DIA Building

ABOUT DIA

Our diverse workforce is skilled in military history and doctrine, economics, physics, chemistry, world history, political science, bio-sciences and computer sciences. We travel the world, meeting and working closely with professionals from foreign countries.

At DIA, we provide military intelligence to warfighters, defense policymakers and force planners in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, in support of U.S. military planning and operations and weapon systems acquisition. We plan, manage and execute intelligence operations during peacetime, crisis and war.

MISSION

Provide intelligence on foreign militaries

to prevent and decisively win wars

VISION

Illuminate opportunities to enable the U.S.

to outpace our strategic competitors

VALUES

DIA has a strong legacy centered on our ability to confront and overcome challenges while maintaining our core values. Embedded in these values are the leadership principles that guide us. These principles are the driving force that keep our workforce grounded, and are represented throughout the DIA enterprise.

Values graphic with text and circles, each section highlighting the Values of D-I-A. Title. Excellence. Text. Commitment to excellence in defense of the Nation. Recognize the incredible privilege and honor to support and defend the United States. Second Title. Initiative. Subtext. Initiative to be part of the solution. Innovate new ways to address emerging and enduring priorities. Next Title. Accountability. Subtext. Accountability to ensure we meet teh highest standards. We must be steadfast, timely, efficient, and take personal responsibility for actions and outcomes. Next Subtitle. Integrity. Subtext. Integrity in spirit and deed. We are forthright, honest and principled in the face of adversity. Last Subtitle. Teamwork. Subtext. Teamwork in service to our mission. Together, we provide unparalleled intelligence to our customers. Values graphic with text and circles, each section highlighting the Values of D-I-A.
Leadership Description Start

LEADERSHIP

The Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is a three-star military officer that rotates between Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines approximately every three years and is the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense and to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on matters of military intelligence. The DIA Director also chairs the Military Intelligence Board, which coordinates activities of the defense intelligence community. DIA has a Deputy Director and a Command Senior Enlisted Leader.

Leadership Description End
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Lieutenant General Jeffrey A. Kruse, USAF
Director

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Suzanne White
Deputy Director

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John Kirchhofer
Chief of Staff

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Brigadier General Chad Parker
Mobilization Assistant to the Director

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Greg Ryckman
Deputy Director for Global Integration

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CSM Corey Perry
Command Senior Enlisted Advisor

DIA Strategic Approach

DIA fulfills a unique role at the intersection of the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. Warfighters, policymakers and acquisition leaders rely on us for foundational intelligence on foreign militaries and the operating environment that only we provide. Today, our role is more vital than ever as the re-emergence of strategic competition challenges U.S. prosperity, security and the democratic world order we have fought to sustain since World War II. Our competitors have studied and learned from the American way of war. They are building asymmetric capabilities that seek to diminish our long-standing military dominance in all warfighting domains — land, maritime, air, space and cyber. The 2018 National Defense Strategy seeks to expand our competitive space with a more lethal and innovative defense enterprise coupled with a robust network of allies and partners — challenging DIA to change at a remarkable pace.

Organization

Headquarters

• Director: Lt. Gen. Jeffery A. Kruse, USAF
• Deputy Director: Suzanne White
• J2 Directorate for Intelligence
• Joint Functional Component Command - Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

Staff Elements

• Chief of Staff
• Chief Financial Officer
• General Counsel
• Inspector General
• Command Senior Enlisted Leader
• Equal Opportunity & Diversity Office
• Executive Secretariat
• Strategic Planning, Policy, & Performance Management Office
• Office of Corporate Communications

Directorates

• Directorate for Analysis
• Directorate for Operations
• Directorate for Science & Technology
• Directorate for Mission Services

Intelligence Centers

• Americas and Transregional Threats Center
• Asia Pacific Regional Center
• Europe/Eurasia Regional Center
• Middle East/Africa Regional Center

1960s: Early Years
  • DIA’s activation plan was drafted by the Agency’s director designate, Lt. Gen. Joseph Carroll.
  • DIA occupied “A” and “B” Buildings at Arlington Hall Station from the early 1960s until the Agency moved to Bolling Air Force Base in 1984.
  • DIA validated and approved many U-2 missions from the 1960s through the 1990s. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, photo interpreters discovered Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba after U-2s flew over the island. The missiles were capable of hitting a significant portion of the United States.
  • DIA’s Defense Intelligence School was chartered in 1962.
  • In 1963, DIA established the Production Center at Arlington Hall Station. Under the leadership of Brig. Gen. Herron Maples, the Production Center allowed DIA to consolidate and integrate several production elements from the military services.
  • On Feb. 6, 1963, DIA’s John Hughes, special assistant to Carroll, conducted a televised briefing on the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba.
  • During the Vietnam War, DIA supported strategic bombing missions by providing target lists to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who then selected targets for individual missions.
1970s: Years of Transition
  • In November 1970, U.S. forces conducted a raid on the Son Tay prison camp in Vietnam to rescue American POWs. DIA provided intelligence support to this operation.
  • On May 26, 1972, President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and an interim agreement on the limitation of offensive arms in Moscow. The agreements created new intelligence requirements, resulting in increased production pressures for DIA’s analysts.
  • DIA was involved in Operation BABYLIFT — an effort to evacuate Vietnamese orphans from Saigon via aircraft. Tragically, five DIA employees were killed during the operation when the first flight crashed on takeoff on April 4, 1975.
  • Shortly after the fall of Saigon in 1975, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia seized the U.S. container vessel SS Mayaguez. The ship and its crew were taken to an island off the coast of Cambodia. DIA coordinated intelligence efforts to locate the ship, and President Gerald Ford ordered a contingent of U.S. Marines to retrieve the vessel.
  • The Cobra Dane radar on Shemya Island became operational in 1977, and played a key role in evaluating Soviet ballistic missile capabilities throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
1980s: DIA Comes of Age
  • In 1981, DIA issued the first in a series of unclassified publications on the strengths and capabilities of Soviet military forces. “Soviet Military Power” was a lavish production that included dozens of color photographs and paintings depicting Soviet hardware. It was republished in 1983, and subsequently updated every year until 1991.
  • In April 1983, terrorists bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. Later that year, terrorists bombed the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American troops. As terrorist attacks increased in frequency in the mid-1980s, DIA established its first all-source fusion cell for terrorism analysis.
  • In October 1983, President Ronald Reagan ordered U.S. troops to Grenada for Operation URGENT FURY. DIA provided the bulk of the intelligence work in support of the operation. This marked the first time since the 1970 raid of the Son Tay prison camp that DIA supplied operational and tactical intelligence to combat forces.
  • The new Defense Intelligence Analysis Center opened in 1984. The new building allowed the Agency to benefit from the consolidation and centralization of personnel and missions formerly scattered in a number of locations across the National Capital Region.
  • In 1986, DIA supported Operation EL DORADO CANYON, which saw the U.S. military launch a series of air strikes against Libya in response to Libyan-sponsored terrorist attacks in Berlin. DIA aided planning for the operation by providing target lists and identifying Libyan air defenses.
  • In October 1986, DIA received its first Joint Meritorious Unit Award for providing “unparalleled intelligence support encompassing the broadest range of intelligence analysis, technical services, photographic processing and reconnaissance imagery to meet the real time requirements of national decision makers.” DIA’s support to counterterrorism operations was singled out for special acknowledgement.
  • The Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 designated DIA as a “combat support agency,” a major milestone in the Agency’s history that resulted in an expansion of DIA’s missions.
  • In November 1989, following several weeks of unrest, the East German government announced that it would permit visits to West Germany and West Berlin. Exuberant crowds of East and West Germans began to dismantle the Berlin Wall. The fall of the Berlin Wall was soon followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War — ushering in a new and challenging era for DIA.
1990s: New Missions, New Adversaries
  • In the early stages of Operation DESERT STORM, DIA provided U.S. Central Command with much of the operational intelligence that allowed coalition air power to destroy Iraqi air bases, radar and air defense sites. In 1991, DIA received a Joint Meritorious Unit Award in recognition of its support to Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM.
  • In July 1991, President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow. At the time, DIA analysts had predicted Gorbachev’s imminent fall from power. Within months, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
  • In 1992, the Missile and Space Intelligence Center, located in Huntsville, Alabama, became a field production element of DIA. MSIC personnel provide intelligence on short-range missile technologies found in surface-to-air missiles, anti-tank guided missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles.
  • The Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center, today known as the National Center for Medical Intelligence, became a field production element of DIA in 1992. NCMI’s mission includes monitoring foreign environmental health and infectious disease risks, foreign biotechnology development, and other issues that could potentially impact U.S. military operations and the health of U.S. troops.
  • From 1992 to 1993, DIA supported Operation RESTORE HOPE — the U.S. effort to capture Somali warlords who were preventing Somalis from receiving international assistance.
  • DIA deployed a National Intelligence Support Team to Bosnia from 1995 to 1996 to assist U.S. and NATO efforts to stop the genocidal war raging there. The NIST brought sophisticated and secure communications equipment to the combatant commands to support rapid turnaround intelligence requirements from the field.
  • In 1996, terrorists bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. troops. Following this attack, DIA created the Office for Counterterrorism Analysis.
2000s: Years of Transition
  • On September 11, 2001, a group of foreign terrorists flew two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center in New York City, and a third into the Pentagon. A fourth hijacked aircraft crashed in a field in western Pennsylvania. The attacks claimed approximately 3,000 lives, including seven DIA employees.
  • In response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. launched Operation ENDURING FREEDOM on October 7, 2001, to destroy terrorist camps and topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Hundreds of DIA personnel eventually deployed to Afghanistan to provide analytic support, assist with document exploitation, support prisoner interrogations and provide direct support to military operations.
  • The U.S. launched Operation IRAQI FREEDOM in March 2003, in response to the perceived threat posed by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Many deployed DIA analysts worked at the Perfume Palace in support of the effort.
  • Starting in the months after Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, DIA supported and participated in the efforts of the Iraq Survey Group, a 1,400-member international team formed to locate evidence of weapons of mass destruction developed under Hussein.
  • The Defense Intelligence Analysis Center expansion was completed in summer 2005. The first group to occupy the new facility included 66 employees from the Directorate for MASINT and Technical Collection.
  • In 2010, the new Joint Use Intelligence Analysis Facility opened in Rivanna Station in Charlottesville, Virginia.
  • In 2011, the Russell-Knox Building opened at Quantico Marine Corps Base. This building houses elements of five military investigative agencies, including DIA’s Counterintelligence and HUMINT center.