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Defence

About Defence

Defence Intelligence


History

The Defence Intelligence Staff can trace its ancestry back to 1946, when the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) was established under the direction of General Kenneth Strong, General Eisenhower's wartime Chief of Intelligence. The JIB's main areas of interest were economic, logistic, scientific and technical intelligence - subjects of interest to all three services (which still retained their separate intelligence organisations), as well as to the War Office and other government departments.

Following the creation of a unified Ministry of Defence in 1964 under the Mountbatten reforms, the JIB was amalgamated with the three single-Service intelligence organisations to form the present Defence Intelligence Staff. For most of its early history the DIS was preoccupied with Cold War topics. However its focus has now shifted towards providing intelligence support to operations overseas, countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and supporting the global war on terrorism. At the same time the responsibilities of the Chief of Defence Intelligence have expanded to include not only intelligence analysis and collection but also a range of other activities, including environmental and geographic information and intelligence training.

The DIS moved into its present headquarters, the Old War Office Building, in 1992.