The definition above provides a clear idea of the importance and complexity of intelligence-gathering in a modern-day battlefield environment. This information-gathering and analysis approach, used to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their strategic and tactical decisions, can be divided into three levels based on the hierarchy of intelligence collection and decision-making by the state’s political and military leaders. First, strategic intelligence is concerned with broad issues, such as economics, political assessments, military capabilities and the intentions of foreign nations. Such intelligence can be scientific, technical, sociological, economic or diplomatic, and is analysed in combination with known facts about the region in question related to geography, topography, industrial capacity and known demographics. Second, operational intelligence provides support to the army commander and is attached to the formation headquarters. Third, tactical intelligence is focused on supporting the operations on a tactical level and is, thus, attached to the battle group; patrols gather intelligence information on current threats and collection priorities and then transmit it for further assessment via the reporting chain higher up the levels of command.

Intelligence has been a fundamental aspect of warfare from ancient Greece and Rome to Byzantium, and from the Napoleonic Wars to the conflicts in the Middle East in the twenty-first century. By the term, according to Clausewitz, ‘we mean every sort of information about the enemy and his country – the basis, in short, of our own plans and operations’. Correct and accurate intelligence-gathering was, and still is, paramount for any military operation, a fact that has been acknowledged by military writers as early as the fifth and fourth centuries BC when Sun-Tzu and Aeneas Tacticus were advising their readers on the advantages of accurate intelligence in war: