ISR versus ISTAR: A Conceptual Crisis in British Military Intelligence

Abstract

Between 2009 and2011 there was an intense debate in UK, Canadian and Australian military intelligence circles regarding two putatively competing doctrinal concepts. These were USoriginated 'intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance' (ISR) and the British-originated 'intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance' (ISTAR). While the inclusion, or not, of 'target acquisition' (TA) might seem a marginal difference, in fact the TA question opened up wider and deeper range of existing concerns about the organisational and doctrinal relationships between intelligence and operations in a military command staff. In 2011, senior echelons in UK defence intelligence shut the debate down with a summary decision to abandon ISTAR in favour of ISR.Nonetheless, ISTAR persisted as the preferred term of art in a number of UK and allied defence quarters. This article argues that ISTAR persisted because there was a practical need for the concept. Furthermore, that need reflected significant changes in the basic relationship between intelligence and operations arising from a range of technological and doctrinal transformations evolving out of what is commonly referred to as the 'Revolution in Military Affairs'. The article concludes that these alterations in the intelligence-operations dynamic remain to be properly addressed in UK and allied intelligence doctrine. IN PRESS WITH International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligenceof effects…' 3 However marginal the apparent difference in the two ideas might appear, the relative authoritativeness and suitability of the two concepts became a keenly fought dispute.