DOD needs to use public, human intell more in Afghanistan

According to a new Defense Department report, military officials in Afghanistan rely too much on intelligence from electronic devices and are neglecting to use the defense budget properly to collect intelligence information available to the public and from numerous sources, including academic papers and newspapers, reports Eli Lake in the Washington Times

The report by the Defense Science Board (DSB), a panel that advises DOD, also said analysts are often flooded by the volume of data collected by sensors on the bottom of military aircraft and from high-tech camera and radar pods on blimps, and the Times said that although the technology has helped find and kill enemy combatants, it has created a "a crisis in processing, exploitation, and dissemination" of the information.

The report said DOD should develop expertise in anthropology, sociology and what's called "human-terrain mapping" to understand and predict insurgencies, the article continues.