TARGINT
Targeting Intelligence — intelligence directed specifically at the development, validation, and prosecution of targets
TARGINT — targeting intelligence — is the functional intelligence category covering the development, validation, and operational prosecution of targets. The category is a function-of-use designation rather than a discipline of collection in the SIGINT/HUMINT/IMINT/MASINT/OSINT sense: TARGINT product draws on whichever collection disciplines yield the operationally usable target-development material for the specific target set under prosecution. The institutional product is the target package — the documented basis on which a specific target is identified, validated, located, and (where appropriate) authorised for kinetic or non-kinetic action.
The institutional articulation of targeting intelligence as a distinct functional category dates to the World War II strategic-bombing campaigns and the systematic target-development work of the US Army Air Forces' Committee of Operations Analysts and (subsequently) the Strategic Bombing Survey. The Cold War institutional infrastructure for nuclear targeting — the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) target-development process — was the principal vehicle through which TARGINT was integrated into the strategic-warfare planning framework. The post-Cold-War conventional precision-strike targeting regime — the Defense Intelligence Agency's targeting role, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's (and predecessor National Imagery and Mapping Agency's) targeting-product mission, the Joint Targeting School at Dam Neck, Virginia — institutionalised the modern functional category.
The post-2001 expansion of the discipline has been the substantial institutional development. The targeted-killing programme (now formally documented through the published 2010 OLC opinions, the 2013 White House Policy Guidance, the post-2017 Trump-administration revisions, and the 2022 Biden-administration Presidential Policy Guidance) operates substantially through TARGINT — the development of individual-target packages on suspected al-Qaeda, Islamic State, and adjacent-organisation operatives, validated through collection-multidisciplinary integration, and prosecuted through unmanned aerial systems or special-operations raid. The institutional infrastructure for individual-target TARGINT has been substantial: dedicated targeting cells within Joint Special Operations Command, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, and the broader interagency counterterrorism framework, with sustained collection support from SIGINT, GEOINT, HUMINT, and the broader collection enterprise.
The discipline's distinctive analytical demand is the standard of certainty required for target validation. The institutional standards for what constitutes "near certainty" of identity and "near certainty" of non-presence of non-combatants — the standards specified in the 2013 White House Policy Guidance and successor documents — have been the subject of substantial subsequent academic, journalistic, and policy debate. The 2021 Kabul drone strike on a vehicle subsequently determined not to have contained the targeted individual is the most prominent recent published case of individual-target TARGINT failure; the broader institutional record on targeted-killing intelligence has been characterised in the published assessments of the Stimson Center, the New America Foundation, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the Long War Journal.
See also
- Intelligence cycle — the analytical framework TARGINT sits within
- GEOINT — provides the principal location and pattern-of-life input for individual-target packages
- SIGINT — provides communications-pattern and identification material
- HUMINT — provides on-the-ground identification and pattern-of-life corroboration
- Targeted killing — the operational application TARGINT supports in the post-2001 institutional frame