Commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet

By JO3 Ryan Hicks
USS Abraham Lincoln Public Affairs

Intelligence Specialist Second Class Dominique Martin looks over a Tactical Air Reconnaissance Pod System (TARPS) photo taken from a F-14D Tomcat. (Photo by JO3 Ryan Hicks)

Intelligence Specialist Second Class Dominique Martin looks over a Tactical Air Reconnaissance Pod System (TARPS) photo taken from a F-14D Tomcat. (Photo by JO3 Ryan Hicks)

The best way to explain the importance of the intelligence specialists on board USS Abraham Lincoln may be to explain what the ship would be like without them.

Imagine -- the Carrier Intelligence Center (CVIC) on the O-3 level would be empty of its storehouse of ISs. Without them the ship would be unaware of possible threats outside immediate radar range and unaware of the likelihood of those threats becoming a real danger. Pilots would be unaware of where, exactly, their targets are located and unaware if those targets pose a threat to them. In general, the ship and the air wing would largely be - unaware.

Intelligence specialists figure out what’s going on, who’s doing what, what capabilities are out there, and what the people with these capabilities are intent on doing. They then give this intelligence to the warfare commanders to allow them to make informed, intelligent decisions.

Intelligence Specialist Chief Petty Officer Tom Nank, OZ Division’s leading chief petty officer, emphasized the difference between information and intelligence in the case of his division’s work.

"Information is raw data - numbers, figures, facts," said Nank. "Intelligence is something meaningful that you get out of analyzing that data. You can have as much information as you want, but without the analysis, it doesn’t do much good.

"The purpose of our division is to take the intelligence we get and make sure weapons this ship can bring to bear are applied for the right target at the right time, and the people that go in harm’s way come back safely."

This is no small task - and no small task force is taking care of it. The OZ division handles all intelligence for the ship’s operations. The OZ division contains all of the ship’s ISs. An average destroyer owns one IS; deployed and with the air wing and battle group staffs, USS Abraham Lincoln has close to 50. They work in two shifts, separated into four workstations that give the ship never-ending coverage and analysis of every piece of information that may be of use to the carrier and its battle group.

There’s the ‘Strike Plot’ watch station, which deals with airplanes and what is on the ground to bother them. There’s Supplemental Plot, or ‘Supplot,’ which deals with the area around the ship outside radar range. There’s the briefing center, where the ISs brief the pilots on what to expect, and then turn them inside out afterward to find out what they saw. And there is Multi-Sensor Interpretation watch station, where specially trained ISs interpret various types of images to glean information.

Every 12 hours, a new shift rotates in, and they are told what affects each specific workstation and what to anticipate in the next half-day.

"We also almost work in a customer-to-producer relationship," said Nank. "Whoever has the weapon, they tell us what intelligence they need, and we get it for them."

Many Abe crewmembers’ jobs aren’t affected much by the current Composite Training Unit Exercise (COMPTUEX); the ISs are an exception to this.

According to Intelligence Specialist Third Class Ken Nichols, the biggest changes for the division are the rate at which the information comes in and the areas they concentrate on.

"When we’re operating normally, we’re looking all over the world," said Nichols. "During COMPTUEX or during a real combat situation, we’re looking at a specific area and all over the world."

"The exercise is adding some more excitement to our jobs," he added, "and it also helps us to see how much we’ve learned during training - essentially, it puts our training to the test."

"Part of COMPTUEX’s groundwork is to have real planes pretending to be other planes," said Nank. So during the exercise, Abe’s ISs are doing research and looking up the backgrounds of these pretend planes and briefing the pilots on ‘our’ side about what’s out there.

Since the exercise deals mainly with playing war games, this is where CVIC really gets a chance to train.

"This is where we’re tasked with pulling down information relating to the battle scenarios. We search through websites, message traffic, publications," said Nank.

Intelligence Specialist First Class Michael Moss has been the leading petty officer for CVIC for the past year.

"During COMPTUEX, Commander, Carrier Group One [the exercise’s evaluator] feeds us information, and we react," said Moss. "After we analyze the information, we disseminate the intelligence to the warfare commanders and the air wing."

For the ISs in the OZ division, COMPTUEX is mostly just another day at the job, but at a slightly faster pace. As far as their work goes, Moss had nothing but praise for his division.

"I have the most intelligent individuals in the Navy working for me right now - definitely."

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