Measurement and signature intelligence

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Measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) is a technical branch of intelligence gathering, which serves to detect, track, identify or describe the distinctive characteristics (signatures) of fixed or dynamic target sources. This often includes radar intelligence, acoustic intelligence, nuclear intelligence, and chemical and biological intelligence. MASINT is defined as scientific and technical intelligence derived from the analysis of data obtained from sensing instruments for the purpose of identifying any distinctive features associated with the source, emitter or sender, to facilitate the latter's measurement and identification.^[1][2]

MASINT specialists themselves struggle with providing simple explanations of their field.^[3] One attempt calls it the "CSI" of the intelligence community,^[3] in imitation of the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Another possible definition calls it "astronomy except for the direction of view."^[3] The allusion here is to observational astronomy being a set of techniques that do remote sensing looking away from the earth (contrasted with how MASINT employs remote sensing looking toward the earth). Astronomers make observations in multiple electromagnetic spectra, ranging through radio waves, infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light, into the X-ray spectrum and beyond. They correlate these multispectral observations and create hybrid, often "false-color" images to give a visual representation of wavelength and energy, but much of their detailed information is more likely a graph of such things as intensity and wavelength versus viewing angle.