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(U//FOUO) Letter to the Editor: ELINT and TechSIGINT Defined
FROM: SIGINT Communications
Unknown
Run Date: 03/09/2004
FROM: SIGINT Communications
Unknown
(U//FOUO) The below letter was sent in response to the recent article ELINT and TechSIGINT
Defined :
(U//FOUO) Submitter name:
(
)
-- (U) Please provide any feedback on the content of the article.
(C) The article concludes with an introduction to TECH SIGINT, and calls out that comms
externals excludes anything internal to COMINT signals. The quandary here is that PROFORMA is
a branch of COMINT (as explained so eloquently by DIRNSA during his keynote address at the
inaugural OP-PROFORMA conference in January of 2003), and deals almost exclusively with the
internals of the given communications link/system. The confusion extends when you find
PROFORMA being passed by the most common of communications systems. So saying, look
inside a common multichannel system and you could find dozens of modems. There's one
passing e-mail; that's COMINT. There's another one passing a fax; that's COMINT. Why, here's
one passing air surveillance; that's TECH SIGINT! It doesn't quite work. In reality, PROFORMA is
more a family of functions associated with sensors, vice a specific set of modulations, frequency
ranges, or users.
(U) If one draws a venn chart of COMINT, ELINT and FIS, PROFORMA finds itself in the junction
of the three. If it's pushed too far into any single category, confusion ensues.
(U) To address this, a formal PROFORMA Business Plan is being developed as an Enterprise
initiative. The result of the business plan should be the institutionalization of PROFORMA.
-- (U) Please provide suggestions for future article content.
(U) JPC has been asked to provide an article for NSA daily, describing PROFORMA, its origins, its
uses, and its future. This TECH SIGINT article tickles the subject, but doesn't answer the mail.
(U) I welcome your feedback.
"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)."
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DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108