Military Intelligence Agency
Intelligence agency of Serbia
The Military Intelligence Agency (Serbian: Војнообавештајна агенција, romanized: Vojnoobaveštajna agencija; abbr. ВОА / VOA) is the military intelligence agency of Serbia, organizational unit of the Ministry of Defence. It is responsible for providing military information, as well as representing and protecting the military interests of Serbia abroad and carries out its tasks through activities of military intelligence and military diplomacy.
History
With establishment of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Principality of Serbia, by the 1876 Act on the General Staff Organization, the bearer of the military intelligence activities was the First Susbsection of Operations Section of the General Staff (Prvi odsek Operativnog odeljenja Đeneralštaba). In 1884, it was transformed in the External Subsection of the Operation Section of the General Staff (Spoljni odsek Operativnog odeljenja Đeneralštaba) acting as the intelligence service of the Royal Serbian Army.
The missions and competneces of the External Subsection were subsequently extended and in 1900 it was renamed to Subsection for Reporting of the Operation Section (Izveštajni odsek Operativnog odeljenja).
During World War I, when the General Staff was transformed into the Serbian Supreme Command, the Subsection for Reporting of the Operation Section became the Intelligence Subsection of the Operation Section of the Supreme Command (Obaveštajni odsek Operativnog odeljenja Vrhovne komande).
In 1920, four departments were established within the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the newly-formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the fourth of which, the Intelligence Department of the General Staff (Obaveštajno odeljenje Generalštaba), performed military intelligence and counterintelligence activities.
After the World War II, the General Staff of the Yugoslav People’s Army had an Intelligence Section which in 1947 became Second Directorate within the General Staff of the Yugoslav People’s Army. Subsequently, in 1950s it was renamed to the Intelligence Directorate the General Staff of the Yugoslav People’s Army (Obaveštajna uprava Generalštaba).
“Military Intelligence Agency” enters the record as intelligence agency of Serbia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Military, Intelligence and Agency can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Military Intelligence Agency” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.