Public Intelligence

Nation-state adversaries regularly use accounts on popular social networking sites to facilitate social engineering against DoD members. Information disclosed or discovered on social networking sites creates a significant operations security (OPSEC) concern and in the context of a wide spread collection effort could be by adversaries to form a classified picture.

The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) is warning military personnel to avoid becoming victims of online sextortion scams using “sexual images (obtained either through enticement or malicious code)” to extort money from unsuspecting victims. “Cyber sextortion” is described as a growing problem among the military services with incidents being reported by “all Military Criminal Investigative Organizations” involving service members located at bases all over the world. The AFOSI report, released in February on a restricted basis, was recently posted online on the document-sharing website Scribd.

This Special Product was produced in response to reports of Department of Defense (DoD) personnel becoming victims of internet-based extortion scams known as sextortion. Its purpose is to inform United States Air Force (USAF) personnel of this new online scam and offer mitigating steps that can reduce the chances of becoming a victim.

This publication provides multi-Service tactics, techniques, and procedures (MTTP) to standardize and describe the use of internet tactical chat (TC) in support of operations. Thus, it provides commanders and their units with guidelines to facilitate coordination and integration of TC when conducting multi-Service and joint force operations.

This Statement of Work (SOW) involves purchasing and installing a Lawful Intercept (LI) capability for the Government of Iraq (GOI). The capability shall include: providing installation, system engineering, system administration, terminal operations support, and mentoring/training Iraqi system operators. The solution should include a disaster recovery feature/configuration that would replicate (backup) the server and database storage at a physically separate facility. LI will provide the GOI a powerful communications intelligence tool to assist in combating criminal organizations and insurgencies by supporting evidence-based prosecutions, warrant-based targeting, and intelligence-based operations.

This publication provides multi-Service TTP for the seamless integration of air assets during the conduct of maritime surface warfare. The maritime domain is defined as the oceans, seas, bays, estuaries, islands, coastal areas, and the airspace above these, including the littorals. AOMSW is intended to support the joint force commander’s (JFC’s) objectives by providing capabilities/forces in support of joint maritime operations. The end state of this publication is a streamlined support process for maritime surface warfare within the joint force maritime component commander’s (JFMCC’s) area of operations (AO).

The Air Force Public Affairs Agency created this guide to help all Airmen safely and wisely use social media. This guide provides simple, easy-to-follow tips to help you use social media tools in your professional and personal life. This guide is for informational purposes only and does not replace official Air Force instructions.

The following map depicts the approximate locations of current and planned Department of Defense unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) activities inside the U.S.  The locations, service branches, and types of UAS flown were obtained from several publicly released DoD presentations.  If you are aware of other DoD drone activities in the U.S. not listed below, please [...]

Several statistics reports on unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) mishaps that are compiled yearly by the Air Force Safety Center. The following reports are the most recent that are publicly available.

Most of the public discussion surrounding the use of drones both internationally and domestically has focused on issues of privacy or civilian casualties. Due to the technical complexity of drone operations, there has been little media examination of the practical feasibility of widespread domestic drone deployment. In February, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2012 was signed into law clearing the way for more than 30,000 domestic drones by 2020. The law requires the FAA to create procedures for commercially-operated drones by 2015 and enables law enforcement agencies to operate small-scale drones at low altitudes. While this has a number of negative implications for the right to privacy, such as the lack of any laws governing the usage of data collected via drones, the thought of a future where U.S. skies are filled with an array of drones has a much larger, more practical problem: is it even logistically possible to operate thousands of pilot-less aircraft in the domestic airspace?

“Enduring Airpower Lessons from Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF) and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF)” is one of three lessons learned (L2) focus areas directed by the Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF) at CORONA Top 2008. This report is the third and last in a series of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) L2 reports produced for fiscal year 2009 and focuses on Small UAS (SUAS) capabilities and issues.

JFIRE is a pocket-size, quick-reference guide for requesting fire support in accordance with approved joint tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP). JFIRE contains calls for fire, joint air attack team (JAAT) techniques, a format for joint air strike requests, close air support (CAS) coordination and planning procedures, communications architecture, and weapons data.

This multi-Service tactics, techniques, and procedures (MTTP) publication will assist in advising foreign forces. It serves as a reference to ensure coordinated multi-Service operations for planners and operators preparing for, and conducting, advisor team missions. This MTTP is intended to provide units and personnel that are scheduled to advise foreign forces (FF) with viable tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) so that they can successfully plan, train for, and carry out their mission. Currently, material regarding advising is found in joint and Service doctrinal treatment of foreign internal defense (FID), counterinsurgency (COIN), security assistance (SA), and unconventional warfare (UW). Several Services are developing documents that focus on basic survival and common advisor skills, but do not sufficiently cover how an advisor team might function at all levels. This MTTP provides guidance that will help to enhance the activities of some advisor functions and improve inter-Service coordination for this joint mission.

Every year as technology grows and advances thus do the threats that surround it. Predicting what new cyber threats to look for may not always be an easy task. By keeping up with the past trends and ever changing current environment, may help to give us a good handle on how to prepare for what may be to come.

U.S. Air Force presentation detailing human interface systems for drone ground control stations from May 2010.

RPAs are revolutionary surveillance and weapons delivery systems – changing the way the Air Force builds situation awareness and engages enemy forces – but their full potential has yet to be realized. To begin to address this issue, the Air Force initiated this study to review the state-of-the-art in RPA operations, focusing on control and connectivity in an irregular warfare (IW) environment. The Panel was specifically tasked to identify RPA architectures and operational concepts centered on human-systems integration, distributed systems operations, and effective command and control – a cluster of concepts and technologies we subsequently labeled as “mission management” enablers. The Panel was also tasked to recommend mid- to far-term S&T development roadmaps for advancing these technologies to improve the flexibility and capability of RPA operations.

Air Force Policy Directive 91-4 on safety in using directed energy weapons (DEW) revised October 21, 2011.

The Air Force has been secretly flying armed Reaper drones on counterterrorism missions from a remote civilian airport in southern Ethi­o­pia as part of a rapidly expanding U.S.-led proxy war against an al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa, U.S. military officials said. The Air Force has invested millions of dollars to upgrade an airfield in Arba Minch, Ethi­o­pia, where it has built a small annex to house a fleet of drones that can be equipped with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs. The Reapers began flying missions earlier this year over neighboring Somalia, where the United States and its allies in the region have been targeting al-Shabab, a militant Islamist group connected to al-Qaeda.

U.S. Air Force models U-2C and U-2F spy plane aircraft flight manual from May 10, 1967.

A restricted distribution presentation from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory massive cloud traffic auditing and online data mining presentation from July 2011.

Four versions of the U.S. Army and Air Force civil disturbance plan known as Garden Plot from 1968-1991.

This manual provides preplanning guidance for handling emergency situations, which include the full spectrum from civil disobedience through hostile disturbances to violent acts of terrorism. It discusses the concept of operations in planning for these crisis situations and offers an outline for preparation, execution and resolution of mass disturbances. Air National Guard units will use this manual as guidance. The use of name or mark of any specific manufacturer, commercial product, commodity or service in this publication does not imply endorsement by the Air Force.

Unregulated psychoactive substances marketed as “bath salts” are among the latest in a series of legal synthetic drugs that are being offered as alternatives to illegal drugs. Produced as legal substitutes for ecstasy, cocaine and amphetamines, salts are powerful stimulant drugs designed to avoid legal prosecution and are commonly available on the internet and specialty head shops. They can be made up of a variety of unregulated chemical substances and are being sold under a variety of names or brands. Open sources indicate that “bath salts” are becoming increasingly popular due to the perception that they pose seemingly safer alternative to illegal methods of getting “high” and can easily be obtained over the Internet. Concerns regarding the safety of these drugs have prompted many European countries to take measures to stop the imports and selling of these products within their borders. Recent seizures nationwide suggest these powdered salts are making inroads in the US, thus becoming narcotics of potential concern.

Restricted U.S. Air Force F-16A/B Flight Manual from August 15, 2003.

The following five reports are from the U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command’s Threat Information Fusion Cell. The “Homeland Defense Information Summary” reports focus entirely on domestic security matters and feature content from local police departments and regional fusion centers. The very existence of the reports should be a matter of scrutiny given the fundamental divide between domestic military affairs and civilian law enforcement necessitated by legislation such as the Posse Comitatus Act.