Deployed with 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment - part of 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division - to Iraq from February 2004 through February 2005, Captain Natalie Friel served as the battalion assistant intelligence officer (AS2) and, most prominently, played a key role in Operation Phantom Fury: the November 2004 combined-joint assault to retake the city of Fallujah. While officially the AS2, during a time of transition for the unit prior to this decisive urban fight kicking off, Friel acted as the primary S2 and, as such, oversaw Task Force 2-2's intelligence preparation of the battlefield. Because of her deep familiarity, then, with the situational picture, once major combat began she was stationed in the tactical operations center and would also go out and brief commanders in the field on the latest intel assessments. In this interview, she shares her far-reaching visibility over the entire intelligence picture, focusing on enemy tactics and capabilities; information gleaned from human, signals and imagery intelligence sources; her experiences with US Marine Corps intel officers and USMC assets, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles; and her overall insights into why the operation as a whole was a success. Reflecting on her initial thoughts during the IPB process, Friel remarked: "Looking at all the pictures, you could see that this was just not a city where people were living normally. It was definitely a fortified zone with huge speed bumps everywhere and concrete barriers along the roads. They had been preparing a long time for us to attack." She also comments at length on the "more intense and better trained" insurgents her task force encountered and the enemy's employment of a sophisticated spider hole and underground tunnel network that proved a challenge for coalition forces in general.

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