ABSTRACT
In the spring of 2009 the UK Ministry of Defence elected to undertake a review of the existing military Joint Intelligence Doctrine. Its doctrine, Joint Warfare Doctrine 2-00 (JWP 2-00) Intelligence Support to Joint Operations, had been promulgated in 2003 largely on the basis of coalition-oriented expeditionary and peace support operations in the Balkans, West Africa, Middle East and Afghanistan. This had replaced an earlier, first edition of JWP 2-00 issued in 1999. By 2009, the UK’s intelligence doctrine had escaped scrutiny for six years, two years longer than its predecessor and under conditions which had witnessed wide-ranging and accelerating changes in the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) environment and the longest interval of sustained, high-tempo operations by UK forces since the Second World War. Regardless of how sound a piece of work the 2003 doctrine might have been, by 2009 too many goalposts had moved too far and there was a widespread and growing dissatisfaction with it.
