Strategic-intelligence analysis: Contributions from an operational-design orientation

To ensure actions are ‘purposeful’—that is, that they achieve the intended outcome— planners rely on sound intelligence to develop courses of action. Intelligence requirements and subsequent collection in support of any planning effort should be informed by an appreciation of what that effort is seeking to achieve and specifications of what should be collected. This paper examines operational design and suggests that the use of a shared language of factors and conditions can bind the two disciplines—intelligence and planning—together such that the products of intelligence, and the detailed explanations for the area of interest, lead directly to lines of operation and courses of action for planners. The paper presents a case study of organised transnational crime in a law-enforcement context.