CSI army style (From Salisbury Journal)

CSI army style

11:31am Thursday 19th January 2012 in Forces focus By David Falcke

The new year sees a newly reformed battalion moving into new accommodation and taking on an exciting new role.

Last week, 2 Military Intelligence (Exploitation) Battalion proudly marched the eight miles from their old barracks at Netheravon Airfield camp to their newhome at Trenchard Lines, Upavon to begin a new chapter in their history.

Their old role of counter intelligence and security will be taken on by other battalions while 2 MI Bn adopts the exploitation role.

The exploitation of captured materiel and personnel for intelligence purposes is not a new process, US military directives from the Vietnam era cite an earlier example, but it has been significantly refined in recent years.

2 MI Bn will support the Intelligence Exploitation Force in Afghanistan, and is to start building a contingency exploitation capability that can support any future operation.

When talking of forensic exploitation, most people might think of Crime Scene Investigations (CSI).

The main difference between materiel and Personnel Exploitation (MPE) and CSI is the required outcome.

MPE is conducted in order to provide intelligence that can be used by troops on the ground either to plan operations, or save life, whereas CSI is aimed at collecting evidence to build a case for prosecution through the judicial system.

However, the process is very reminiscent of CSI Miami (or New York or wherever) except the military investigators are often operating under fire.

Lance Corporal Garry Atkinson, a member of the Weapons Intelligence Specialist Company, said: “What we are trying to achieve is gathering information that we turn into intelligence on the makeup of IEDs and any new developments and devices.

“We get the first bits of information from the IEDs and create trends, we then pass this on to other agencies.

The information that we get from these devices is very important in catching the bomb makers. It is a very satisfying job as during the tour we saw bomb makers and facilitators that we had identified arrested.”

There is a lot of high-tech kit involved; for biometric profiling they have a HIIDE camera, which not only takes conventional photographs but also a retina scan and fingerprints, all helping to build up a picture of residents of an area.

Other equipment the team carries are portable chemical test kits that are so sensitive they can differentiate between normal and decaffeinated coffee, portable X-Ray machines and mass spectrographic equipment.

In Afghanistan all telephones systems are based on radio masts, so a great deal of information is gleaned by tracing people through mobile phone use.

The unit has computer programmes that will download every call and message from a mobile phone and read the information on a person’s Facebook page.

The Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Procter, said their move marks a new start for the battalion. “We decided to combine the move with our annual fitness test and so did the eight miler to mark the occasion with a tab across the Plain.

With our new capability we needed a new location and we will start to bring in all our assets, which are dotted around the UK. Upavon allows us to do this.”

“We have a company in Northern Ireland and another in Abingdon and we hope to co-locate during the year.

Our mission is to force generate and train personnel for the intelligence Exploitation Force in Afghanistan and in 2013 we will have to supply a contingency force for worldwide deployment.”

“Our work in Afghanistan is vital to the operation which has been borne out by the post operational tour reports and we are becoming increasingly successful and the work here in Upavon is crucial to the success on operations.”