Overview
Situational understanding is the accurate interpretation of a situation and the likely actions of groups and individuals within it. This includes adversaries, neutral parties, assumed friendly entities and non-combatants. Awareness, analysis, knowledge, comprehension and judgement facilitate understanding, which enables timely and accurate decision-making. Situational understanding is an essential prerequisite for the conduct of campaigns and operation.
Air power plays a key role in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), offering real-time battlespace awareness.
ISR is an activity that synchronises and integrates direction, planning and collection capabilities and actions with processing, exploitation and dissemination systems.
Many assets in the battlespace have a surveillance capability. Surveillance operations are a key activity that is crucial to underpin a commander’s understanding of the force disposition and current activities of an adversary or potential adversary.