The Marine Corps intelligence community provides commanders on the ground the necessary information they need to make a decision. Without them, commanders would be blind.
The Marine Corps intelligence community provides commanders on the ground the necessary information they need to make a decision. Without them, commanders would be blind.
Did you miss the dinner? Read our overview of the event.
Download the Intelligence Awards Program(Opens as a PDF)
The Marine Corps intelligence community provides commanders on the ground the necessary information they need to make a decision. Without them, commanders would be blind.
The Marines who work in intelligence gather the information they have collected from a variety of sources and make it comprehensible and valuable to the troops on the battlefield.
“In the Marine Corps, we always say intel leads operations,” said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Andrew G. Lutz, recipient of the Marine Corps Intelligence Officer of the Year Award. “It’s kind of in a joking manner, but in all matters you can’t have operations without intel or intel without operations.”
The intelligence community gathered at the 3rd Annual Intelligence Awards Dinner Sept. 16, 2013, to celebrate seven Marines, an intelligence community civilian employee, and 3d Radio Battalion for their superior performance and innovation in accomplishing the mission.
MSgt Jonathan S. French, the recipient of the Director of Intelligence Innovation Award, designed databases while serving in Afghanistan that allow intelligence analysts to focus on the imagery they receive instead of on administrative paperwork.
“I saw that Marines were spending more time on the formatting of the final product instead of focusing on what the warfighter needed on the ground,” French said.
Another problem was that the information was not in a searchable format.
“The database reuses information gathered previously, so when a customer puts in their request for information it pulls it from the database,” French said. “It also structures the final products so it can be searched.”
Another aspect of the intelligence community is being able to understand and interpret different language—a skill Sgt Miguel Iles excels at.
Iles, recipient of the Language Professional of the Year Award, learned Chinese while in college. When he joined the Marine Corps, they decided to use his talent for languages and sent him to the Defense Language Institute to learn Korean.
“It is an extremely demanding course,” Iles said. “In less than a year and a half they brought my Korean skills up to match my Chinese.”
Iles deployed twice to the Korean Peninsula where he served as a Signals Surveillance Team Leader.
“It was very rewarding to be able to use the language in an intelligence capacity and as an interpreter,” Iles said.
Recently, Iles was assigned to the Defense Language Institute as a Chinese language instructor and as platoon commander for the students learning Asian languages.
“I’m very happy to be able to teach and give back to the fleet,” Iles said. “I hope to instill a love of language learning in the Marines so they will continue to be self driven to keep up their skills. That way, when they are needed, they will be ready to go.”
The intelligence community is also always looking for ways to improve how they operate and adapt to the needs of the Corps. Capt Jesse S. Sloman, recipient of the MajGen Michael E. Ennis Award for Literary Excellence, suggested changing the selection process for intelligence analysts in his article for the Small Wars Journal.
“I saw Marines that were really excelling and who had potential,” Sloman said. “But the pipeline process wouldn’t allow them to get the most out of their intel career.”
Instead of the MOS being a pipeline option, Sloman suggested that the intelligence analyst be an additional MOS that Marines would have to compete for later on.
“I think that would let them get Marines who are a little more mature and who know what they want to do in the Corps,” Sloman said.
In keeping with the tradition of honoring Marines, the Marine Corps Association & Foundation hosted the dinner alongside Marine Corps Intelligence Enterprise in order to recognize the outstanding performance of the award recipients.
The awards were provided through MCA&F’s Marine Excellence Awards Program, which provides Marines with the incentive to do well in their professional military education and career. Last year, MCA&F distributed 10,988 awards.