"Intelligence" is comprised of five categories of knowledge and understanding: a society's leadership; culture and values; the strategic, political, economic, and physical environment; military capabilities and orders of battle; and comprehensive battlefield information. Examples of technologies and system approaches of potential relevance in these areas are discussed below.

Understanding potential adversaries, coalition partners, and involved neutral countries implies an infrastructure for acquiring an in-depth knowledge about cultures, leadership values, and other driving factors that allow us, when needed and on a timely basis, to get "into their minds." Applicable technologies include automated language translators, interactive and autonomous computer simulations, advanced database systems for organizing and understanding data and transactions of individuals and institutions, and computerized educational systems for training and learning these skills.

Collecting sufficient and timely environmental information is crucial to Rapid Dominance. Logistics, demographics, and infrastructure are broad areas of collection along with geography, road/rail/ship lanes, utility sites and corridors, manufacturing, government sites, military and paramilitary facilities, population demographics, economic and financial pressure points (such as oil wells or gold mines), and major dams and bridges. Technologies used to provide environmental awareness include traditional means such as satellites that can be augmented with dynamic sensor management tools for optimizing observation routines. The vast quantities of data that reside on the world's computer networks, if properly exploited, provide another rich source of information. Data mining tools, such as Web crawlers, gatherers, brokers, and repositories that pull and organize data from public networks, will be essential to building a more complete picture of potential adversaries. Since not all databases and host computers are cooperative with these methods, offensive information warfare tools will be required to obtain specific pieces of information that are vital for national security purposes.

Once data are collected, they must be processed and disseminated and then stored for future access. Enterprise data storage and retrieval systems that are capable of working with many terrabytes (1,000 gigabytes) of information are already commonplace. Since it is impossible for humans to comprehend such vast quantities of information without some assistance, data exploitation tools (filters, fusion, automatic target recognition, image understanding, etc.) will be crucial technologies. Finally, the information, once processed, will be of little use if not disseminated to the right people in a timely fashion. "Intelligent data" dissemination and wide bandwidth communications are examples of essential technologies emerging in this area.

In addition to knowledge about regions and locations where U.S. force may be applied, it is important to maintain vigilance and up-to-date knowledge on specific "hot spots" and to have sufficient flexibility within the system to shift attention rapidly to new areas. Systems addressing this more time-sensitive set of tasks would include light, quickly deployable satellites, high altitude and endurance unmanned aerial vehicles, manned platforms, and unattended ground sensors.

As a crisis unfolds and the insertion of U.S. troops or other military action becomes more probable, information needs and the number of information consumers both increase dramatically. Information that must be collected and correlated include targeting, battle damage assessment (BDA), weather, terrain, infrastructure, tracking of special targets, logistics, position and status of our own troops, identification friend or foe (IFF), and status of material. It is vitally important that sufficient sensor systems work in all weather conditions and at night to maintain the "operations tempo" required by Rapid Dominance.

Battlefield awareness requires three information technologies: collection, fusion, and dissemination of real-time actionable information to a shooter. Rapid Dominance requires an unprecedented level of real-time information collection that will be provided by sensor systems such as space platforms, UAVs, unattended ground sensors, and advanced manned reconnaissance platforms. In addition, the entire infosphere of the adversary will be monitored not only for classic information such as operational commands but also to determine the shock effect being created by Rapid Dominance operations. Collecting data from cooperative sources such as one's own troops, allies, and friendly non-combatants is also critical. While Operation Desert Storm showed the value of self-location sensors such as GPS, the friendly fire casualties demonstrated that there is still work to be done in terms of giving each commander and soldier sufficient information to operate effectively. Much of this information, such as the physiological status of individual combatants, is not currently collected, and much of what is sensed is not properly disseminated.

It would be hard to overstate the importance of information dissemination within Rapid Dominance. Administering Shock and Awe requires a spectrum of attacks that the adversary is unable to fathom, but our own forces must operate effectively, even aggressively, within an environment that could easily lead to serious information bottlenecks and overload. Commercial technologies will be key to the U.S. developing a structure to effectively disseminate information. Already, commercial communications technologies such as global broadcast satellites and protocols like those underlying the Internet have been used as stop gaps by the U.S. military in major deployments.

Merely transmitting the right information at the right time will not be sufficient for operations enabling Rapid Dominance. Information will need to be fused to create knowledge-based displays. The technologies that will be important in this area go beyond the data fusion algorithms currently in place and should leverage heavily off of technologies in fields such as computer image generation, virtual reality, and advanced simulation.