page_title: Intelligence analysis
section_title: Analogy
hierarchical_section_title: Intelligence analysis / The nature of analysis / Methods of analysis / Analogy
context_page_description: Intelligence analysis is the application of individual and collective cognitive methods to weigh data and test hypotheses within a secret socio-cultural context. The descriptions are drawn from what may only be available in the form of deliberately deceptive information; the analyst must correlate the similarities among deceptions and extract a common truth. Although its practice is found in its purest form inside national intelligence agencies, its methods are also applicable in fields such as business intelligence or competitive intelligence.
context_section_description: Analogy is common in technical analysis, but engineering characteristics seeming alike do not necessarily mean that the other side has the same employment doctrine for an otherwise similar thing. Sometimes, the analogy was valid for a time, such as the MiG-25 aircraft being designed as a Soviet counter to the perceived threat of the high-altitude, supersonic B-70 bomber. The Soviets could have canceled the MiG-25 program when the US changed doctrines to low altitude penetration and canceled the B-70 program, but they continued building the MiG-25.
  One of the Soviet variants was a high-speed, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft (MiG-25RB), which, for a time, was thought comparable to the US SR-71 aircraft. Several additional points of data, however, showed that an analogy between the SR-71 and MiG-25RB was not complete. HUMINT revealed that a single Mach 3.2 flight of the MiG wrecked the engines beyond hope of repair, and the cost of replacement was prohibitive. The SR-71, however, could make repeated flights with the same engines. The dissimilarity of engine life was not only expensive, but meant that the MiG-25RB could operate only from bases with the capability to change engines.
  The United States had applied "reverse engineering" to the MiG, essentially saying "if we had an aircraft with such capabilities, what would we do with it?" In the fighter-interceptor role, however, the US gives the pilot considerable flexibility in tactics, where the Soviets had a doctrine of tight ground control. For the U.S. doctrine, the aircraft was too inflexible for American fighter tactics, but made sense for the Soviets as an interceptor that could make one pass at a penetrating bomber, using an extremely powerful radar to burn through jamming for final targeting.
  Many of these assumptions fell apart after Viktor Belenko flew his MiG-25 to the West, where TECHINT analysts could examine the aircraft, and doctrinal specialists could interview Belenko.
caption: Top speed MiG-25RB reconnaissance flights damaged its engines beyond repair
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