![]() ![]() They spend a lot of their time on base, working behind a desk, supervising the information gatherers and molding their reports into a concise, readable form. Wherever they go, Intelligence Officers, do a lot of writing, a lot of thinking and a lot of talking to people about what they know and what they think is going to happen. Narrator: On completion of their training, Intelligence Officers will likely be posted to a Canadian Armed Forces Base, working with the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Special Operations Forces. We have a much wider breadth of responsibilities, we’ve got many more capabilities than you just see on TV and it allows us to actually have a deeper understanding of real issues, current events, and really society at large that you just won’t get anywhere else. WEISHAAR: The job we do is actually much more interesting than what you see on TV. And even when there are pieces missing from that puzzle, they need to be able to make the call, because incomplete information now is more useful than a complete picture after the fact. After that, it’s up to each Intelligence Officer to use their instincts, their intuition, their training and tradecraft to evaluate the situation. They use technology to track electronic signatures and get very clear images taken from the sky. Intelligence Officers use computerized tools to help them and their teams go through massive amounts of information. Narrator: Collecting intelligence is both an art and a science. WEISHAAR: Some of them are highly classified, but some of them are open-source, including news as well as social media. ![]() Intelligence Officers lead the teams that collect and provide leaders with that information from a variety of sources. They need to know and understand the operating environment – the weather, the terrain, the enemy, the people and the politics - as events are unfolding. Narrator: Intelligence Officers are responsible for ensuring that their commanders are well informed, because just knowing what’s going on, on the ground, in the air or on the seas is not enough. WEISHAAR: We provide commanders and other high-ranking officials, both in the government and in the military, with the information they need to know at that moment to make decisions that could affect people’s lives or the direction of an entire country. The job of an Intelligence Officer is to predict the future in an asymmetric world. Narrator: The days of simply knowing who and where the enemy is and knowing how they fight, are over. I’m an Intelligence Officer serving with the Canadian Forces Joint Imagery Centre in Ottawa, Ontario. I’m Captain Nicholas Weishaar, from Abbotsford, British Columbia. ![]()
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