Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin
Project Pathfinder
Breaking the Barriers to More Effective Intelligence
by Timothy B. Hendrickson and Major Michael G. Knapp,
USAR
The views expressed in this article are those of the
authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the
National Ground Intelligence Center, the Department of the Army,
Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
In early October 1994, Iraq moved Republican
Guards Forces Command units to the Kuwaiti border. As the
crisis develops, U.S. decisionmakers attempt to judge whether
Saddam Hussein will order his forces into Kuwait again, as he
did in the summer of 1990. A small team of National Ground
Intelligence Center (NGIC) analysts applied new analytical software
technology to the problem in an attempt to predict possible Iraqi
intentions. Within hours of receiving the short-fuzed tasking, team
members conducted a detailed comparison of information from 1990
and 1994. Based on that comparison, the team made some key
conclusions on Iraqi intentions (more on this later).
Before this technology was available, such analysis of thousands of
disparate pieces of multisource information would have been done
manually, unable to keep pace with rapidly changing situations, and
would not have provided the desired results to decisionmakers in
time. Moreover, the comparative analysis would have been next to
impossible without this software innovation because of the serious
limitations in the human brain's ability to assimilate large
amounts of information at one time.
Challenges and Constraints
A working environment that is difficult and demanding as never
before confronts today's intelligence analyst. The nature of the
threat has changed significantly with the end of the Cold War; the
rise in regionalized, smaller-scale conflicts; and the increasing
proliferation of highly destructive weapons and related critical
technologies. This environment has brought about a corresponding
change in organization and employment of the U.S. military. Our
forces are now predominantly based in the United States and
employed on short notice as joint and combined service teams with
a broad range of missions from conventional combat to operations
other than war. Each of the Services must remain ready to support
two major conflicts simultaneously, yet must also continue to
downsize and reorganize!
The defense and national intelligence communities have also had to
evolve in this atmosphere of increased tensions and uncertainty.
Analysts must be able to work faster and smarter but with fewer
resources while continuing to provide effective and timely support
to their many customers. Today's analytical environment is
characterized by a number of dynamics that affect how the analyst
can operate. These include-
- Information Overload. Vastly increased amounts of
information, particularly from open sources, and in more varied
forms are increasingly competing for analysts' time. (The more
varied formats, provided through multimedia and interactive
networked systems, have capabilities that include
digitized imagery, sophisticated graphics, and
integrated video and audio.) There is already more data from
classified sources available than can be read. When combined with
unclassified information, this flow of data is likely to become a
tidal wave. Analysts thus will fall farther and farther behind in
their ability to evaluate incoming as well as archived information
for suitability or further use. This situation will continue unless
analysts employ a new analytical mindset that enables them to tap
into as many sources as possible to ensure appropriate
coverage and treatment of their subject areas.
- Increased Complexity. The information analysts seek is
often highly technical. The application of statistical analysis or
complex computer models is often needed to arrive at the predictive
estimates, trends, and patterns customers require.
- Declining Resources. All intelligence community
organizations need to maximize their analytical efforts in the face
of downsizing, reorganizations, and budget cuts. Analysts
have less time to devote to intelligence production due
to reductions in supporting assets such as computer systems
and basic data prcessing equipment.
- Increased Customer Requirements. The customer's
information and analysis requirements are more specific than in the
past in both the amount and type. Customers have also become more
diverse. The amount of ad hoc, unprogrammed requirements is
exceeding anticipated and resourced requirements in many
organizations.
- Broadcast Intelligence. Increasingly, emphasis is on
broadcast "Cable News Network-type" video connectivity. This type
of broadcast intelligence mechanism aids coordination and also
real-time dissemination between producers and customers for cogent
analysis on fast-breaking events. Briefings must be
well-focused, hard-hitting, and visually attractive to compete with
other media clamoring for the decisionmaker's attention.
- Product Changes. In addition to increased timeliness and
availability, analysts are designing "softcopy-only"
products for electronic dissemination. These digital
products must be short in length, focused,
"bottom-line-up-front" documents that contain embedded
imagery, graphics, and other nontextual media.
- Tactical Support. Intelligence is a key component of an
informed, demanding warfighting commander's decision support
system. Intelligence organizations must push automated analysis
capabilities and access to theater- and national-level intelligence
farther downward to the operational- and tactical-level
warfighter. This will improve the responsiveness, interoperability,
and information-sharing ability of the intelligence system at
all levels to meet the individual commander's unique
requirements.
- Technological Advances. Technological advances
include rapid and continuous computer hardware and operating
software improvements, increased standardization of systems,
and greater electronic connectivity and sharing of resources.
These advances have paved the way for a wider use and acceptance
of, and common development of improvements to, sophisticated
analytical toolsets that can offset organizational resource
shortfalls.
- Visualization. Analysts no longer have the luxury of
scanning each document that comes in or is in the archives. They
must use graphically based, computerized capabilities. These
systems enable the recognition and exploitation of often complex
relationships between ideas, documents, and groups
(clusters) of related documents, and the ability to perform such
operations on large amounts of data in real time. By decreasing the
amount of time required to evaluate and process information through
visualization, analysts acquire greater analytical
opportunity and enhanced productivity. Text extraction and
concept-based retrieval tools will also be needed to improve
analytical capabilities.
Built by and for Analysts
- The analytical software toolset mentioned in the real-world
scenario at the beginning of this article, and the one which most
closely appears to address the analyst's operating constraints
described above, is Project Pathfinder. The NGIC created Pathfinder
analytical software as a user-friendly, developmental program. It
provides analysts with automated tools and methods to process,
analyze, and integrate information drawn from any U.S. Government,
commercial, or public domain database. Pathfinder enables its users
to drastically reduce the time spent on projects (in many cases,
from months to days or days to hours) by exploiting
significantly larger amounts of information than was possible
before. Users are able to sort, arrange, compare, retrieve,
and visualize the contents of thousands of documents at a
time.
- The program's UNIX-based environment provides multiuser, windowing,
and graphics capabilities that allow simultaneous use of multiple
tools. Its large disk space and high processing speed increase
analyst efficiency. The Pathfinder software also provides
administrative tools to manipulate, edit, delete, and share
databases. This encourages analysts to work as a team, to share
relevant data among team members, to rapidly assimilate new
information, and to quickly identify data important to the analysis
problem.
- Pathfinder's focus is on aiding analysis of data in electronic
form, thus reducing the burden of hardcopy analysis. Pathfinder
lets analysts easily search for, collate, and cross-reference
information for presentation in related subsets. This reduces the
time spent searching for desired information, increases user
understanding of the data, and allows more time to perform true
analysis. Pathfinder's relational tools allow relationships of
people, facilities, or other user-defined entities to be easily
seen and used as a guide for more detailed investigation. The
program automates the process of loading electronic media into a
database, organizing the data for analysis, and identifying
relationships which permits users to visualize information and draw
conclusions.
- Analysts conceptualized and designed all of these capabilities. We
view this aspect of Pathfinder's development philosophy user
control of development priorities and establishment of
requirements as the fundamental reason for its success. The
philosophy also stipulates that Pathfinder is not a new database,
but its design allows more effective use of existing ones. The
Project Pathfinder Study Advisory Group, which meets bimonthly, is
open to any analyst in the intelligence community. Pathfinder
software is available free of charge to any United States
Government intelligence agency that requests it. However, NGIC
can provide the necessary commercial off-the-shelf hardware
and software only as its budget allows. Although contributions
from member agencies keep the program viable and responsive, this
is not a prerequisite for joining Pathfinder. The NGIC is
continually seeking opportunities to form partnerships with other
government or industry programs that have similar goals and
objectives.
- The current version of Pathfinder (Version 7.0) emphasizes the
near-real-time exploitation of large textual information streams.
This version supports advanced data preparation software; document
clustering and visualization; advanced text retrieval including
refined searching and query-by- example; and link analysis tools
such as NETMAP and the Analysts' Notebooks, both commercially
developed visualization and link analysis tools that permit
the display of complex data relationships.
- Other improvements featured in Pathfinder 7.0 are replacement of
the OpenWindows graphical user interface with Motif; connections to
the NAIC's Foreign Technology Data Base; and a Personal Information
Manager, a government-developed organization tool that uses icons
to represent and link information for generating reports and other
products.
- Pathfinder is considered a lead- er in analytical tool programs; it
is a rapidly growing user base (which has doubled in the past year)
reflecting its widespread acceptance and utility (see Figure 1).
The NGIC's Pathfinder Project Office and the supporting
vendor's design team create annual development plans. These plans
provide an adequate support of the current program in the
field through on-site installation, maintenance, hotline
support, comprehensive testing procedures, and a
vigorous training program. The plans also provide for parallel
expansion of program capabilities through a detailed layout
of goals, milestones, and future requirements.
Goals for Pathfinder Version 8.0 next year include the following
broad performance enhancements:-
- Portability to other hardware platforms.
- Elimination of dependence on any single commercial
software program.
- Ability to operate on multiple software configurations,
to the extent possible.
- Availability over the U.S. intelligence
community's Open- Source Network and MOSAIC- Intelink.
Other goals include
- Continued emphasis on training, and offer of additional
courses if funding permits.
- Doubling once again of the user base to more than 600.
- Moving to a real-time, operationally oriented
functionality is also an important near-term goal.
A Pathfinder Success Story
- The comparison of merged 1990 and 1994 Iraqi deployment databases,
made possible by Pathfinder, showed the two sets of data clustered
separately. This indicated that the two events, although similarly
motivated, were dissimilar, and that Saddam Hussein's intentions
were much more limited this second time around. NGIC analysts were
also able to provide a list of specific indicators from the 1990
attack that would not have been evident without use of Pathfinder's
advanced analytical tools. If the system's current capabilities had
been available in the summer of 1990, it is possible that analysts
could have provided earlier and more specific warnings of the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait.
Major Knapp is currently the Automatic Data Processing
Systems Manager for NGIC's Foreign Materiel Directorate. Readers
can reach him at (804) 980-7479 or DSN 934-7479.
Mr. Hendrickson is the Program Manager of the Project
Pathfinder Team and a senior analyst in NGIC's Acquisition
Strategies Division. He represents NGIC in the National Open Source
Program and other analytical automation groups. Readers can contact
him at (804) 980-7242, DSN 934-7242, or via his E-mail
address thendri@ngic.osis.gov.