Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling –
The Defense Intelligence Agency’s Reserve Integration Office honored two Joint Reserve Intelligence Centers for their support of reserve intelligence operations and training in a virtual ceremony, Aug.19.
DIA Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley Jr. offered the keynote address for the event and presented awards to the Camp Parks and Buckley JRICs for their “superior performances in supporting timely and critical intelligence to the warfighter.”
Members of Congress, including Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado and Rep. Jason Crow of California’s sixth district, also attended the virtual ceremony to honor these JRICs for their efforts in safeguarding the United States.
Divided into two categories based on the size of the reserve center, the Director’s JRIC of the Year Award recognizes the outstanding contributions made by JRICs in support of reserve intelligence operations and trainings – essential aspects of ensuring military readiness – through the promotion of joint service cohesion, commitment and reserve integration.
This year, the Camp Parks JRIC won in the large category and the Buckley JRIC achieved the award in the small category. These two JRICs support the needs and requirements of the Intelligence Community and are a vital contributor to defense intelligence.
In 2019, Camp Parks’ work supported 24 reserve units, three combatant commands and three combat support agencies. It also supported two full-time, real-world pre-deployment trainings and several joint exercises.
Similarly, Buckley also supported reserve units, CCMDs and CSAs – providing more than 88,000 intelligence production hours. Through renovations, Buckley also increased its facility capacity by more than 100 percent to provide additional mission support.
The contributions of these JRICs represent the benefit of promoting the peacetime use of the intelligence entities within the reserve component, recognized in 1995 with the establishment of the Joint Reserve Intelligence Program.
Today, there are more than 28 sites in the JRIC enterprise – in 23 states across five regions – that assist CSAs, CCMDs and other reserve and national guard units.
“The JRIC structure allows operational intelligence to be transferred in near-real-time to supported commands, providing an agile, ready and skilled force of focused intelligence professionals that the National Defense Strategy demands while moving at the speed of relevance,” said Ashley in his remarks.
While individually owned by branch-specific services, JRICs are designed to emphasize the joint nature of defense intelligence. However, they also improve individual service branches’ unit and tactical level intelligence capabilities.
Moreover, the facilities serve to promote readiness, operational training and operational support requirements.
“Joint reserve intelligence centers improve reserve intelligence readiness by having them support warfighter mission requirements during their drill weekends, annual training and on long term orders. The JRICs are critical to the operational support to the Total Force,” explained U.S. Navy Capt. Mike Montes, the JRIP Program Management Office chief.
Although DIA supports the JRIC enterprise by providing information technology connectivity– namely JWICS accessibility – DIA is a customer of the intelligence produced by the reservists who work at these facilities.
In fiscal year 2019, DIA received approximately 10% of the defense intelligence produced by the JRIC enterprise – a percentage that ranks DIA as one of JRICs top customers.
Through the contributions of these reserve intelligence professionals, the JRIP and the JRIC enterprise furthers DIA’s commitment to excellence in defense of the nation and supports DIA as it seeks to be the indispensable source of defense intelligence expertise.