O.O.D.A

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Whether it be in martial arts or on the airsoft field. All battle fields should follow this guiding principal. Observe your enemy, by far this is the upmost crucial point we can make. Far to often people with jump straight deciding and acting. One good example of this is cops swatting people in their homes. The cops receive a call about someone in danger and immediate bust down the door to the home. By immediately deciding that someone is in danger and acting by breaching the home; the cops have failed to observe. This has lead to many tactical mistakes and misjudgments in the field.

Intelligence gathering

Human Intelligence

Human intelligence is everything that you can learn from talking with people. For our example before a cop were to swat a residence might it not be prudent to talk with neighbors or people in the area to possibly confirm reports.

Signal Intelligence

Signal intelligence is everything that can be learned from gathering signals in the area. This may be useful in that it would tell you who may be operating in the area. For example if you are picking up radio traffic you know there is at least 2 people in the area talking to each other. If the signals are encrypted that could also indicate the presence of certain personnel. Even the absence of signals may tell you something.

Open Source Intelligence

Open source intelligence is everything that can be learned from trawling open source data. For example if we have a subjects name we could look them up on social media platforms. We could look them up on public databases. It is often surprising what people have publicly available. The government also has extensive databases of different types that may be of use. For example map data or satellite data of a particular region.

Cyber Intelligence

Cyber Intelligence is anything that can be learned from cyber space. For example knowing where your subject likes to shop or what sites they visit often. Knowing a subjects search history could be a gold mine of data.