Joint Forces Staff College

Operate to Know: an Operational and Intelligence Design for the Operational Level of War Joint Forces Staff College

Publisher Marketing: This book is that if the United States and its allies are to fight and win decisively against the complex adaptive adversaries of the twenty-first century, then knowing must become a primary operational activity. Intelligence must ascend from its diminished status to an equal pillar of action with operations, resourced and organized with equipment, processes, and intellectual skills to produce a continuous picture of the enemy and environment tied to forces that can rapidly exploit opportunities to generate more intelligence. The joint force faces a global security environment where adversaries neutralize American superiority in fire and maneuver by hiding and remaining untargetable-especially by avoiding open battle. Adversaries seek to make the environment inhospitable for U. S. forces--driving joint forces to fortified enclaves, marginalizing their influence, and placing them on the defensive. In this environment, the joint force must function differently: pulsing to understand the environment, then taking decisive action while being able to pace the intensity of operations to allow off-ramps for other instruments of national power to take the lead to meet national objectives. This book recommends the development of a joint operating concept that establishes the foundation for an aggressive knowing capability consisting of active observation with pulsing and continous diagnostic feedback to create a continous receive-respond, collect- pulse connection between intelligence and operations to pry, test, understand the environment, and then take decisive action