Measuring Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Effectiveness at the United States Central Command

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Directorate of Intelligence sought RAND Corporation assistance in developing a repeatable process to measure the effectiveness of its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations to evaluate current performance and plan for, influence, and resource future operations. The authors of this report used a mixed set of methodologies for the analysis. They linked the effect CENTCOM wishes to achieve with its customer base to the five major roles assigned to ISR assets at CENTCOM. For each role, the authors identified CENTCOM-unique measures of effectiveness (MoEs) and measures of performance (MoPs) to evaluate the value and success of ISR support and requirements. They assessed the sufficiency of available data sources and identified new data required to complete the metrics, finding that MoPs must focus on outputs (quantitative) and MoEs on outcomes (qualitative) and that both sets of metrics must be defined in the context of their uses. Consideration of currently available data and databases uncovered issues with data heritage, curation, and volume that must be addressed to ensure that analytic outcomes using the data are reliable. Researchers provided an associated visualization tool to display the assessment results, which they determined to be the best way to allow analysts and other stakeholders to use the data to support decisionmaking.