The Army is using innovative analysis techniques adapted from the civilian sector to get the best of insurgents in Baghdad. It's working, bit by bit.
U.S. troops battling the shadowy guerrilla insurgency in Iraq have adopted the computer-sleuthing tactics of big-city American police departments to prepare strikes against rebel fighters and their sources of money and weapons.Posted by Alan at December 23, 2003 12:42 PMMilitary intelligence analysts have adopted databases and software used by civilian law enforcers to catalog names, pictures and suspects' fingerprints and to search such for links among guerrilla suspects, said Lt. Col. Ken Devan, the top intelligence officer for the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division.
Devan and the division's intelligence analysts study clusters of attacks in Baghdad neighborhoods, looking for the time of day and days of the week when strikes are most likely. They then alter their convoy schedules and routes to avoid ambushes or send patrols to confront the guerrillas, Devan said.
The division uses three programs in tandem, entering data on every bomb blast, every firefight, every suspect detained and every tip given by a local resident. Digital fingerprints are taken from every arrested suspect and added to the database.
"We're seeing patterns emerge. There are certain neighborhoods you don't want to be out in, or there's a better likelihood you'll be attacked," Devan said. "You try to predict what the enemy's going to do next. We try to cut him off at the knees."
AP report via CNN