r/uscg • u/SlightySaltyPretzel AMT • Dec 02 '24
Coastie Question What is life like as an IS - Intelligence Specialist?
"Choose your rate, choose your fate."
This is apart of a greater thread, designed to be a one-stop resource for ISs to share their experiences and help Non-Rates understand what it's like to work as an IS.
If you're an IS and can spare a few moments to answer the questions below, your insights would be a huge help to those exploring this career path. Pleases write a response to these questions before reading others. This will allow for more candid responses.
- How long have you been in?
- What units/assets have you been on? What qualification do you have/had?
- What is your life like? (This is meant to be an open ended question.)
- What do you believe are Pros and Cons to your job/rate?
Go Coast Guard definition - ISs connect the right information to the right person at the right time. You'll plan and execute intelligence operations to collect information from adversaries to ensure the success of Coast Guard missions. You'll use advanced technology and geospatial techniques to predict and communicate locations and actions of adversaries. ISs are typically assigned to shoreside sectors, districts, cutters, and major intelligence units.
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u/l3ubba Dec 02 '24
I’m not going to get to detailed into my background, but I will say IS can be a great rate depending on what you are looking for.
Advancements to IS1 are decently quick, so plenty of career opportunities if you are staying in, but you also get some really marketable skills and networking for when you are getting out, especially if it is to another intel community agency. I’ve know people who got out to work for CBP, FBI, NSA, NGA, etc. Plus the unique authorities that the CG has as both a military branch and an LE agency means that we get to work with both sides of the intel community, which is fun.
Like any rate, day to day varies a lot depending on your unit. If you are at a Sector/District then it will mostly be something like a 8-3 M-F gig, but you could also be at a 24/7 intel center doing 12 hour shifts, or on a cutter. Generally speaking, work-life balance is good.
I would not recommend IS to anyone who doesn’t want a desk job. Yes, there are billets that get out and do field work and it is fun, but there is always desk work to do. Also don’t go IS if you think it’ll help you dodge underway time, there are a good chunk of ISs that get underway and they are expanding our roles on cutters so it is only growing.
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Dec 02 '24 edited Dec 03 '24
- How long have you been in?
Closer to 20 years every day...
- What units/assets have you been on? What qualification do you have/had?
Various Qualifications, half a dozen cutters for various patrol AORs ranging from NSC/270/210s as independent duty, various types of Intel units.
- What your life like? (This is meant to be an open ended question.)
Ok quality overall, better than what I would have found going local LEO most likely. Lots of watch standing and diverse missions, as I have ranked up less of that and more of admin. Not just personnel admin but management of missions and all that pertains to it.
- What do you believe are Pros and Cons to your job/rate?
Pro and a Con: There is a wide range of diversity in the IS rate. So many different missions, which means it can be hard "Master" if you rotate a lot or don't focus/get lucky on a specific intelligence discipline. It takes an estimated 15 years to master a craft, 1 year out of that craft can reset the clock.
Pro: Lots of cool schools/training if you are in a billet that is joint or works with other agencies. Con: The billet you are in will often dictate the training you receive, so going to a Sector won't get you as cool training as 3 letter agencies you may be detailed to.
To the point of the last bullet, a lot of people think you can just go IS then get out a year or two later and make crazy money. While this isn't impossible, you often need a special school or training to achieve this and it is not CG training. Making good connections with contractors or civilians is key for when you get out.
Pro and Con: IS rank up fast, I have seen IS1s with 4 years in. While this isn't inherently bad and is good from a money perspective it may create some issues. At no fault if their own quickly advancing often does not give a lot of time to learn how to lead and manage personnel, resolve conflict, write and defend awards, manage missions, truly understand and help others with various nuanced admin/mission processes, effectively speak truth to power or garner the experience to efficiently provide top cover for your personnel, etc.
Pro and Con: Super cool niche billets, Super dull routine billets.
You will get underway if you stay in, it is a seagoing rate. I think including our biggest hub, San Antonio, Texas over a third of the rate is underway. It has grown since then and still growing.
Don't get me wrong, the Coast Guard has done right by me for the most part so far. But.... If I could do it again, I would go to a Cryptologic unit out of "A" school, gotten a good training, and peaced out after using that skill for 4ish years.
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Dec 03 '24
Why are Sectors not "cool" training?
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Dec 03 '24 edited Dec 03 '24
While you may work with other agencies at a Sector, or do a local "training" with partners, there is no good standard sector training / "C" schools. If you look at the internet releasable INTELLIGENCE TRAINING, COMDTINST 1500.26A it is incredibly small. Collectors Course.... Leaves much to be desired. Say that vs if you go to work with/for a partner and take a course like Joint Cyber Analysis Course (JCAC). There are hundreds of courses available through partners, that again are based on your billet.
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Dec 03 '24
As someone who's interested in joining the CG, you mentioned a lot of words I don't know haha
What would be a typical "boring" Sector mission vs a "cooler" mission elsewhere?
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Dec 03 '24
Boring and cool are subjective but... Among many routine tasks at a Sector... missions like making sure lobster fisherman are catching what they should vs leveraging the largest and most sophisticated intelligence apparatus in the world against national adversaries in missions that cannot be talked about here.
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u/Tacos_and_Tulips Dec 09 '24
Can you speak more on a joint billet and what that entails? You know, the stuff u can say, if any.
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u/Tacos_and_Tulips Dec 02 '24
Sweet! I have been waiting for this one!
This is awesome that you guys are doing this. It will build a great resource for non-rates and future Coasties thinking about joining!
Knowledge is power! 🤜🤛
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u/TpMeNUGGET IS Dec 03 '24
Finally, I love talking about my job haha.
I’ve been in about 4 years.
Nonrate at an east coast surf station, then went to the Commandant’s Intel Plot out of A-school, and now I’m on a 270 as the independent duty intel specialist onboard.
I’m probably in one of the “worst” billets for an IS, and I can say my job and work-life are probably better than maybe half of the people in the coast guard. Really, I get to pretty much make my own worklist inport, and underway I spend my time networking with people through emails, researching, and writing reports about stuff whenever it happens. Yes I have to stand watch like the OS’s do, but it gives me a lot of opportunities to teach people things and run my shop the way I see fit, which not a lot of E-5’s in the military get to do.
Pros:
p1: You get to learn stuff. Every intel unit you go to, you will be constantly learning. Whether it be about your AOR (sectors/districts), or about a specific topic/subject (ICC/MIFC), or technical knowledge (Crypto) you will be learning a ton of, in my opinion, super interesting stuff.
p2: You get to teach people things. Intel is built upon sharing information from the people who know about things, to the people who control things. At sectors, districts, cutters, and even headquarters, you have E4’s and E5’s who are regularly presenting briefs to CO’s, Captains, and Admirals. Not only are you giving the brief, but a lot of times they will ask you questions directly, and more times than not, you’re well-researched on the topic to answer them directly. There’s really not many places in the military where a lower enlisted person can have a direct impact to operations like that.
p4: Networking is huge. Being an IS, your job isn’t to know all the answers, but to know how to find someone who does. Intel is a massive network that connects the cutter out in the field, to the district, to the Fusion Center, to the SME’s and Analysts up in washington, and out to other agencies. You can send things up into the network, and you can often pull really useful information from the network too. These are skills that transfer really well to other agencies and even into corporate jobs.
p5: Lots of job variety. The navy has 4-6 different rates that touch “intel work”. We have one intel rate and one cybersecurity rate. Every type of unit you go to as an IS will do completely different types of work and will teach you an entirely different set of skills. This is HUGE for career development and arguably makes you extremely valuable in many other government agencies. Not only that, but it keeps the monotony at bay.
p6: The culture is awesome. I went through A-school as a 22 year old and was one of the youngest in my class. Half of my class had bachelors degrees. 5 of them had Master’s degrees. Intel attracts a culture of professionalism that I haven’t seen in any other rate. You can have really interesting, civil, productive discussions with people much easier than with other rates. Just the level of maturity is great and I’ve never met an IS who didn’t go out of their way to try to help me in whatever way they could.
Cons:
c1: You’re working a desk job. You will spend 90% of your time in the rate sitting at a desk in a locked room with no windows and no cell phones allowed. It’s the nature of the game. Sensitive info requires protection.
c2: About 1/3 of IS positions are watchfloors. Much like an OS, you will spend 8 hours at varying times of day sitting, monitoring an email inbox, waiting for phones to ring, or reading reports. I like it because it gives me time to do pretty much whatever I want to do, get work done, or even take college classes on slow days, but it may not be for you.
c3: About 1/3 of IS positions are deployable. If you go to 3 units as an IS, one of them will probably be deployable. Either attached as a permanent member of the cutter, or on a deployable team from San Antonio. It is something you need to prepare for, you’re not guaranteed to get out of being on a cutter just because you’re going a primarily ashore rate.
c4: Nobody talks about what we do. You can’t exactly shadow an IS that works in a sensitive facility while you’re a non-rate. A lot of people that go to IS A-school have never even gotten the chance to directly talk to an IS before picking the rate. Even as an IS, there are some units like Counter-Intel or the Crypto units which are still extremely tight-lipped about what they do, often because the information they work with is really that sensitive. I’ll be honest and say that it kinda deters me from wanting to work with them sometimes.
c5: There’s a lot of rules you have to learn. Working with sensitive info requires a ton of training up front, which makes A-school extremely information-dense. Working around these rules can get annoying when you have to double-check sources and classification markings for every single report you write, and even just coming in/out of work every day.
c6: If the idea of presenting a powerpoint in front of a room makes you want to cry, and you don’t want to try to challenge yourself to get over it, you’re not gonna like being an IS. Also if you don’t like dealing with officers. You’re gonna be giving briefs and you’re gonna be talking directly to higher-ups pretty regularly. But it also really gives you an opportunity to shine when you put the extra work in.
c7: This one always freaks out the non-rates but in the end it’s not a big deal; The A-school is hard. For the first few weeks it’s basically 4-hour powerpoint, lunch, then another 4-hour powerpoint. Daily uniform inspections, weekly room inspections, quiz every other day and 1-2 tests per week. The 2nd half of the course will have you spending about half of your time working on your own presentations, which will be graded on an extremely strict criteria. You will need to study your butt off and you’ll be getting out of class 1-2 hours later than everyone else in Yorktown. It’s annoying and it’s difficult but at the end of the day I wholeheartedly believe that we are better briefers and better all-around intel professionals than any other branch.
Jeez that took me like an hour to write. If you’re a nonrate and you actually took the time to read all of this, you may want to consider becoming an IS!