ELINT
Electronic Intelligence — the SIGINT sub-discipline covering non-communications electronic signals, principally radar
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ELINT — electronic intelligence — is the SIGINT sub-discipline covering non-communications electronic signals. The standard US doctrinal definition (Joint Publication 2-0 and the DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, with national management authority held by the National Security Agency under NSCID No. 6 since 1958) is intelligence derived from the technical and parametric characteristics of foreign electronic emitters that do not carry communications traffic — principally radar systems, navigation aids, identification-friend-or-foe (IFF) systems, fire-control radars, and the broader emitter infrastructure of foreign air defence, naval surveillance, and ground-based weapons systems.
The discipline divides operationally into two principal components. Technical ELINT (TechELINT) characterises the electronic parameters of emitters — the frequency, pulse repetition interval, scan pattern, modulation, and other technical signatures that uniquely identify a particular radar or emitter type and (often) a particular individual emitter installation. Operational ELINT (OpELINT) characterises the deployment, operational status, and operational behaviour of those emitters — where they are located, when they radiate, what their tracked targets are, and how they are integrated with other emitters into an air-defence or weapons-employment network.
The institutional history of US ELINT runs through the Air Force, Navy, and National Security Agency cryptologic components, the National Reconnaissance Office's airborne and space-based ELINT collection systems, and (from 1961) the Defense Intelligence Agency's all-source incorporation of ELINT into finished analytical product. The principal documented Cold War ELINT systems include the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft's signals-collection payloads, the RC-135 fleet of dedicated SIGINT aircraft (in service in successive variants from the 1960s to the present), and the long sequence of NRO geosynchronous SIGINT satellites — including Canyon, Rhyolite/Aquacade, and the Orion/Mentor lineage — which carried mixed COMINT, ELINT, and TELINT payloads rather than dedicated ELINT-only missions.
ELINT's relationship to MASINT is sometimes contested. The technical signature analysis of foreign emitters — the discrimination between specific radar types, the identification of specific weapons-system fire-control associations — sits at the boundary between the two disciplines. The convention that has emerged in US doctrine is that ELINT covers the radio-frequency electronic emitter signatures themselves and MASINT covers the broader category of physical-phenomenon signatures (acoustic, seismic, nuclear, optical, infrared, magnetic, chemical, biological), with the working overlap at radio-frequency MASINT handled case-by-case.
The principal operational consumers of ELINT have historically been the air-defence-suppression and electronic-warfare communities, where the parametric and locational data are required for the targeting and deception of foreign emitters during military operations, and the strategic-warning community, where changes in foreign air-defence and missile-system emitter activity have historically been a principal indicator of impending action. The post-2001 expansion of unmanned aerial systems and the continuing post-2014 evolution of foreign integrated air-defence systems have kept ELINT a substantial and operationally consequential sub-discipline.
