-: I am Major Thomas Huet from Ottawa, Ontario,
and I'm an Intelligence officer.
-: The days of simply knowing who and where the enemy is
and how they fight are over.
The job of an Intelligence Officer is to predict the future.
In an asymmetrical world.
Intelligence Officers are responsible
for ensuring their commanders are well-informed on the
ground, in the air, or on the seas.
They must understand operating environments as events unfold.
and lead their teams to collect information,
including weather, terrain, enemy forces, people,
and politics.
-: Intelligence is really a critical function
because really we work hand in hand with operations.
Our job is to essentially provide them the information
necessary to make their decisions.
-: Collecting intelligence is both an art and a science.
Intelligence officers use computerised tools
to help their teams analyse massive amounts of information.
-: The first step is direction.
We, talk to our commanders
and understand what the problems are.
The second thing we do is collection.
So we go out and gather
that information that we're looking for.
So that could be humint,
someone on the ground asking questions.
That could be ISR, so a UAV platform up in the air,
or that could be a satellite
that is just basically flying around the earth.
And so we basically try to pick the best sensor
to answer the question that we're looking at.
And then the last step is we disseminate that information
to the people who need to know.
-: Intelligence Officers must also use their instincts
and training to evaluate situations.
-: Intelligence is only as good as it is timely.
If we take all the time in the world
to get the answer right, sometimes it might be too late.
So we have to try to find
and strike a balance between getting the right information
and getting the information fast enough.
-: Intelligence Officers do a lot of writing
and will find themselves conveying information
to a very senior audience early in their careers.
They must become comfortable quickly
and feel confident about the information they present.
-: What I'm trying to do is essentially provide the commander
with the information he needs to make his decision.
And his decision could be, do I fly today or not?
Or it could be, do I attack today? Or how do I attack?
So really we're basically providing the
decisional superiority.
So we're trying to basically make sure that they are able
to make decisions better than the enemy commanders.
For me, I think the most interesting part
of my career was when I was deployed recently
and I was in charge of an organisation that was responsible
for full motion video analysis.
So we basically took the videos that were coming off
of the different unmanned aerial vehicles in the theatre
and we got to analyse them.
And so I was in charge of about 80 people doing
that analysis and basically directly helping the war
fighters on the ground to figure out what was happening in
that area of operations
Intelligence,
one of the things I appreciate is just that I get
to learn about everything
and learn about, you know, what's happening in the world.
I just kind of really enjoy the aspect of,
you know, figuring it out.
And when I have a question,
I don't always have the information at hand,
and so I have to figure out how do I get that information.
And so that to me is really gratifying
because I get to basically figure out plans
and problem solve every day.
I think the piece of advice
that I would offer someone who's thinking about a career in
the Canadian forces and in intelligence in particular, is
that if you enjoy, you know, knowing about the world,
if you enjoy research,
then this is probably the career for you.
Being curious about the world would lead
to success in this trade.