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May 31, 2004

Information Filtering

Steven den Beste has some interesting notes on press bias, always a hot topic among us members of the VRWC. But while I find his essay both interesting and generally convincing, I found it more interesting because it touched on a similiar problem faced by today's military: information overload and editing.

Thanks to a proliferation of intelligence gathering methods, a commander in today's Army can quickly find himself buried in information. Engineers have topographical software that can analyze terrain to locate avenues of approach and more defensible terrain. Satellite photographs are now available to show commanders enemy actions and locations to levels of detail once considered impossible. UAVs can travel anywhere on the battlefield to provide real-time surveillance of critical locations. Add in reconnaissance troops, scout platoons, and spot reports submitted by units in contact plus reports from adjacent units and the amount of data flowing into a unit headquarters is staggering. With all that information available, how can a commander make decisions without succumbing to paralysis by analysis?

Part of the answer lies in the staff. A combat battalion includes a small but important group of people whose job is to keep track of the disparate information that flows into the TOC and CTCP. At the TOC, the S2 applies his expertise to intelligence information that comes in, while the S3 Air tracks the friendly data, the Engineer LNO tracks anything dealing with mobility, countermobility, and survivability, and the FSO addresses fire support issues. Back in the CTCP, the S1 tracks personnel issues, while the S4 worries about supply issues. Each of them is responsible for tracking everything that falls under their area of expertise, and only bringing things to the attention of the battalion commander if it is an issue he truly needs to address.

So how do they know what the boss needs to address? Primarily through CCIR: Commander's Critical Intelligence Requirement. When the commander sets his staff to work composing the order, he still writes two things himself: his intent, and his CCIR. His intent explains to the unit what he hopes to accomplish with the mission, and I'll probably get into that more in a future post. CCIR tells everyone what the boss needs to know. The commander determines the CCIR by identifying the decisions he will need to make during the battle. Contrary to how Hollywood often portrays senior leaders, commanders try to minimize the number of decisions they will have to make during battle. Even with all the information-gathering now available on the modern battlefield, decisions are best kept at the lowest possible level with the men who have the best understanding of what is happening. A battalion commander will assess the mission and locate probably only two or three Decision Points, times that he will have to determine what the battalion does next. Based on that assessment, he determines the information he will need to make the decision. That determines his CCIR, which is put out to everyone in the battalion, so whoever gets the information knows that it needs to go forward as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, CCIR cannot guarantee success. Even the most knowledgable commander may fail to predict some events, and the enemy is working constantly to present the friendlies with unexpected circumstances. No unit can rely solely on predictions on future events made before the battle. A commander has to rely on his staff to identify unexpected problems or opportunities and bring them to his attention while he's still able to do something about them. But they can't bring everything to his attention; they have to be careful to pick out only the relevant information that either really requires the commander's attention, or is vital to help him make one of his decisions. That gives the staff a surprising amount of power.

This becomes more true the further up the the chain you go. A battalion commander is still pretty close to the action, and he can even move up to the front if he must to actually get eyes on the situation. A brigade commander would have a difficult time doing so, and a division or higher commander really has to rely on his staff to sort through the massive amounts of information and provide him with only the data he needs. And unlike news consumers today, division commanders can't hop onto the internet to check out alternate media sources like blogs. A commander's staff must be able to get him the right information consistently without overloading him with extraneous data that will render the commander unable to sort through it all in time to make a decision.

Commanders are highly experienced officers. A battalion commander is usually approaching 18-20 years of service, with brigade and division commanders well beyond that. But in the final analysis, their decisions are made based on information given to them by officers and NCOs with far less experience and training. Yet, somehow, just as 22-year old lieutenants and 20-year old sergeants manage to lead and inspire troops to succeed in battle, these still-junior officers and NCOs learn to sort out the important from the mundane, and get the critical data in the correct hands at the right time. This is a testament to the training the Army provides through its leadership schools, but it owes as much to the willingness of young men and women to take on great responsibilities in pursuit of the highest of causes. Its success is, ultimately, a testament to the nation that produces such people.