Intelligence in War: The Value--And Limitations--Of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy Read Online Free PDF Page B

it was not intended to undermine the system itself. The system, by the time the British embarked on their progressive supersession of the Moghuls at the end of the eighteenth century, was deeply entrenched in the processes of Indian political and military life. Indian government could not work without it. The British, who were committed to reestablishing Moghul power on an efficient basis, ruling themselves while leaving the Moghuls nominally in charge, simply took it over. They “reconstituted under their [own] control the classic Indian intelligence system which allied the writing skills and knowledge of learned Brahmins with the hard bodies and running skills of tribal and low-caste people.” 12
    Wellington could not have established himself as the leading sepoy general without the
harkaras,
whom he both cultivated and tyrannised. His successors continued to do so. Not until the arrival of the telegraph and the establishment of printed newspapers in the middle of the nineteenth century did the
harkara
system decline; and even so, training in long-distance message-running persisted into the 1920s, sustained by the Indian appetite for news, uncontrolled by official interference, which is such a distinctive feature of sub-continental life. The reason, it has been suggested, why India has become and remains the largest and only real democracy in the Third World is because of its citizens’ insatiable thirst for information.
    REAL-TIME INTELLIGENCE:
WHAT, HOW, WHERE, WHEN?
     
    Who knows what in sufficient time to make effective use of the news—that is as good a definition of “real-time” intelligence, the gold standard of modern information practice, as is possible—was not often a military consideration in the classical world or even the age of Wellington. Alexander, Caesar and Wellington all operated within the peculiar constraint, to the modern way of thinking, of very slow communication speed over any distance not to be covered by a running man or a galloping horse. The best
harkaras
were credited with a speed of a hundred miles in twenty-four hours, but sceptics thought fifty more realistic. The modern marathon, whose runners achieve twenty-six miles in about three hours, gives a better indication of the nature of real-time intelligence before the coming of electricity. The armies and navies of the pre-electricity age operated within an intelligence horizon of considerably less than a hundred miles. Hence the enormous importance attached by the commanders of the past to strategic intelligence: the character of the enemy, the size and capability of his force, its dispositions, the nature of the terrain in his operational area and, more generally, the human and natural resources on which his military organisation depended. It was from guesses based on such factors that generals of the pre-modern world made their plans. Real-time intelligence—where the enemy was yesterday, in which direction his columns were headed, where he might realistically be expected today—was arcane information, rarely to be collected on a real battlefield. As late as 1914, ten divisions of French cavalry, beating the Franco-German-Belgian border for nearly a fortnight, altogether failed to detect the advance of several million German troops. French reconnaissance forces failed again in the same area in 1940. Strategic intelligence is a desirable commodity. It rarely, however, brings advantage in actual time and space. For that, something else is necessary. What exactly is it? How is it possible to assure that the key questions, what, how, where and when, are answered to our advantage, not the enemy’s? That is the theme of this book.
    The acquisition of real-time intelligence requires, first of all, that the commander should have access to a means of communication that considerably outstrips in speed that of the enemy’s movement over the ground or water. Until the nineteenth century, the margin of superiority was very small. The