Reviews for Intelligence Analysis and Assessment

The average rating for Intelligence Analysis and Assessment based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-08-31 00:00:00 Johannes S�re The author, Thomas Mahnken, uses a case study approach to probe the question of how military institutions can discern the changing ways of warfare during peacetime. He looks at the efforts of U.S. military and naval attaches to determine and then report upon innovations in the Japanese army and navy, German army and air force, and British army and air force during the interwar period, 1919 to 1939. He found that these observers succeeded in whole or in part in about two thirds of the cases he studied---which overturns the conventional interpretation that U.S. intelligence operations during this period were ineffectual. He has five major conclusions: (1) that the services were more inclined to monitor the evolution of established weapons systems than to identify entirely new weapons; (2) that the observers were more likely to discover new innovations if they could observe them first-hand; (3) that the tendency to ignore new developments was most pronounced when the attaches' parent service was not interested in pursuing a particular technology or failed to see the benefits of the technology; (4) that in cases where observers had only scattered information they often filled in gaps by mirror imaging, assuming that the foreign service would use it in the same way U.S. services planned to do; and (5) that specialists in a single country had a much better track record in interpreting the meaning of innovations as opposed to generalists with little knowledge of the military organization involved. The writing is academic but clear and the logic of the author's argument is impeccable. This is an important book for anyone interested in the history of military intelligence or in the development of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Army Air Corps during the interwar era.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-22 00:00:00 Kelly Silva Excellent. Well worth multiple reads.