Effects Based Operations (EBO) and Predictive Battlespace Awareness (PBA) are intimately linked. Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace (IPB), the predictive component of PBA, provides a structured analytical process for defining the battlespace environment, describing the battlespace effects that influence all sides, modeling the adversary, and determining likely enemy courses of action (COA). IPB documents some of the necessary elements of EBO, such as centers of gravity, counter-COAs, and indicators. The IPB process has been adapted to Information Operations (IO) through Intelligence Preparation of the Information Battlespace (IPIB), a prototype system for cyber-defense. IPIB ranks Enemy cyber-COAs and lists mission-critical network assets that must be defended. It is clear that IPIB can be inverted for developing COAs that implement EBO, and the prototype is being modified for offensive IO. Full-spectrum EBO would combine kinetic, cyber, and cognitive COAs to affect an adversary's behavior. This paper uses a Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) scenario to: 1) Provide an example of EBO-based PBA for CIP. 2) Illustrate the interaction between EBO and PBA. 3) Demonstrate the need for a national Critical Infrastructure vulnerability assessment. 4) Identify why simulation and wargaming are the most viable means of performing such an assessment.
In the area of Modeling and Simulations for Wargaming and Exercise Support, Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace (IPB) is a flexible process that assists commanders and their staffs in planning and executing campaigns and missions. The Automated Assistance with IPB (A2IPB) tool, being developed for the USAF, enables the leveraging of information about the adversary's capabilities, potential centers of gravity, and possible courses of action (COAs) across all dimensions of the battlespace. Operational staffs heavily depend on IPB products prepared during the analysis of the adversary situation and the evaluation of the battlepace's effects in order to forumlate initial friendly force dispositions and schemes of maneuver. Wargaming is a conscious attempt to visualize the flow of a military operation, given friendly strengths and dispositions, adversary assets, and possible COAs, and a specific battlespace environment. It attempts to foresee the action, reaction, and counteraction dynamics between a pair of friendly and adversary COAs. A2IPB has the potential to allow the commander and his staff to conduct a wargame from within the software. Friendly COAs will be graphically portrayed against the adversary's most likely COA and then against the most dangerous COA. By having all relevent infomration loaded into the same database, conduct of the wargame is facilitated, data modification is easier, and the ability to plan back a particular set of COAs multiple times is provided. Using A2IPB facilities the commander's decision upon a COA believed to be the most advantegeous to the operation. Using the results of wargaming associated with the COA, the staff prpared OPORDs that implement the commander's decision.
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