BOHICA Blues Today: "Some Assembly Required" (Patreon)

Yay, some Army Intel humor! Because "S2 Staff Humor" is so awesome!

Seriously, when a unit gets assigned a mission, such as the 813th Helicopter Aviation Battalion going to Kosovo, a lot of planning gets started. There's a process called "MDMP" which means "Military Decision-Making Process" which involves everyone from a staff getting together and formulating plans based on their realms of expertise.

The Intelligence section, or "S2 Shop", has a lot of these plans early on. In fact, at the very beginning of the MDMP planning phase, the S2 Intelligence section and the S3 Operations section carry most of the burden (at least in my opinion).

One of the things the Intel shop is responsible for is "assembling a threat model".

What that means is taking a look at an enemy or potential enemy, or some sort of adversarial group. It may not be an actual "enemy" as in someone to engage in combat; it may be an organized crime syndicate, or warlord militia hijacking food supplies.

We try to come up with a likely scenario of what these adversary groups are going to do, and how they are going to do it, and then we plan what can be done to counter these potential problems.

Of course, "assembling a threat model" can also be taken very literally, as Private O'Neil has done here.

However, if you have troops struggling with identifying different armored vehicles for threat identification purposes, maybe assigning them a few detailed model kits might help.