Making Intelligence Drive Operations: QMN047

Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster, Friday, 28 June

(Today’s report is a 6 minute read)

BLUF: Much of success in warfare is about massing your forces at the right place and right time in order to have a devastating effect on an enemy weak point. CCIR represents information that the commander needs in order to make a critical decision over the course of an operation - and it’s key to focusing effort from across a wide area at just the right time. It's subcategories include Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIR), Friendly Force Information Requirements (FFIR), and Essential Elements of Friendly Information (EEFI). These requirements tell the entire organization what information is valuable immediately and it lets the commander know where and when to act.

Special Forces Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) conduct an AAR after Counter Improvised Explosive Device training at Panzer Local Training area near Stuttgart, Germany, 10 June, 2020. Photo by Sgt. Patrik Orcutt

Brady here. Concealed behind an irrigation ditch in a palm grove outside West Baghdad, my scout snipers watched a house and a huge farm field continuously for three days. With a spotting scope and binoculars they established a pattern of life at the farm - they noted who came and went, what they did and for how long. On a schedule they radioed back to our intelligence analysts what they were seeing. The analysts compared it to the information we were getting from drones and scouts about other people at other locations. And when we got the right amount of information, the battalion hopped on helicopters and flew out to the farm. Across two days and nights we pulled thousands of pounds of explosives out of the ground at the farm - mines and artillery shells mostly - destined to be turned into hundreds of roadside bombs across Baghdad in the coming year. We also found kidnapping victims - Al Qaeda affiliated organized crime groups were kidnapping western reporters and aid workers for ransom - and we found evidence of more victims in the area. Then we arrested a network of insurgents that were trying to push the country into civil war. But what made it all happen - what got the 500-man battalion to the right place at the right time - was a list of requirements.

Yesterday I let you know how the military communicates with the OPORD. Part of that OPORD, under the Execution paragraph, is a heading called Commander's Critical Information Requirements (CCIR). This set of requirements represents information that the commander needs in order to make a critical decision over the course of an operation. The subcategories include Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIR), Friendly Force Information Requirements (FFIR), and Essential Elements of Friendly Information (EEFI). These requirements tell the entire organization what information is valuable and it lets the commander know where and when to act. Much of success in warfare is about massing your forces at the right place and right time in order to have a devastating effect on an enemy weak point - CCIR presents triggers to make that happen.

PIRs look a lot like general statements that ask where the enemy will do something, and are broken down into sub-requirements that provide indicators that one enemy course of action is happening versus another. 

PIRs are a beautiful thing because they can be gathered actively or passively. A sniper’s mission can be to alert an intelligence team to the presence of an organized crime boss at a farm- and fill that PIR when he calls it in on the radio. But it can also be filled by the infantry squad leader running a surprise checkpoint on a nearby country road when that boss gets incidentally caught driving up at 10PM. Because as explained above PIRs are made up of indicators and specific little bits of info, they can be collected and reported to trigger action at any time. 

FFIRs are pieces of information the commander needs to know about either his own force or the friendly forces around him before he can take action. As expertly explained by COL Thomas M. Feltey and CPT Matt Mattingly, PIRs combined with FFIRs form a sort of If-And-Then string that leads to a battlefield decision. My battalion commander in Iraq needed to know whether helicopter transport was available, and if the routes in and out of the farm could be blocked by a nearby Marine light armored vehicle company, before he gave the go to search the farm.

EEFI is essentially what we believe the enemy’s PIR to be. We know that whether they go through a deliberate planning process or not, their knowledge of our activity leads them to behave in different ways- so we need to take measures to conceal or limit information- or deceive the enemy into thinking we're pursuing a different course of action. EEFI determined that my scout snipers had to watch that farm because we knew that the RQ-7 Shadow we had sounded like a lawnmower in the sky and would keep the right people from being at the farm - so we needed a way to quietly watch from a distance. 

As stated many times here before - the beauty of our ethos of mission command is that it allows decisions to be made at the lowest possible level - as CPP likes to say “centralized intent with decentralized execution”. When done right the system reduces risk and promotes fast action on the battlefield. Involving your whole force in the decision process maximizes the use of all your assets and helps ensure you can mass effects when and where you need them.

Business leaders can form their own requirements about the behavior of their markets and customers and use them to make decisions about what business to pursue. When done right this often looks like sales and marketing working together to have media reflect what customers are saying in real time. And I've heard it said more than once lately that businesses don't do enough in many cases to mask their intentions from competitors - creating EEFI for all the players in your space could be a great way to ensure you catch competition off guard. Either way it's never a bad practice to involve leaders across your organization in your decision making process - your decisions will end up being based more on fact and less on speculation. (BJM)

And you can find more explanation of CCIR at s2company. (BJM)

DESIRE TO KNOW MORE INTENSIFIES: Marine Corps Establishes Volunteer Cyber Auxiliary To Increase Cyberspace Readiness (1 min) An innovative approach to training Marines in the finer points of cyber warfare utilizing – who’da thunk it? – civilians. Although Gen. Neller suggests that a security clearance will be required, the Corps’ press release notes that basement neckbeards will be welcome. “Qualified volunteers must be US citizens with advanced cyber experience and will be screened and assessed before assignment to a specified unit or project. Cyber Aux members do not wear a uniform nor need to meet the Marine Corps physical fitness and grooming standards.” Fears of another Snowden aside, our ICs may want to consider a similar strategy in bolstering their cyber-security ranks: I rather doubt that Russia demands that their hackers be squeaky-clean. Anyway, per the Corps: “Highly qualified talent should email CyberAux@usmc.mil for more information or to begin volunteering with the Marines.” (KSA) 

THOUGHTFUL ACTION ON AI ADOPTION: A Major Police Body Cam Company Just Banned Facial Recognition (4 min) So somebody in a leadership role out there is actually thinking about the social and moral implications of emerging technology and then acting on their conclusions? “Axon’s move is a rare departure from the “move fast and break things” style of innovation traditionally associated with new technologies. And it may very well indicate that, when it comes to facial tracking and privacy, policing may be where we draw the line.” (BJM)

STILL THERE & STILL DYING: Second Military Contractor Killed in Afghanistan Marks A Lethal Week (3 min) “Retired Chief Warrant Officer Four Christian H. McCoy was killed Monday in Afghanistan, one year after hanging up the official service uniform he wore for 30-years in the U.S. military—most of it within the ranks of Army Special Forces. Newsweek confirmed McCoy's death after speaking to multiple Defense Department sources, interviewing his former wife on Wednesday and obtaining a confidential letter from a major U.S. military defense contractor. While details are scarce at the moment surrounding the circumstances of McCoy's death, a Defense Department source, who asked not to be named, told Newsweek that a Mine-Resistant Armored Vehicle was damaged along with two remote-controlled weapon systems, known as CROWs, at the time of McCoy's death on Monday.” (BJM)

Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.

KS Anthony (KSA), Chris Papasadero (CPP) & Brady Moore (BJM)