| Abstract: | From its inception in 1947 until the late 1970s the primary missions of the United States Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) involved maintaining a presence in East Germany for confidence building measures and reporting on items related to indicators and warnings of hostilities initiated by the Soviet Army. While not abandoning its traditional missions, the unit underwent a major transformation in the early 1980s and became the first Humint integrated collection, analysis and production center. Through a combination of factors, USMLM was able to link targeting, single-source collection and analysis while providing insights in a wide range of areas, from nuclear weapons, troop morale, equipment production, technical data, health and ethnic issues and literacy. Most significantly, USMLM confirmed severely reduced manning levels in GSFG combat arms units. ‘Intelligence is best done by a minimum number of men and women of the greatest possible ability.’ (R.V. Jones, the ‘father’ of modern scientific and technical intelligence) |
