For award and retention of AFSC 1N131/51/71/91/00, eligibility for a Top Secret security clearance, according to AFI 31-501, Personnel Security Program Management, and for sensitive compartmented information access.
NOTE: Award of the 3-skill level without a final Top Secret clearance is authorized provided an interim TS has been granted according to AFI 31-501.
For award of AFSC 1N131 ability to type at a rate of 20 words per minute.
Note: This job requires a Sensitive Job Code- (SJC) of "F."
Strength Req: G
Physical Profile: 333231
Citizenship: Yes
Required Appitude Score : G-64 (Changed to G-66, effective 1 Jul 04).
Technical Training:
Course #: X3ABR1N131 006
Location : G
Length (Days): 120
Detailed Career and Training Information for This Job
The following information was extracted from posts in our Message Forum, posted there by a member, RDKIRK, who spent 26 years in the 1N1X1 Career Field:
As for being an intelligence specialist, I was a 1n1 (reconnaissance imagery analyst). Basically imagery analysts are the people who study reconnaissance imagery such as from what we used to call "national technical intelligence systems" and can now call "reconnaissance satellites." That's known as IMINT --Imagery Intelligence. One-En-Ones also drive Predator drones.
Contrary to popular opinion, it's not just a matter of looking down on people (although that's a hoot, too), or a matter of how good the imagery is. You see, the "other guys" know we're watching, so the most important stuff is kept hidden. The real challenge of the job is not what you can see, but figuring out what you *can't* see.
Nowadays, we're doing so much with "remote sensing" that it can't really be called "imagery" analysis any more. Think about the kinds of things astronomers using the Hubble telescope figure out about distant galaxies and stars from spectrograhic and other methods, then turn that capability 180 degrees.
That makes it very much like being one of the guys on "CSI," tracking down tiny clues and determining what's happening from things most people wouldn't even notice, or from temperature variations, wind patterns, tonal variations of the ground or grass, and other things we don't talk about. It can be very, very detailed. Sometimes you might spend months--even years--getting the proof for your hypotheses. The best thing is when you can be *predictive*--when you figure out how to tell what is *going* to happen in the future from the clues you see today.
Some people are so good, they can even trace the movements of guerrilla forces through African jungles or tell you what day a certain bomber at a certain airbase will return to depot maintenance. Okay, those guys are pretty ate up, but they're awesome.
There is a kind of community competition at work. USAF analysts are always in competition with the folk at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency--NIMA-- (they don't call their people "imagery analysts," they call them "geospacial intelligence analysts"--woo hoo). The competition is to find something new first, or if you don't find it first, do a better job of figuring exactly what it is and what it means. It's pretty good when you can outdo the NIMA guys in DC. There was a time when the imagery analysts at CIA made a prediction that a female SSgt who worked for me was able to refute because she had done her homework better--even the admiral we worked for (Admiral Jacoby, who's now director of the Defense Intelligence Agency) enjoyed sticking that one to the CIA.
Those guys are pretty good because they get more chance at long-term specialization. But USAF analysts usually know more about a greater variety of things. We all work closely with other intelligence "disciplines," such as SIGINT and ELINT. We do verification of defector reports, search for peace treaty violations, track down drug operations, sometimes even search for missing ships or airplanes. Every other type of intel is considered more reliable if it can be verified from imagery.
During wartime, the job of the 1n1 is to do targeting and BDA (bomb damage assessment). We find what should be bombed, then look at it afterward to determine if it was sufficiently destroyed. If it was missed, we look for what *did* get hit. We have the lists of every target, every missile launched, every bomb load dropped, and we do the "scoring" to figure out where every bomb struck.
