For those who don't really know what's involved with Geospatial Intelligence, I sort of liken it to playing with Google Earth for a living.
The weird thing is that for a job which is clearly quite important, yet requires a specific skillset which people might not necessarily know they actually have, I think that the RAAF struggles for numbers because it's kind of obscure and also requires a ridiculously high security clearance which can take 18+ months to obtain.
So the Chief of Air Force has established a new program where Any Airman (ANYA) roles in this area have been created, involving a three year posting that includes training as a Geospatial Imagery Analyst (GIA) and deployment to the Middle East to carry out relevant duties. Depending on one's performance in the ANYA role, this could also facilitate a future remuster (changing of job) to GIA.
I've missed the boat for the first intake of ANYA GIAs, but it's definitely piqued my interest. Strangely enough, it was the reservist Logistics Officer that I spoke to a few times last year who first got me considering the possibility of intelligence related jobs. Perhaps if I collected more university units to do with international relations or counter-terrorism (yes, they do exist!) I could get a taste for secret squirrel business, and seem like I have a relevant degree.
I wonder how people get recruited for these jobs, if they supposedly have no previous experience and thus no evidence of how good they'd be at spying? Personally, I like the idea of analysing and scrutinising things for a living... it'd probably mean that I'd be too mentally exhausted at the end of the day to philosophise about the minutiae of my own life.
There's also something kinda Sim Cityesque about looking down on the world like some God whose subjects have no idea that they're being watched. Or maybe that's just me.
Test your skills at the Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation Imagery Analysis Quiz!
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