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NAVY NEWS, NOVEMBER 2007
Get wise on DCI
Set in 660 acres in the heart of the Bedfordshire countryside, it would be difficult to identify a more striking defence site or one that is further from the sea than the Defence Intelligence and Security Centre (DISC) at Chicksands. Nevertheless, a number of Royal Navy and Royal Marines serve within the DISC, many employed by the Defence College of Intelligence (DCI), responsible for delivering defence intelligence training in security, language, intelligence,
including Communications Technicians, Royal Marines, the Royal Signals, Intelligence Corps and RAF Intelligence branch personnel. The newly-created ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance) training department is at the forefront of training Service personnel for current operations. The Tactical Intelligence (Counter Insurgency) Branch provides intelligence training designed to prepare a battlegroup, battalion, brigade or division’s intelligence cell for operational duties in Afghanistan and Iraq while the Tactical Intelligence (Conventional) Branch delivers training to nonintelligence specialists. The branch also supports the annual two-week International Intelligence Director’s Course, which draws together senior officers from 26 nations for a series of intelligence-related seminars and discussions. The Analysis Training Branch does just that; it teaches personnel a wide range of analytical techniques and delivers IT training in support of analysts’ work. The Air Intelligence Training Department provides initial specialist training for RAF intelligence officers and intelligence trades, although a number of RN officers have attended this training as an element of professional development before working in naval intelligence. Maintaining its wartime roots, the SIGINT training department at Chicksands site provides signal collection, analysis, reporting, exploitation and
Military intelligence is not something which appears in the pages of Navy News very often. Capt Paul Burrell RN, Director of the Defence College of Intelligence, hopes to shed some light into this murky world – and above all the men and women who train the people who control the countless tentacles of information.
photography and geospatial disciplines. The centrepiece of the site is the remarkable 12th-Century priory which is, given its age, unsurprisingly haunted. Legend has it that Rosata, a nun, fell pregnant to one of the canons. For her transgression she was walled up alive in the cloister after witnessing the execution by disembowelment of the canon who was responsible for her situation. She reputedly continues to walk the priory on the 17th of each month. All of which has very little to do with defence intelligence, but we thought you’d like the gruesome tale. Anyway, Chicksands’ military life only began when the Air Ministry snapped up the site in 1936 and developed it into as a code intercept station supporting the signal intelligence programme carried out at Bletchley Park. After WW2, the site was used by the US Air Force as a Signals Intelligence (or SIGINT) centre until September 1995 when
it was returned to the MOD. Today, the establishment is home to the Defence College of Intelligence under Capt Paul Burrell RN, although the college is split across the country. The Defence School of Intelligence can be found in Chicksands itself; the Defence School of Languages at Beaconsfield; the Defence School of Photography (DSOP) at Cosford, near Wolverhampton, and the Royal School of Military Survey (RSMS) at Hermitage, near Newbury. Almost 5,000 people pass through the various college ‘campuses’ each year, tutored by some 470 staff, 38 of them RN or RM. At the core of the college, and led by a Royal Navy commander, is the Training Policy and Management Department which ensures both defence-wide and single Service training policies are implemented across the organisation. Having undergone a recent and fundamental reorganisation, the Defence School of Intelligence now comprises six departments, responsible for specialist trade training
l The business end of RN intelligence... A Royal Marines boarding party climbs aboard a tanker in the northern Arabian Gulf – an operation based on intelligence gathered... and an operation to gather intelligence
applied language training across the three Armed Forces. Recognising the importance of physical and documentary security as a fundamental element of the counterintelligence trade, Unit Security Officer courses for the RN and Army and the IT security investigator and advisor courses are delivered by the Security Training Department, which is led by a Royal Marines major. Despite all the wizardry of the 21st Century world, a significant proportion of intelligence continues to be gathered through human sources. The Human Intelligence training department delivers a range of courses covering: security and intelligence training for attachés and their staffs; overt and covert agent handling techniques; debriefing; tactical questioning; interrogation and surveillance techniques. Finally, with Chicksands being the home of the Intelligence Corps, the Templer training department provides military and professional training for the Intelligence Corps’ soldiers and officers, with the fundamental aim of engendering and nurturing Intelligence Corps’ spirit and ethos. Moving on to the Defence School of Languages, headed by an RN commander, it teaches around 400 people across the spectrum of operationally related-languages. Graduates of the Defence School of Photography are responsible for the images which fill Navy News. The photographers trained at Cosford are trained not merely in the art of still photography for PR purposes, but also combat
camera work, accident and investigative training for all three services. With a history on the Hermitage site dating back to 1949 and having been granted its Royal status in 1996, the Royal School of Military Survey provides geospatial training to MSc level for Royal Engineer Officers and foreign students through the Army Survey Course and to a Foundation Degree level for soldiers of the Royal Engineer Geo-Technician trade. To exploit the growing links between imagery intelligence and geo-spatial intelligence, the RSMS has recently taken control of the Imagery Intelligence training department at Chicksands and the imagery analysts it trains. Visitors, both national and international, to the Defence College of Intelligence are frequent and the organisation enjoys links with local Sea Cadet and school CCF units. While training necessarily dominates activities, both staff and trainees make good use of the wide range of sporting and other activities that are on offer through the extensive facilities on all four sites and have achieved success in a variety of unit level single and inter-service competitions. It’s fair to say that while many miles from the sea and without a warship in sight, the Defence College of Intelligence is a busy and thriving unit delivering operationally-focused training. The RN and RM personnel serving within the organisation are making an active and valued contribution to the training of intelligence in its broadest sense.
Reporting from the Fleet
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