2LT Vineyard, Ryan31MAR2014The Modern Military Intelligence Officer as a ProfessionalThe modern military intelligence professional must be an expert in his or her craft. Basic skills include command and control of military intelligence and combined armed forces soldiers during combat and intelligence collection operations. Additionally, an MI officer must be able to coordinate the employment of military intelligence Soldiers at all levels of command, from platoon to battalion and above in U.S. and multinational operations. Additionally, an MI officer must be proficient at all levels of intelligence collection, particularly if he or she is an all-source intelligence officer (35D). These areas include visual intelligence (IMINT), human intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), among many other types and disciplines of intelligence work. Finally, an officer must be technically competent in what his soldiers do. An officer's ability to lead his soldiers depends on his knowledge of his soldier's skills. The US Army officer is a professional who provides expertise, leadership and an example for his soldiers to follow. Each soldier is a subject matter expert, trained in a specific skill. An officer, the leader of a soldier, must be able to employ that soldier effectively. This means understanding the skills of a soldier. An officer must additionally have the ability to train that Soldier outside of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) schools. This means that a successful officer must master, or even become an expert in, his soldier's skills. For an average soldier, this would mean several MOS-type training schools. In the intelligence field, a soldier can be anything from prophet... middle of paper... and a trade could result in a similar 20% failure rate demonstrated by "trained" graduate students » by Dr. Gottman. Every military intelligence officer should aspire to be the field's Dr. Gottman. The intelligence profession will never be perfect; the fog of war will always exist. Van Riper compares current American military thinking to that of a chessboard; only noting that in the real world you can't see the enemy's pieces or thought process. An Army Intelligence officer is aware of their assumptions, flaws, and analytical process while maintaining themselves as an expert. Otherwise, an officer does not respect his beliefs. “I will give to the selfless fulfillment of my duty and my mission the best that effort, reflection and dedication can bring. To do this, I will not only seek to continually improve my knowledge and my practice of my profession…”