I know people mock twitter, but until a few years ago, to know when the russians were sailing a task force and where it was going would have required a lot of sensitive assets doing very dangerous work and the results would have been classified with more prexifes and codewords than a bad tom clancy novel.
By contrast Twitter is a great example of how open source media use, properly analysed assessed and forming part of wider work can help us achieve the same effect in a fraction of the time and resource.