TL;DR: In an exploratory study, experienced battalion commanders given more varied intelligence did not envision a broader range of mission actions. Their established planning rubrics shaped what they noticed and prioritized.

How intelligence can narrow a plan

Military planners work with incomplete information and limited time. Intelligence products help commanders manage that uncertainty by emphasizing the enemy's "most likely" and "most dangerous" courses of action. Those labels are useful, but focusing on two expected futures may leave less familiar threats out of the plan.

Herbert Simon's bounded rationality model describes how time, incomplete information, and human cognitive limits constrain decisions. Anchoring is a related heuristic: relying too heavily on information that frames an initial judgment. The framework featured in our report adapts Simon's model to illustrate how time constraints, incomplete information, and cognitive limitations can jointly constrain decision-making

We did not measure anchoring directly. We asked whether broader intelligence would help commanders envision a wider range of mission-relevant actions during hasty planning, and we expected that it would.

The tactical envisioning exercise

We developed a scenario-based tactical envisioning (SBTE) exercise around a fictitious offensive mission. Six active-duty Army lieutenant colonels, all serving as battalion commanders in brigade combat teams, took part across two workshop sessions. Each commander received one of three versions of the same scenario:

• The low-information packet described only the most likely enemy course of action.
• The current-information packet described the most likely and most dangerous courses of action, following standard practice.
• The high-information packet included both standard courses of action plus cues about loitering-munition drones, disrupted water and power, and an irregular biker gang that could contribute to civil unrest.

The commanders had 60 minutes to review their packet and list as many guidance items, planning considerations, and anticipated staff actions as they could. They then joined a 20-minute focus group to discuss how they had processed the scenario.

We counted each distinct item as an envisioned mission action (EMA), a descriptive proxy for how broadly a commander explored the problem. Two reviewers independently coded the actions into the Army's six warfighting functions: command and control, intelligence, movement and maneuver, fires, protection, and sustainment. They then reconciled disagreements. This coding captured how many actions commanders listed and where they directed their attention. It did not evaluate whether a particular distribution was optimal.

What the commanders wrote

Broader information did not produce longer lists. The two commanders in the low-information condition generated 55 and 88 EMAs, averaging 71.5. The current-information pair generated 35 and 32, averaging 33.5, while the high-information pair generated 46 and 44, averaging 45.0.

With only two commanders per condition, we cannot attribute these differences to the information packets or rule out individual writing styles. The pattern went against our hypothesis: the commanders who received the least information listed the most actions.

The focus groups helped us understand these responses. All six commanders reported using a structured planning rubric learned through professional military education and refined through operational experience. Regardless of which packet they received, they consistently prioritized higher-headquarters mission intent and terrain and/or weather. The novel cues in the high-information packet were not prominent in their written responses or focus group discussions.

How familiar rubrics shaped planning

Under time pressure, the commanders' rubrics gave them a dependable structure for planning around mission intent, key tasks, end state, and warfighting functions. The similarities across participants suggest that professional military education had created lasting planning habits centered on the mission.

Those familiar rubrics may also have limited what commanders considered. All four commanders whose packets explicitly labeled a most dangerous enemy course of action centered their planning on it. We interpret this as possibly reflecting a shared risk-mitigation heuristic. Movement and maneuver received the most consistent attention, averaging 15.2 actions per commander. Fires, protection, and sustainment averaged 4.0, 4.2, and 3.5 actions, respectively.

These descriptive patterns show which planning structures remained influential as the amount and variety of intelligence changed. They do not establish that any commander planned poorly or that one balance of warfighting functions is best.

Testing prompts for divergent thinking

Adding more cues may be insufficient if commanders interpret new information through familiar rubrics. A more direct approach would be to add a brief divergent-thinking step after commanders draft their initial guidance. They could reframe the problem, consider a low-probability but high-consequence event, or generate one option outside their usual rubric.

The SBTE provides a controlled setting in which professional military education programs could test these prompts. EMA and warfighting-function coding could also help commanders reflect on where they directed their planning attention. Both uses remain proposals. The exercise is a proof of concept for research and training; it is not a validated measure of planning quality or a demonstrated way to improve operational performance.

What the study can tell us

We collected data from six relatively similar commanders within one month, so the findings are exploratory and not statistically generalizable. EMA counts may capture verbosity as well as cognitive breadth. We did not calculate a formal interrater-reliability coefficient or score the quality or adaptability of the actions. The scenario design combined course-of-action labels with novel threat cues, so it also cannot separate anchoring from the effects of information richness.

Larger studies could test the exercise with more commanders, structured response sheets, expert judgments of planning quality, and experimental prompts that isolate specific mechanisms. In these workshops, established planning frameworks appeared to shape tactical envisioning more than additional intelligence did.

Full Citation

Stothart, C., Stratmoen, E., Ejiogu, K., Maue, B., Evans, T., Karas, M., Sebok, A., Dermody, M., & Blair, M. (2025). Overcoming cognition-limiting heuristics in mission planning (ARI TR 1471). U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences.