More Technical Definitions of SIGINT and Its Branches
In the United States and other nations involved with NATO, signals intelligence is defined as:
-
- A category of intelligence comprising either individually or in combination all communications intelligence (COMINT), electronic intelligence (ELINT), and foreign instrumentation signals intelligence, however transmitted.
-
- Intelligence derived from communications, electronic, and foreign instrumentation signals.
The JCS definition may overemphasize "foreign instrumentation signals". That part should be considered in combination with measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT), which is closely linked to foreign instrumentation such as telemetry or radio navigation. An ELINT sensor may find a radar, and then cue (i.e., guide) a COMINT sensor for listening in on the talk between the radar and its remote users. A nonspecific SIGINT sensor can cue a Frequency Domain MASINT sensor that can help identify the purpose of the signal. If MASINT cannot identify the signal, then the intelligence organization may task an IMINT aircraft or satellite to take a picture of the source, so photo interpreters can try to understand its functions.
Being a broad field, SIGINT has many sub-disciplines. The two main ones are communications intelligence (COMINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT). There are, however, some techniques that can apply to either branch, as well as to assist FISINT or MASINT.
Read more about this topic: Signals Intelligence
Famous quotes containing the words technical, definitions and/or branches:
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive ityesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I dont give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (19151984)
“What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)