Balancing Army Readiness with NSA Mission: A Case Study of the 717th Military Intelligence Battalion
Robert Chung
Introduction
The priority of every Army unit is readiness to make sure our Soldiers have the skills needed to deploy, operate, and win across the entire conflict spectrum. With that understanding, individual Army units pursue readiness in a tailored fashion based on its stated mission, available personnel, assessed level of training, and assigned equipment to achieve readiness standards set by the Army. The Army’s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) provides ready Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) forces to support the National Security Agency’s (NSA) global mission. As such, the 717th Military Intelligence battalion, located in San Antonio, is the INSCOM contributor to NSA in Texas (NSAT). To achieve readiness, we balance Army training and NSA requirements through a continuous process of situational understanding, training prioritization, training methodology, and leader engagement to provide the most effective Service and NSA-related training possible. This article describes how the 717th MI battalion achieves training readiness while executing its ongoing global mission.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/balancing-army-readiness-nsa-mission-case-study-717th-military-intelligence-battalion
