Piercing the Fog

Piercing the Fog discusses the development of new sources and methods of intelligence collection; requirements for intelligence at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of warfare; intelligence to support missions for air superiority, interdiction, strategic bombardment, and air defense; the sharing of intelligence in a coalition and joint service environment; the acquisition of intelligence to assess bomb damage on a target-by-target basis and to measure progress in achieving campaign and war objectives; and the ability of military leaders to understand the intentions and capabilities of the enemy and to appreciate the pressures on intelligence officers to sometimes tell commanders what they think the commanders want to hear instead of what the intelligence discloses. The complex problems associated with intelligence to support strategic bombardment in the 1940s will strike some readers as uncannily prescient to global Air Force operations in the 1990s. A half century ago, accurate, timely intelligence contributed significantly to victory and hastened the end of World War II. Such a legacy is worth reading and thinking about by all those responsible for building, maintaining, and employing air power. How well intelligence is integrated with air operations is even more important today than it was in the past. It will continue to prove as critical in the next century as it has been in this one.RICHARD P. HALLIONAir Force Historian