I've been looking around this forum and there are some great answers to my questions but I would just like a little more specific answer...
First of all, I'm 21 years old and going to graduate from college with a degree in German and Spanish and a minor in Political Science. So far I have only been looking at my options for the navy and doing some research to see what job I might want. I would love to continue using my languages and, if possible, learn another or maybe even two. I have only taken the practice asvab and I got a 94. With that in mind, I have several questions:

1. What is the difference between intel officers and ctis? I have a really good idea from what I've read in this forum but I've read on other websites that there is a intel group that works in crypto and I'm not sure how that is different from a cti.
2. Do intel officers use languages a lot or is that mostly a job for a cti? Also, my recruiter told me that cti is an enlisted job only. He said that if I wanted to use my languages that I should go enlisted. True?
3. I really want to travel and I'm not sure if I would like to be 3 years in one place "staring at a computer screen" as one person put it. Do ctis get to travel? What kind of travel do intel officers have?
4. Which is better for a civilian job after getting out of the navy? That is a very important question for me. I would love to work in the CIA or NSA. Something along those lines.
5. If I did go enlisted would I be able to send in a package to go officer after a while?

I appreciate your input. Sorry if I've repeated questions that are already on the site, I might have missed them.

Your recruiter is correct...if you want to use your language as the primary part of your job, then you need to go enlisted OR hope that you can get picked up for a Forward Area Officer (FAO) slot at the mid-point of a 20-year officer career. FAOs are NOT intel officers though.

1. Intel Officers = Comissioned Officer CTI = Enlisted, collection/worker bee. Not even in the same ballpark

2. Some intel officers do use languages, but it is not usually a primary part of their duties, and is more common among FAOs and DATTs; ALL CTIs are supposed to use languages

3. Most intel officers I know these days get to do lots of travel, usually to the sandbox where they sit for 6 months to a year staring at a computer screen. Some CTIs get to travel, but that has to do with billet assignment and has been discussed ad naseum in prior posts.

4. CIA and NSA are very, very different career paths. I'm not sure either intel officer or CTI would really help you get into CIA...you might as well apply now. CIA isn't a military organization, so among the CIA folks I know with prior military experience it was not really that significant of an asset. It was their education and willingness/ability to take a full-scope polygraph that got them in the door. CIA takes people in at a very low level but invests years in training them. CTI would help you to get a job with NSA. Overall, being a commissioned officer would take you further initially when you get out of the Navy in the civilian world though.

5. Yes, please refer to other posts in the non-intel forums.

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What is the difference between intel officers and ctis?

Well officers get paid about double what you'll make as a CTI. That is unless you max out your language pay which you could definitely do if you aced the DLPT in German, Spanish, and whatever language they teach you at DLI. The officers still make quite a bit more though, especially once they hit O-3. People say officers do more work which justifies their pay, but that's arguable. CTI is good if you don't want to deploy and want to go to school for about 1.5 years while getting paid for it. Officers have to deploy and go on ships and such.

I plan to try to get a job with the NSA when I get out. It's ridiculous how much more civilians doing the same job as a CTI make. I guess it kind of makes sense though since the Navy does spend a lot of money to get you your clearance and to teach you a language. I've been in for 2 years so far and haven't even started working yet. It's pretty crazy how much money the Navy spends to make a linguist.

Like squid said, if you want to use your languages as an officer you're going to have to wait quite some time. I know many people who have Bachelors degrees who chose CTI for this reason. I mean a lot of people (including me) would rather be learning things and expanding our knowledge every day than having to manage people. That's something I really dread. I never want to make even 1st class because then you have to worry about what other people are doing. Chief would be even worse, and being an officer is worse than being a Chief. 2nd class is a fine stopping point for me.

So basically if you want to use a foreign language in your job and get sent to school for 1.5 years, go CTI. If you want to manage people and get paid more, go officer.

A shipboard Intel Officer's job primarily deals with sending out all hands emails telling everyone not to discuss ship movements with our families. Second duty is to randomly rifle through office garbage cans for "sensitive material." Lastly the intel officer gives the "classified" port briefs before we pull into foreign ports that involves many hours of searching for the correct power point slide design and/or clipart.

quote:

Originally posted by HookedUpAndConnected:
A shipboard Intel Officer's job primarily deals with sending out all hands emails telling everyone not to discuss ship movements with our families. Second duty is to randomly rifle through office garbage cans for "sensitive material." Lastly the intel officer gives the "classified" port briefs before we pull into foreign ports that involves many hours of searching for the correct power point slide design and/or clipart.

Buahahaha that was great. That made my night.

Saxquiz..don't count on the no management part. I'm a GG-12 now (O-3/O-4 rank equivalent), and I managed more people as an E5 and had far more responsibility as an E5 than I've ever come close to having since. Now I manage a couple of contractors and an intern, back then I managed about 14 people.

So...it is very possible to manage more and get paid less as a CTI :P

Thanks for your responses everyone. They are much appreciated.

I took your advice, XSquid, and I looked at other forums and threads regarding whether or not I could put in a package for officer. Also, I found the rating that really interests me: HUMINT. However, I still really want to learn more languages. It's a dilemma. So my questions now are, how difficult is it to enlist as a cti and then cross-rate (not sure of the correct term) to HUMINT? Which would be better: enlist as a cti first then try to go officer and do HUMINT, or vice versa? Thanks again for your help.

mrspao...The Navy really isn't much of a player in the HUMINT realm. While it is possible that the IS rate may have some involvement with HUMINT, I know nothing about it. HUMINT is primarily the domain of the Army, and to a lesser extent the Marine Corps. NCIS is involved with HUMINT, but that is the extent of my knowledge on the subject.

I work with HUMINT every day (as a consumer, not a producer), and I agree it is a fascinating field. If HUMINT really interests you, consider looking at another service. The intell community is HUGE and there are many, many different types of jobs (imagery, MASINT, ELINT, Collection Management) that most people on these boards (understandably) don't know anything about. CTI is a good job, but it isn't the path to get to a lot of these other types of career fields.

Working in alphabet soup agency is not all that tough. However, getting certain jobs at an alphabet soup agency is competitive. All these agencies need IT support, mechanics, HR folks, patent lawyers, etc, etc. They are no different then any other large organizations, so getting into NSA or CIA really isn't all that more difficult then getting a job at AT&T or Boeing.

The amount of people who get to work 1V1 with a real life bad guy in an operational role, is pretty small. However, one producer could give a whole room of analysis weenies enough content to work on for a year. Who takes the lead on these types of ops depends on a host of things, but you would be surprised who is involved (agency-wise). My point is that NSA and CIA are not always the places to go to do interesting work.

I think most traditional intel guys probably aren't going get anywhere near this stuff.

JMHO.

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However, one producer could give a whole room of analysis weenies enough content to work on for a year.

On the relatively rare occasion when a collector gives us something of value.

Nabbs, I'm not sure why you think getting into NSA, CIA or the other alphabet soup agencies is easy, especially for enlisted folks, which make up the bulk of individuals on this board. It requires, at a minimum, folks to get their BS/BA and usually a very long, drawn out application process. I have seen NSA applications take longer than 12 months. When I got my conditional offer from the FBI, they warned me it would take up to a year to get my final offer. My final offer from the Air Force took almost 9 months.

That's hard on folks, especially when they are facing shakey or disappearing contracts (as was my case) and have a family to house and feed.

Ok, how about change the HUMINT to IS in my questions? I would still like to know if it is difficult to go from CTI to IS, and if it is better to do CTI and then try for IS or vice versa. I am very interested in both ratings and I have been taking a lot of time to think about both of them.

As I've said before in multiple posts, once a CTI, your pretty much stuck there for your career. The only exception I am aware of is for CTI 1s who cross-rated into CTN. I'm not the enlisted billet manager, but I can pretty much promise you that going CTI to IS or vice versa isn't going to happen, ever.

If you really want to go HUMINT, look at going Army or Marine Corps. CTI is first and foremost a SIGINT rating, all the IS-types I have ever worked with were either imagery or all-source types, not HUMINT collectors. NCIS does do HUMINT, but you have to be a civilain to be an analyst or collector there.

The advantages to CTI, as I see them, are these: MASSIVE investment in training (DLI), mostly-shore based (which facilitates completing college), limited to no deployment (good for time with family). Disadvantages: Limited to no deployment, limited to no ability to see big picture impact of your work, strong tendency to get professionally pigeon-holed (over-specialization), skill-set and experience generally not in demand outside of NSA.

Advantages to IS: Overwhelming probability of deployment (see the world), skill-set in high demand in civilian world (all-source, imagery), exposure to multiple target sets, being a jack of all trades, using intel to support tactical operations (especially when assigned to squadrons). Disadvantages: Overwhelming probability of deployment (time away from family), difficulty in gaining in depth target knowledge (one ISC I know said "We're a mile wide but an inch deep"), relative difficulty in obtaining BA due to schedule.

**Disclaimer: I am not an IS, so this is just what I have picked up from the many IS types I have worked with over the years.**

Like I said before, if you really want to work for the CIA, you might as well apply NOW. You can apply on line and I know they are hiring. I can't promise that you'll actually get to be a HUMINT collector though...if that's what you want, you need to look into the Army or the Marine Corps.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: XSquidling,

You have to understand a bit what it is HUMINT does. In very simple (and careful) parlance there are assets (could be a person, could be a satellite, could be a Chinese newspaper) who deliver information to managers who sanitize that info and pass it onto analysts, who in turn analyze and look for trends etc. Again this is a very over-simplified process flow, but it gives a basic idea of how things work. While my experience on this side of the house is limited (and I would defer to Squid), a CTI/N or IS is going to be involved primarily with the analysis.

Being somebody who manages an actual human asset and works 1V1 with them is a total different career path, and generally these types of roles chose you as opposed to the other way around. The place that does work these sorts of things in the Navy is NCIS (one of their most notable and public cases was Jonathan Pollard). Of course going into NCIS means you are entering law enforcement so career-wise this could be a total departure from what you want to do.

As others have said in the past, IS' have ended up in everywhere from jail to the NSA (my doorman is a former Army IA). So as everything it is what you make of it. But if you are looking to do the James Bond thing and meet with spies in a bazaar in Turkey, you got a long way to go. On the other hand, if studying raw data and identifying trends and patterns which is then passed on to a product/program manager and impacts operation decisions either one is the way to go (not to mention there are plenty of alphabet soup agencies that are interested in your work).

HTH.

quote:

Like I said before, if you really want to work for the CIA, you might as well apply NOW. You can apply on line and I know they are hiring. I can't promise that you'll actually get to be a HUMINT collector though...if that's what you want, you need to look into the Army or the Marine Corps.

Don't forget the State Department! I had a blast at the Foreign Service Institute.

Also remember the lead agency for domestic ci is still the FBI.

Ah yes, shame on me. For that matter, shame on me for leaving out the Deparments of Treasury and especially Energy. They are also players in the intelligence world, and I have enjoyed working with them. Nabbs is right, FBI is the domestic lead for CI, mostly. For military issues though, NCIS, AFOSI, and the entity formerly known as CIFA all play a CI role as well. Like Nabbs said, these agencies have a foot in the law enforcement and the intel world. I know former CTIs who work for all these agencies, but like Nabbs incidated, not as collectors. CTI won't set you up for that type of career.

Nabbs, CTs are collectors and reporters, not analysts....the analysis rating is IS.

quote:

Nabbs, CTs are collectors and reporters, not analysts....the analysis rating is IS.

Again, I defer to you on the specifics of these rates as you clearly have a wealth of experience in this area. But the point is that if you split this "intelligence" into two groups you would have those that are actually acquiring information and then you have those that analyze this info (semantics aside).

If you really have a burning itch to be involved with dealing face-to-face with foreign nationals you would probably have more exposure working at an embassy for State approving visas then entering the military. Additionally FBI, CIA, and NSA all recruit on college campuses and you certainly should apply online if you are interested.

I think Squid and I are probably confusing you more then you wanted, but I think you should make sure that you have realistic expectations.

-N

Thank you very much for all of your time and information. I still have some months before I graduate to decide what I want to do. I will consider your advice very carefully to see which options are the best for what I want to do in my life.