Intelligence Series · Series A Capstone
INT-10: Area Intelligence Methodology
Fuse your group’s RTSA and pattern-of-life reporting into one current, shared picture of your area — and keep it alive after you stop being the one running it.
Course Overview, One Page
A single printable page covering what INT-10 teaches, the 6 lessons, what you need before starting, and the doctrinal sources behind the method. Useful for deciding whether the course is for you, or for handing to somebody in your group who is weighing it up.
Why This Course
Two members can each do everything right — one running a clean RTSA baseline on the local net, one running a clean pattern-of-life baseline on their street — and both correctly report “normal,” while something area-wide is actually shifting that neither one can see alone. Separate baselines are not automatically a shared picture. Nothing in INT-02 or INT-08 tells you how to combine several people’s reporting into one thing your group can actually run on, keep current, and hand to whoever’s making the call. That’s this course.
This is not a new collection discipline. It doesn’t re-teach reading a net or reading a street — it teaches the layer that sits on top of both: fusing multiple sources into one file, keeping that file honest as it ages, and turning it into something short enough that a MAG leader actually reads it.
- Look at a week’s worth of comms logs and pattern-of-life logs from different observers and tell whether they describe one emerging situation or several unrelated ones.
- Build and maintain an Area Intelligence File with a structure someone else can pick up and keep running if you’re not available.
- Rate an incoming report for source reliability and information credibility before it goes into the shared picture — and say which of the two is actually in doubt.
- Decide what belongs in the file versus what belongs in a briefing, and write a short Area Intelligence Summary that tells your group’s leadership the one or two things they need to decide right now.
Lessons 01–06
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LESSON 01 From Baselines to a Picture Why two correct, separate baselines still aren’t a shared area picture, and where the Area Intelligence File fits in your group’s information flow. |
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LESSON 02 Architecture of the Area Intelligence File The sections a working AIF needs and why each one earns its place — you leave this lesson with a template you can start using. |
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LESSON 03 Fusion Methodology Merging multiple members’ reports into single entries: corroboration, conflict, and rating what you’re told before it goes in the file. |
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LESSON 04 Maintenance Battle Rhythm Keeping the file alive: update triggers, information decay, version control, and who can see and edit it. |
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LESSON 05 From Picture to Decision Turning a full file into a short briefing product leadership will actually read, prioritized against what they need to decide. |
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LESSON 06 · CAPSTONE Capstone Practical: Redbud Hollow Fuse several weeks of fictional RTSA and pattern-of-life logs into a complete Area Intelligence File and a finished briefing — the course’s actual test. |
How This Course Works
| Format | Six self-paced online lessons, each with a short knowledge check you complete before the next one unlocks. |
| Prerequisites | INT-02 (Radio Traffic Situational Analysis) and INT-08 (Reading Your Ground: Pattern of Life Analysis) — required, not suggested. This course fuses their outputs and assumes both are already familiar. |
| Time | Roughly 45–60 minutes per lesson; the capstone runs longer since it’s a full build exercise. |
| What you’ll produce | A working Area Intelligence File template (Lesson 02) and a completed capstone build (Lesson 06) you can adapt directly for your own group. |
| Certificate | Available from the Course Map once all six lessons are complete. |