The U.S. 66th Military Intelligence Brigade’s Northern Raven Team collaborated with the Finnish Army to carry out a joint open-source intelligence (OSINT) collection mission in Finland late August this year.
As a newly inducted NATO member as of April 2023, Finland has strengthened its security cooperation with NATO allies, particularly the United States, as both nations share strategic interests in maintaining stability in the Baltic region and Northern Europe, especially given heightened geopolitical tensions with Russia in recent years.
“The Finish OSINT team is one of the best and largest we’ve worked with. They have a very serious group of analysts that really care. They come with a lot of backgrounds, such as programming and operational expertise, that within a few days, they can make really great intelligence products,” stated Staff Sergeant Skyler Barsten, the production manager for the Northern Raven Team.
Both armed forces utilized advanced OSINT tools and methodologies to accomplish the mission, as well as AI-driven algorithms to sift through massive amounts of data, flagging relevant information based on keywords, phrases, and geographic locations. In addition, geospatial analysis tools enabled the teams to gather intelligence from publicly available satellite imagery, allowing them to detect infrastructure changes, movements of military assets, and other indicators that could inform their strategic assessments.
“One of the main benefits of OSINT is its “shareability.” What makes OSINT so sharable is that it is entirely based on publicly available information. We can really work with anybody, and it lets us start that communication process in terms of here’s how we can share intelligence, and here’s how we can work together to enhance our collection for both sides,” said Specialist Curtis Maxwell, an OSINT collector assigned to the Northern Raven Team.
The U.S Army intelligence leaders are focusing more on using OSINT, according to the 2024-2026 Intelligence Community (IC) OSINT Strategy. The strategy comprises four strategic focus areas that will
strengthen OSINT as a core intelligence discipline and position the IC to capitalize on its full
potential. Thus, the IC plans to coordinate open source data acquisition and expand sharing, establish integrated open source collection management, drive OSINT innovation to deliver new capabilities and develop the next-generation OSINT workforce and tradecraft.
Press release source: army.mil Image source: army.mil
