Information Environment Advanced Analysis

The Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSD(I)) sponsored the development of IEAA to help students and their senior leaders address strategic and operational problems identified in the National Security Strategy (NSS), National Defense Strategy (NDS), National Military Strategy (NMS), Global Campaign Plans via the Joint Strategic Campaign Plan, and the Unified Commands’ Theater Campaign Plans (TCPs). Based on repeated requests from theater commanders for a course of this kind, the Joint Staff/J7 continues to certify IEAA to give analysts, planners, and operators an educational experience that immerses them in a highly interactive and multidisciplinary set of approaches and concepts learned through the lens of real-world practical exercises (PEs).

The course focuses on OIE, IA, and the effective use of Information Forces as key means for achieving objectives, end-states, and strategic priorities. Students learn a carefully crafted, wide range of concepts, approaches, tools, and techniques to gain informational and thus operational and strategic advantage across the competition continuum.

IEAA graduates complete 16 blocks of instruction and small group activities that enable them to gain a broad understanding of the approaches, concepts, and frameworks for defining and managing information-heavy complex problems for lasting advantage. Key topics include critical thinking for Digital-Age problems; decomposition of complex problem sets; influencing the behavior of target audiences and decision makers; defining and characterizing problems; forecasting and anticipatory analysis; Joint operational design; will and capability; influence planning considerations in the global IE; incorporating information forces, working within interagency teams, working with allies and partners; wargaming and red-teaming; and assessment.

Students learn new concepts in morning and afternoon plenary sessions and then break into small groups of about ten students each, where they learn more about the importance of these concepts by performing a series of tasks relating to each of them. Students complete these using a real-world, current, practical exercise (PE) focused on a major, long-term national-security concern. The course’s highly interactive and realistic approach allows students to hone their analysis, planning, and information-sharing skills while building an understanding of the best means for navigating various DoD and whole-of-government structures and dynamics. These educational insights and skills help them to discern and manage problems before they become crises, and crises before they become armed conflicts. Central aspects of this approach include teaching students how to seize and hold the initiative over adversaries and competitors by influencing their decision calculus and behavior through narratives and related means; how to work problems across all instruments of power (IOPs) and in coordination with their counterparts in non-military IOPs; how to wargame and red-team a draft COA; how to assess information-dense problem sets in which understanding and measuring will is often even more important than measuring capabilities; and ultimately how best to maintain a continuing advantage within a specific problem set.

The real-world PEs that IEAA uses give students challenging, long-term, complex problem sets to work using analysis, design, and planning processes. The focus here is to help students understand the importance of developing information-sharing groups and techniques, employing standing planning teams, and making the best use of their organizational structures to maximize the depth, breadth, and effectiveness of integrated analysis and planning efforts to support Information Forces that enable decision advantage for senior leaders. The PEs are aligned directly with priorities set forth in the NSS, NDS, NMS, and Unified Command TCPs. Further, they give students timely and highly realistic problems to work within the context of key DoD and Joint documents.

Students engage with major challenges set forth in the PEs at the level of grand strategy by understanding the problem sets in terms of U.S. and allied strategic priorities they affect. They use an all-IOPs approach to develop their operational approach, and to build and deliver their final IE recommendation briefings to invited senior leaders. They can then use the new skills they develop in IEAA at home station and deployed to advise commanders and other senior decision makers regarding the best means for achieving informational and influence-focused effects, objectives, and end-states supporting strategic priorities. Importantly, the PEs reflect Unified Command Areas of Responsibility (AOR), are continuously updated based on current events in the global and region-specific competition environments, and are linked to learning objectives to plan, act, and assess to support decision makers and Information Forces. The PEs are the key component enabling students to leverage integrated Information Forces to gain IA by conducting information and influence activities in the IE.

Learning Assessment: Once IEAA graduates complete the 16 blocks of instruction, they have a much broader and deeper set of approaches, concepts, and frameworks for defining, characterizing, and managing information-heavy complex problems for continuing advantage. Prior to graduation, students demonstrate their learning in oral comprehensive exams and by building and delivering a 40-minute operational-approach (“draft COA”) briefing to senior evaluators from the local area. These evaluators range in rank from general/flag officers to lieutenant colonels/commanders who command organizations from the brigade/wing to the battalion/squadron level. They are all seasoned “information practitioners” who give the students positive, useful, and rigorous critiques of their briefings and help them understand how to incorporate what they learned in the course at home station and during deployments.

Prerequisites: Students from all the Services, and from FVEY and NATO militaries are eligible to enroll in the course. Applicants from the Coast Guard, non-DoD Intelligence Community, and other Federal Government departments and agencies are also eligible to attend given the importance of developing whole-of-government approaches and professional relationships. Applicants must have a strong record of performance as analysts, planners, or operators. Ideally, they will be in the O3-O5 range for officers, CWO2-CWO4 range for warrant officers, E5-E8 range for noncommissioned officers, and GS/GG 11-15 range for civilians. Personnel outside of these rank parameters are accepted based on their combination of qualifications, experience, and potential to learn and use course concepts and approaches. Contractors are accepted only by exception and through careful coordination with the course sponsor. Selection for the course depends heavily on the combination of an applicant’s training, experience, and education. Deployment experience, completion of Joint and Service courses relating to the IE and OIE, and Unified Command assignments also have weight in the selection process. Applicants who are not selected on their first attempt are encouraged to apply again as their qualifications increase.

Introduction to the Global Information Environment – Provides students with an overview of the new realities of the Digital Age and the complex global information environment, including concepts, techniques, constructs, lexicon, and relationships to doctrine that will be used throughout the course.

Critical Thinking – Students learn techniques to adaptively apply when analyzing and challenging conventional wisdom, understand how adversaries think, and comprehend how critical thinking supports mission analysis – across the information environment and in numerous other domains.

Information Environment Characterization – Students learn systems theory, approaches and analytic techniques with which to decompose systems, subsystems, objects, and attributes within the global information environment. Students also learn how to create a textual and visual understanding of the challenges they are addressing. This includes applying link, culture, semiotic, pattern, trend and anomaly analyses. Students also study interrelationships, aggregation analysis, and emergent behaviors. This module concludes with recomposition analysis and synthesis of the current state to determine likely outcomes to challenges and what we can do to influence these outcomes in our favor.

Behavioral Influence – Students learn analytic and holistic concepts to understand the decision-making calculus within the information environment as related to decision makers; includes will, human factors, group dynamics, prospect theory, and social identity theory. The focus is on developing capabilities related to influencing the decisions and behaviors of various target audiences.

Operational Design – Students use the analysis they have conducted in previous modules to first conduct anticipatory analysis, in which the students develop two future state depictions to get a sense of what the problem may look like if it is addressed, or not addressed, with activities and effects in the information environment. This work is aided by Center of Gravity analysis, which helps students determine where to target their information and influence effects. Students learn assessment terminology, techniques, and approaches. Measures of Effectiveness, Measure of Effectiveness Indicators, and Measures of Performance receive significant emphasis. Students are required to develop an assessment methodology and specific criteria for the problem they are working. Students then apply an information environment framework and a hierarchy of effort to align activities and effects to achieve objectives and an end-state. They examine how components of will and capability interact to reach the desired end-state they are tasked to meet. Students learn operational design techniques and begin developing an operational approach (draft course of action).

Influence Planning – In this block of instruction, students engage with a range of crucial planning and operational concepts and approaches. They receive instruction in integrated planning and campaigning—the indispensable art of conducting continuous planning and operations in parallel to deal with fast-moving, digital age problems. They also engage with the means for developing a whole-of-governments and whole-of-alliances approach, bringing as many important players from across the globe and various organizations as possible into the effort to address the problem at hand. Through the use of case studies, students also learn how to engage in Narrative Warfare, winning the struggle of the narrative using effective meta-narratives, narratives, and messages.

Red-Teaming & Wargaming – Students learn to manage risk, think like the adversary and other actors, and discern nth-order effects by applying wargaming and red-teaming methods and techniques. Students learn to use an action-reaction-counteraction methodology to learn how wargamers and red-teamers should interact to ensure the plan is as thorough as possible and that they are anticipating adversary actions to the greatest possible degree.

Capstone Practical Exercise (PE) – The capstone PE is delivered in two phases providing students with a realistic scenario within which they can apply all concepts, techniques, and constructs learned throughout the course. Phase I consists of a 2.5-hour oral examination to ensure students have grasped IEAA concepts and contexts; phase II is 8 hours of concept and technique application culminating with each small group delivering a thorough 45-minute IE recommendation to a senior leader panel.

Christian Andros recently retired from the Department of the Navy after 32 years of service. An intelligence officer, he has a background in Kinetic and Non-Kinetic Targeting, Information Operations and Intelligence Analysis. His most recent position was Director of Intelligence at the Marine Corps Information Operations Center (MCIOC). He holds a Masters Degree from Mary Washington College, a BA from Penn State University and is a graduate of the USMC Command and Staff College. Christian co-authored the USMC Service Concept of Operations for Information Environment Battlespace Awareness (IEBA CONOP), linking MCDP-8 (Information) to IEBA.  He also was a key contributor on the Joint Operations in the Information Environment Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (OIE TTP) Guide for the Joint Information Operations Warfighting Center. As a plankholder of the Marine Corps Information Command (MCIC) he was awarded the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award. Christian also served as an Intelligence Specialist in the US Navy where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife Judy. 

Tom DiSilverio has nearly 40 years experience in the intelligence, engineering, education, space and arms control arenas.  A retired Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Analyst and Air Force Reserve colonel, he has also worked for major defense engineering firms (Ford Aerospace, Loral Command and Control, SAIC) as a systems and test engineer.   He worked as the principal test engineer for astrodynamic software applications and as an on-site programmer analyst for the Space Defense Operations Center in Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station for seven years.  He helped design, build and operate the United Nation’s remote Weapons of Mass Destruction video/sensor monitoring system in Iraq in the 1990s.  He served as the first Chief of On-Site Monitoring Operations for the UN’s Commission on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (UNSCOM).  He served as a Deputy Team Chief for one of the 75^th Exploitation Task Force’s Site Survey Teams in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.  He later served as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Masters of Science in Strategic Intelligence program for reservists at the Joint Military Intelligence College (now National Intelligence University) and served for nearly 20 years as both a contractor and a DIA employee as the Weapons of Mass Destruction Analyst and Defense Warning Advisor for the North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command.

Dr. Robert Ehlers is a retired Air Force colonel with 24 years of service as an intelligence officer.  He completed 12 active-duty assignments including tours from the unit to the theater-command level and special-duty assignments teaching history at the Air Force Academy and the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.  Rob commanded at the flight, squadron, and group levels.  His educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in international studies and history from Ohio State; a master’s degree in history from the University of Florida, Gainesville; and a Ph.D. from Ohio State in military, European, and African history.  From 2010 to 2016, Rob served as the Director of the new Center for Security Studies and Professor of Security Studies at Angelo State University, leading the development of seven new online degree programs.  These online programs, which included bachelor’s and master’s degrees in security studies, intelligence studies, homeland security, and criminal justice, have won national awards and are widely recognized among service-related personnel as useful and effective degrees.  Rob joined JMark Services Inc., in January 2014 as a mentor for the Information Environment Advanced Analysis (IEAA) course. Rob is the author of Targeting the Third Reich: Air Intelligence and the Allied Bombing Campaigns, which won the Air Force Historical Society’s Best Airpower Book award for 2010.  His second book, The Mediterranean Air War: Airpower and Allied Victory in World War II, won the U.S. Military History Group’s award for the best book published in 2015-2016 on any topic relating to American military history from 1918-1945.

Nic Grauer is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel with 23 years of experience as a behavioral scientist and information operations officer.  In his final active-duty assignment, he served as faculty in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Air Force Academy where he initiated and led all Information Warfare curriculum, education, & research in the USAFA’s 2nd largest major.  Before that Nic worked for the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, where he managed the entire Air Force Information Operations enterprise including Operations Security, Psychological Operations, & Deception programs and guided a complex Air Force-wide Information Warfare overhaul.  While on Air Staff, he stood-up and managed the first ever 14F Information Operations Officer career field that applies social science principles to influence the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of foreign individuals and groups.  As an Information Operations leader, Nic deployed to special operations units in 5 middle east nations where he trained 160 US and international forces to assess the effectiveness of their Psychological Operations in the fight against ISIS for Operation INHERENT RESOLVE.  Nic also served as the speechwriter for two INDOPACOM commanders, crafting strategic messaging for the Navy 4-star admirals to shape regional audiences’ perceptions.

Mike Phillips is JMark’s President and Chief Executive Officer. In that role, he implements JMark’s strategic vision and goals, drives corporate growth and success, heads a dynamic leadership team, and ensures JMark’s continued expansion in national and global markets. He was formerly the Executive Director, Analysis Mission Programs, Department of the Air Force, where he was responsible for implementing standards and policy for intelligence analysis across the USAF and for the development of advanced intelligence analysis education and training programs. In that role, he served as primary agent for professionalization, outreach, and rapid improvement of Air Force intelligence analysis.

Dr. Erin Roper is an experimental social/political psychologist.  She previously served as the Senior Intelligence Officer for DIA’s Human Factors Analysis Division, and was the standard bearer for Human Factors analysis and methodologies in the U.S. Defense Enterprise.  During her seven years of government service, she lead multiple international working groups on techniques for applying social science methods to intelligence problem sets, and lead a research team which is an internationally recognized expert in developing and applying intelligence-relevant social network analytical approaches.  She built and delivered a Division-wide, four-week, graduate-level curriculum to train her analytic workforce, a first in the intelligence community.  She has research and teaching interests in advanced and novel analytic methods, leadership decision making, information operations, and antecedents to political violence.  In 2012, she accepted an academic appointment as a member of the psychology faculty at Northwest Arkansas Community College.