Military Review English Edition January-February 2017 | Page 67
COMPLEX IPB
issue becomes what national and international instruments of power could be enabled apart from military
force in order to restore the Donbass region’s systems
specifically, and Ukraine’s identity, ecosystem, and
postrevolutionary equilibrium overall.
Conclusion
The complex IPB process expands the doctrinal
intelligence preparation processes to include bottom-up intelligence refinement and dynamic human
network analysis. Therefore, in operational environments characterized by complex demographics and
their various incentive structures, complex IPB provides a much needed comprehensive analysis—not
only of these system dynamics but also of their interactions and capabilities on varying levels. Complex
IPB, as employed during the Ukrainian forces’ 2015
practical exercise, undoubtedly helped the participants achieve a more comprehensive understanding
of the OE specifically, and of the antiterrorism operations as a whole.
The Ukraine experience with employment of
complex IPB suggests the strong potential for achieving
similar results in other operations, such as antiterrorism operations in Africa. Other potential test cases for
this process could include operations in the Caucasus
and Levant regions in complex urban environments,
and in megacities. It is crucial that human and group
dynamics fuse with infrastructure and physical environment analysis in order to understand anti-access/
area denial hybrid-threat connections and to create the
most comprehensive understanding possible of human
behaviors that affect operations. Slava Ukraini, Geroyam
Slava (Glory to Ukraine, Glory to the Heroes)
Notes
1. Army Techniques Publication (ATP) 2-01.3, Intelligence
Preparation of the Battlefield (Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Publishing Office [GPO], 2014), 1-2. ATP 2-01.3 also is published
as Marine Corps Reference Publication 2-3A, Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 1-1. A Marine Corps staff analyzes “the threat and the
environment in a specific geographic area.”
4. Ibid., 1-2.
5. Ibid.
6. Tom Pike and Eddie Brown, “Complex IPB,” Small Wars
Journal website, 24 March 2016, accessed 5 December 2016,
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/complex-ipb. Pike and
Brown’s model shows similarities to Jamison Jo Medby and
Russell W. Glenn, Street Smart: Intelligence Preparation of the
Battlefield for Urban Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND
Arroyo Center, 2002), accessed 24 October 2016, https://www.
rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2007/
MR1287.pdf.
7. Pike and Brown, “Complex IPB.”
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.; Tom Pike and Piotr M. Zagorowski, “Dense Urban
Areas: The Case for Complex IPB,” Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin 42, no. 3 ( July-September 2016). Note that in their
March 2016 article, Pike and Brown erroneously called the first
step of complex IPB “Define the area of operations,” but in Pike
and Zagorowski’s July-September article, they corrected step one
to read “Define the operational area.” Although published a year
after the Raptor 14 team’s experience in Ukraine, the concepts in
Pike and Brown, and in Pike and Zagorowski, eloquently capture
the principles the team used.
10. Pike and Brown, “Complex IPB”; Joint Publication
( JP) 2-01.3, Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO, 21 May 2014), I-1.
11. Pike and Brown, “Complex IPB.”
MILITARY REVIEW January-February 2017
12. JP 3-0, Joint Operations (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO,
11 August 2011), xv–xvi and GL-14.
13. Ibid., xvi.
14. JP 2-01.3, Joint Intelligence Preparation, I-1.
15. Ibid., I-5.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., fig. I-6, p. I-25.
18. Phillip Karber and Joshua Thibeault, “Russia’s New-Generation Warfare,” Army Magazine website, 20 May 2016,
accessed 5 December 2016, https://www.ausa.org/articles/
russia%E2%80%99s-new-generation-warfare.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Michael Armstrong, Armstrong’s Handbook of Reward Management Practice: Improving Performance through Reward, 5th ed.
(London: Kogan, 2015), describes ways that incentives influence
individual decision making, cooperation, and competition.
22. Elise Giuliano, “The Origins of Separatism: Popular Grievances in Donetsk and Luhansk,” PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo
No. 396, October 2015, accessed 24 October 2016, http://www.
ponarseurasia.org/sites/default/files/policy-memos-pdf/Pepm396_
Giuliano_Oct2015_0.pdf.
23. Ibid., 2.
24. A Ukrainian officer described Projekt Novorossiya as consisting of seven territories and involving the notion that Ukraine is not
sovereign and historically belongs to Russia. Novorossiya plans came
to fruition first with Crimea and then by the Donetsk and Lugansk
oblasts. The overall goal of the project was to unite Kharkiv, Lugansk,
Donestsk, Zaporizhia, Mikolaiv, and Odessa with Transnistria and
isolate Ukraine from the Black Sea. Projekt Novorossiya is considered
defunct due to lack of popular support.
25. In “Complex IPB,” Pike and Brown discuss the potential
calculations for the possible effects of different groups.
26. Karber and Thibeault, “Russia’s New-Generation Warfare.”
27. Pike and Brown, “Complex IPB.”
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