USFK To Establish New HUMINT Analysis Unit
I am surprised USFK did not already have a unit dedicated to doing human intelligence analysis already:
The U.S. troops in South Korea are pushing to set up a unit that will be charged with gathering and analyzing human intelligence on North Korea, local authorities said Sunday.
Human Intelligence, known as HUMINT, is intelligence gathered by means of interpersonal contact.
The move comes as the North’s development of communications security technology is increasingly making signals surveillance of the country’s internal communications more difficult.
According to the authorities, the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) plans to create a specialized unit around October under the 501st Military Intelligence Brigade of the Eighth U.S. Army. The new unit will be called the 524th Military Intelligence Battalion, they said.
In the brigade, the 532nd Military Intelligence Battalion is in charge of human intelligence affairs, but its main duty is analyzing intelligence, not directly gathering it. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link.
“I am surprised USFK did not already have a unit dedicated to doing human intelligence analysis ”
Funds were previously diverted towards Sling-load Training, POSH, POSA, EO, and other various ____ Appreciation activities…
…you know important stuff. 🙄
I am currently hoping to get hired as a HUMINT analyst specializing in satallite imagery of the Pyongyang traffic girls’ shower room.
I was really hoping to be a coworker of Smokes but apparently there is no demand for East Asian Ladyboy Specialist so they rejected his application.
That’s really unjust considering all his experience as a field agent.
I don’t know why, but the 524th MI Bn was deactivated a few years ago; and IIRC correctly, its assets were put under other units within the 501st MI Bde (USFK’s Military Intelligence brigade). It appears they are bringing the 524th back. So while the unit itself was disbanded, its assets never went away — and all this really amounts to is a little game of musical chairs.
Pure speculation on my part, but the current USFK J2 (BG Escribano) was once the battalion commander of the 524th MI Bn. Maybe he came back to Korea to be the J2 and saw that his former battalion had been deactivated and he convinced GEN Brooks that USFK needed to get its HUMINT Bn back.
@Guitard
Close, but Escribano has nothing to do with it. This was LTG Zahner’s (former DA G2, before Legere) bad idea – MI rebalance. The MI community has known all along this was a dumba$$ plan, so know it’s coming back. Same type of BN is going to Camp Zama, 311th MI.
The pen did lose many assets in the form of personnel – not all went to the Hump and 532. Most CI went to 532 (for command & control) and most HUMINT left pen when it was deactivated.
The article is all kinds of stupidly wrong. The BN doesn’t analyze $h!t, it is a Forward Collection BN with both HUMINT and Counterintelligence. USFK in no shape, form or fashion is creating this unit and SIGINT, or lack thereof, has nothing to do with it. 524 will only have been gone for 4 or 5 years by the time it is operational again.