Area Study Overview

Welcome to the Overview section of the Area Study.

This is the “at a glance” portion of the Area Study.

There are four parts of this Area Study Overview.

1. The Area of Operations, or AO

2. The Area of Interest, or AI

And by the way, I’m not going to Army acronym you to death, but these two are crucial and unavoidable. We’ll be using AO and AI through the rest of this course, so commit them to memory.

3. The third part is the Threat Environment Overview

4. And the fourth is the Contingency Overview.

So if I had to give someone an introduction to the area in two minutes, this is where I’d spend it.

The Area Study is a tactical level intelligence document. Tactical level means local level.

This is going to include things like natural disasters, so flooding, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and also man made disasters like riots, societal collapse, war and violent conflict. We will feel the direct effects of this at our tactical, local level.

Intelligence and operations have three levels dictated by time and geography: tactical, operational, and strategic.

The tactical level includes localized and relatively short duration activities and operations. So going to the grocery stores happens at the tactical level. Patrolling with your neighborhood watch is a tactical level mission.

Above that is the collection of numerous tactical operations across a larger area over the course of days, weeks, or months. We call this a campaign or operation, which exists at the operational level.

Above that is the strategic level, which is primarily concerned with the policies and decisions that dictate when and where these major operations are conducted, and usually over much longer time spans, generally years or decades.

For our purposes, the tactical level is what happens in your neighborhood, town, or county.

This tactical levels contains the threats, hazards, events, and conditions that will directly affect you.

The operational level is what happens in your state or region, which carries direct and indirect effects.

And the strategic level is national or global, which carries indirect effects.

For instance, a protest in your town occurs at the tactical level.

It’s driven by a statewide political organization, pushing protests across numerous counties, which occur on the operational level.

These political actors are also coordinating with national organizations during a nationwide day of protest, which is at the national or strategic level.

We won’t get further into the weeds of this concept, other than to say that even though we’re building an Area Study at the tactical, local level, operational and strategic events, like an EMP or a war with China, can have tactical implications.

So it’s important to note the threats at the local level — those protest groups, rioters, criminals — while also understanding the local effects of those strategic threats like a war with China.

The better we understand and anticipate what’s happening on the national/strategic level, the better we can anticipate the follow-on effects to trickle down and finally end up in our neighborhoods.

So, how is my neighborhood affected by a high intensity, conventional war with China in 2025?

This is why we do an Area Study.

In the next video, we’ll cover how to identify your Area of Operations.