Ch. 1 Fundamentals

Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment (IPOE) Defined

• Intelligence preparation of the operational environment involves analyzing the mission variables (enemy, terrain, weather, civil considerations) to determine their effects on operations.
• Commanders and staffs use IPOE results to approach analyzing the operational environment in a holistic way.
• Holistic approach describes all relevant aspects of the OE
• Accounts for all relevant domains
• Identifies windows to leverage friendly capabilities against threats
• Allows commanders to leverage positions of relative advantage at a time and place most advantageous for mission success with the most accurate information available.
• IPOE results in intelligence products used during the military decision-making process (MDMP) to assist in developing friendly COAs and decision points.
• Conclusions reached and products developed during IPOE are critical to planning information collection and targeting operations.
• IPOE products include threat situation templates with associated COA statements and high-value target (HVT) lists.
• Products also include event templates and associated event matrices
• Modified combined obstacle overlays (MCOOs), terrain effects matrices, and terrain assessments
• Weather effects work aids, including charts, effects matrices, light and illumination tables, and weather estimates.
• Civil considerations overlays and assessments are also IPOE products
• The J-2/G-2/S-2 leads the staff effort and begins preparing for IPOE during the generation of intelligence knowledge

Generating Intelligence Knowledge

• Intelligence staffs create data files for their OE based on existing information.
• Staff evaluation of information and intelligence relates to operational variables (political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time [PMESII-PT]).
• Intelligence staff can access holdings maintained by the military intelligence brigade-theater (MIB-T)
• The theater-aligned unit processes, refines, and stores intelligence products daily, which benefit nonregionally aligned units.
• The intelligence staff should begin by determining the information needed to collect on the OE
• As staff collects data on the OE, the data should be organized into baseline data files based on commander guidance.
• Files must be compatible with the unit's command and control (C2) information systems.
• Tactical echelons create primary data files based on the enemy, terrain, weather, and civil considerations, while strategic and operational echelons create files based on commander's operational requirements.
• Commander and staff use the information to assist in framing the OE during Army design methodology

IPOE Throughout the Operations Process

• The commander and staff continually collect information and analyze the operational variables.
• The goal is to provide increased situational understanding due to possible contingency operations
• Situational understanding comes from applying analysis and judgment to relevant information to determine the relationships between operational and mission variables (ADP 6-0).
• Upon receipt of a warning order or mission, the commander and staff draw relevant information categorized by the operational variables and filter it down into the mission variables used during mission analysis.
• Mission variables are mission, enemy, terrain and weather, troops and support available, time available, civil considerations (METT-TC).
• During IPOE, the staff focuses on the relevant aspects of the OE as they pertain to the staff's warfighting function.
• Staff focuses on mission variables of enemy, terrain, weather, and civil considerations.
• Depending on staff's echelon, the type of OE, the type of operation, and changes in the OE, the staff may need to update its analysis to ensure mission focus is both relevant and accurate.

IPOE Effectiveness

To be effective, IPOE must:

• Continuous process with all staff members providing input.
• Account for all domains, the information environment, and the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS).
• Define the commander's area of interest (AOI) by its geographic boundaries to focus collection and analysis within the AOI.
• Describe how the enemy, terrain, weather, and civil considerations will affect friendly and threat operations.
• Include relevant aspects of the OE for decisive, shaping, and sustaining operations.
• Support each step of the MDMP with IPOE products.
• Determine how the interactions of friendly forces, threat forces, and local populations affect each other to create outcomes that positively affect friendly operations
• Support operational framework considerations, physical, temporal, cognitive, and virtual.
• Facilitate the ability to visualize the desired end state and a broad concept of how to shape current conditions into that end state.
• Support the commander in directing the intelligence effort.
• Facilitate understanding threat characteristics and the threat's goals, objectives, and COAs.
• Most effective and best aids the commander's decision making when the intelligence staff integrates the expertise of the other staff sections and supporting elements into its analysis.
• Assists commanders in reducing uncertainty by evaluating how the enemy, terrain and weather, and civil considerations may affect operations and decision making.
• Key is refinement, conclusions and products developed during are continually refined to ensure decisions are based on the most current information and intelligence available.

IPOE Process Activities

The IPOE process consists of four steps:

• Define the OE
• Describe environmental effects on operations
• Evaluate the threat
• Determine threat COAs.
• IPOE is to be implemented as a continuous process

Step 1 - Define the Operational Environment

• An operational environment is the aggregate of conditions, circumstances, and influences that affect employment of capabilities and bear on the decisions of the commander (JP 3-0).
• An OE for any specific operation comprises more than the interacting variables that exist within a specific physical area; it also involves interconnected influences from the global or regional perspective (such as politics, economics) that affect OE conditions and operations.
• Each commander's OE is part of a higher commander's OE Defining the OE results in the identification of:
• Significant characteristics of the OE that can affect friendly and threat operations.
• Gaps in current intelligence holdings.
• Assists the commander in defining relative aspects of the OE in time and space Equally important when considering characteristics of multi-domain OEs
• During step 1, the intelligence staff must identify those significant characteristics related to the mission variables of enemy, terrain and weather, and civil considerations that are relevant to the mission.
• Evaluates significant characteristics to identify gaps and initiate information collection.
• Failure to identify or misidentifying the effect these variables may have on operations at a given time and place can hinder decision making and result in the development of an ineffective information collection strategy.
• The area of operations (AO), AOI, and area of influence must also be identified and established.
• Understanding friendly and threat forces; other factors, such as culture, languages, and tribal affiliations are equally important.
• Identifying significant characteristics of the OE is essential in identifying additional information needed to complete IPOE.
• Once approved by the commander, this information becomes the commander's initial intelligence requirements and focuses the commander's initial information collection efforts and the remaining steps of the IPOE process.
• Additionally, where a unit will be assigned and how its operations will synchronize with other associated operations must be considered.
• The G-2/S-2 should be forming questions regarding where the unit will deploy within the entire theater of operations and the specific logistics requirements needed to handle the operation's contingency plans.

Step 2 - Describe Environmental Effects on Operations

• Intelligence staff describes how significant characteristics affect friendly operations.
• Also describes how terrain, weather, civil considerations, and friendly forces affect threat forces.
• This evaluation focuses on each force's general capabilities until the development of threat COAs in step 4 of IPOE and friendly COAs later in the MDMP.
• The entire staff determines the effects of friendly and threat force actions on the population.
• If the intelligence staff does not have the information required to form conclusions, it uses assumptions to fill information gaps always careful to ensure the commander understands when assumptions are used in place of facts to form conclusions.

Step 3 - Evaluate the Threat

• The purpose of evaluating the threat is to understand how it can affect friendly operations.
• Threat forces have differences in how they approach situations and problem solving and understanding these differences is essential to understanding how a threat force will react in a given situation.
• Threat evaluation doesn't begin with IPOE
• Intelligence staff conducts threat evaluations and creates threat models during generate intelligence knowledge to support force generation task.
• Staff refines threat models to support IPOE
• When analyzing a well-known threat, the intelligence staff may rely on previously developed threat models
• New threat, the staff may need to evaluate the threat and develop threat models during the MDMP's mission analysis step.
• The intelligence staff relies heavily on the threat evaluation conducted by higher headquarters and other intelligence agencies.
• In situations where there is no threat force, intelligence analysis conducted and products developed relating to terrain, weather, and civil considerations may be sufficient to support planning (natural disaster).

Step 4 - Determine Threat Courses of Action

• The intelligence staff identifies and develops possible threat COAs that can affect accomplishing the friendly mission.
• The staff uses the products associated with determining threat COAs to assist in developing and selecting friendly COAs during COA steps of the MDMP.
• Identifying and developing all valid threat COAs minimizes the potential of surprise to the commander by an unanticipated threat action.
• Failure to fully identify and develop all valid threat COAs may lead to the development of an information collection strategy that does not provide the information necessary to confirm what COA the threat has taken and may result in friendly forces being surprised and possibly defeated.
• The staff should identify all significant civil considerations to portray the interrelationship of the threat, friendly forces, and population activities.
• Staff develops threat COAs the same manner friendly COAs are developed
• Good COAs should be suitable, feasible, acceptable, unique, and consistent with threat doctrine or patterns of operation.
• Intelligence staff has primary responsibility for developing, requesting support from rest of the staff

Staff Collaboration

• Precise intelligence is critical to targeting threat capabilities at the right time and place to open windows of opportunity across domains.
• Commanders and staffs receive effective intelligence when they direct and participate in intelligence warfighting function activities.
• There must be close interaction between the commander, G-2/S-2, G-3/S-3, and the rest of the staff, as the entire staff supports unit planning and preparation through the integrating processes.
• From the perspective of fighting for intelligence, the first aspect of supporting operations is developing good information requirements and designating priority intelligence requirements (PIRs) resulting from IPOE and the completion of the MDMP.
• Commanders and staffs must have detailed knowledge of threat strengths, vulnerabilities, organizations, equipment, capabilities, and tactics to plan for and execute friendly operations.
• Staff collaboration assists in developing detailed knowledge and accounts for possible threat COAs.
• Commanders drive intelligence, intelligence facilitates operations, and operations enable intelligence; this relationship is continuous.
• Commanders provide tactical and operational experience as it relates to various OEs and missions; they also provide an understanding, visualization, and description of the problem.
• Commanders assist in shaping the focus and scope of IPOE to facilitate an effective MDMP.
• G-2/S-2s facilitate the IPOE effort
• G-2/S-2s and their staffs cannot provide all of the information the commander requires for situational understanding.
• Other staff sections or supporting elements must assist the intelligence staff in producing and continuously refining all IPOE products.
• Total staff integration ensures a holistic view of the OE, reduces the initial time required for IPOE development, and assists the commander in timely decision making which also improves quality and accuracy of IPOE products.

Staff Section's Expertise to IPOE

• Chief of staff or executive officer ensures IPOE is performed as a collaborative effort and synchronizes staff activities during IPOE.
• G-1/S-1 assists in analyzing the OE to identify its relevant aspects and how they will impact operations.
• G-2/S-2 analyzes the mission variables of enemy, terrain and weather, and civil considerations and assists the commander in understanding how variables can affect operations.
• Analyzes through production of intelligence assessment that supports the MDMP and also informs the staff on intelligence capabilities, limitations, and operations.
• The G-4/S-4 provides subject matter expertise on sustainment operations and assists the G-2/S-2 in identifying and evaluating threat and host-nation logistics capabilities.
• G-5/S-5 is the principal staff officer for planning mid- to long-range operations that coordinates with the G-5/S-5 to ensure the synchronization of IPOE and information collection for future operations or the next phase of an operation
• G-6/S-6 provides subject matter expertise on friendly communications systems and assists the G-2/S-2.
• G-9/S-9 provides subject matter expertise on civil affairs operations that identifies and evaluates civil considerations on military operations and evaluating the effect of military operations on civilian populations.
• Intelligence staff coordinates with supporting elements operations security officer, co-located with the S-3, provides SME on friendly vulnerabilities during the phases of an operation, can assist in identifying by phase which threat assets and capabilities should be the focus of information collection and targeting.
• Information operations provide subject matter expertise on shaping operational activities in and through the information environment and cyberspace
• The chief of fires at division and above and the fire support officer at brigade and below provide subject matter expertise on fires. The fires (artillery and air defense) assists the G-2/S-2 in developing threat fires-related HVTs.
• Engineer coordinator Provides a terrain analysis
• CBRNO Provides the locations of CBRN assets

Relationships

• As one of the integrating processes, IPOE is integral to targeting, risk management, information collection, planning, and decision making.
• IPOE is also related to the generate intelligence knowledge and situation development tasks.

Targeting

• Is the process of selecting and prioritizing targets and matching the appropriate response to them, considering operational requirements and capabilities (JP 3-0).
• During steps 3 and 4 of IPOE, the intelligence staff identifies HVTs associated with each threat capability or COA which assists the fires cell in conducting target-value analysis.
• A high-value target is a target the enemy commander requires for the successful completion of the mission (JP 3-60).
• Identify HVTs from existing intelligence studies, database evaluations, patrol debriefs, and size, activity, location, unit, time, and equipment (also called SALUTE) reports for the reviewing threat.
• Identify assets that are key to executing the primary operation, branches, or sequels and determine how the threat might react to the loss of each identified HVT.
• After identifying HVTs, place them in order of their relative worth to the threat's operation and record them as part of the threat model.

Risk Management

• Risk management is the process to identify, assess, and mitigate risks and make decisions that balance risk cost with mission benefits (JP 3-0).
• IPOE assists in identifying, quantifying, and mitigating risks allowing one to make an informed decision to balance risk with mission benefit.

Information Collection

• Relies on IPOE results where the staff's continuous input to IPOE supports the process.
• Uses key characteristics of AOI, threat events and how it may influence friendly and threat activities.

Generate Intelligence Knowledge

• Relies on sources such as Open source, Intelligence databases and agencies.

Situation Development

• Analyzing information and producing current intelligence such as confirmed or denied threat.

Multi-Domain Understanding of the Operational Environment

• Seeing, responding, and understanding vulnerabilities in the various domains.

Operational Framework Considerations

• Uses cognitive tools to assist the commanders to describe the impacts of power.