Sources of Commanders’ Information Needs

Our conversations with commanders and review of the written record suggest that commanders’ information needs generally flow from an interaction of factors within three principal arenas: commanders’ guidance; the operating environment, including the information domain; and the resources available to the commander. We discuss in this chapter each of these arenas, devoting our attention primarily to the one most relevant to our study: the operating environment, including the information domain. The first source of commanders’ information needs is the higher-level guidance that commanders receive regarding their overall mission and other matters. Influence operations planning should flow from the top down,