228 years, The US Army's Military Intelligence Corp has changed by leaps and bounds, mainly due to the advancement in technology. In 1776, intelligence was gathered by primitive means i.e., word of mouth and eye sight. In more modern times, spy planes, long range view finder, wire taps, and operatives in place within enemy lines (in some cases with in there ranks), to gather inelegance.