Commander's Critical Information Requirements and How to Determine Them

The US Army has been interested for some time in determining what information was critical for its tactical commanders and their staffs for two reasons. First the Army is interested in the decision-making process in and of itself and anything that could provide insight to that process. Second, with the introduction of automated systems into tactical operations centers, developers need a way to prioritize the information to be provided by those systems to the commander and the staff. The Army Tactical Command and Control System Experimentation Site (AES) at Fort Lewis, Washington, has spent almost three years conducting experiments into the functioning and effectiveness of command and control systems. Part of the research has been into commanders critical information requirements (CCIR) and staff critical information requirements (CIR). Three large research efforts, Force Level Control System (FLCS) experiments 1, 2, and 3 were conducted in 1989 and 1990. The first two examined CCIR at the brigade level; the latter determined CCIR and CIR for intelligence functions at the division. This paper presents some of the methods employed in the research and includes sample results showing the range and depth of the analysis.