text: Chapter 8
  intelligence and operations officers, in coordination with the rest of the staff, develop a synchronized and
  integrated information collection plan that satisfies the unit’s maneuver, targeting, and information
  requirements.
  8-85. A unit’s ability to see enemy forces is critical to the conduct of the defense. Defensive plans must
  address the sustainment, replacement, and reconstitution of information collection assets throughout the
  preparation and execution of the defense. In the defense, the performance of information collection tasks
  overlaps unit planning and preparing phases. Leaders performing these tasks often deploy within their
  assigned areas before their units fully develop their plans. These leaders need to respond to changes in
  orientation and mission. Commanders ensure that their staffs fully plan, prepare, and assess the execution of
  their information collection synchronization plans to ensure that all their commander's critical information
  requirements are answered to inform their overall plans.
  FIRES
  8-86. In the defense, units use fires to neutralize, suppress, or destroy enemy forces; to delay or disrupt an
  enemy force’s ability to execute a given COA; and to enhance the effects of massed direct fires. Thus, fire
  support systems support both the commander’s main and supporting efforts.
  8-87. A defending force is more effective if it can locate and attack enemy forces while they are stationary
  and concentrated in assembly areas or advancing along LOCs, as opposed to when attacking enemy forces
  deploy in combat formations within the MBA. To accomplish this, a defending force must employ available
  indirect and joint fires throughout its assigned area and closely link them to target acquisition means, such as
  information collection assets.
  8-88. As defensive plans develop, units visualize how to synchronize, coordinate, and distribute the effects
  of indirect and direct fire at the decisive time and place. They place permissive FSCMs as close as possible
  to friendly positions to enable the rapid engagement of attacking enemy forces by indirect and joint fires.
  Units coordinate the massing of fires effects on enemy targets, concentrated at obstacles and other choke
  points, before enemy forces can disperse. Proper distribution of fires ensures the massing of overwhelming
  combat power at these points and ensures the destruction or neutralization of high-payoff targets without
  wasting assets through repetitive engagements by multiple friendly systems.
  8-89. Effects from multiple domains have the greatest impact on an enemy when units synchronize them
  with direct fires, obstacles, and counterattack plans. Units integrate the fire support and obstacle plans from
  the beginning of planning for a defense. Indirect fires complement the effects of obstacles and can disrupt
  enemy attempts to breach or bypass these obstacles. All elements in the fire support chain must understand
  the commander’s intent, the scheme of maneuver, and the obstacle plan.
  8-90. Various fire support considerations exist for each phase of the defense. As part of shaping operations
  or supporting efforts during defense preparations, units try to disrupt an enemy force’s attack preparations
  by—
  * Employing indirect fires on choke points and likely enemy force assembly areas.
  * Employing air support on known, suspected, and likely enemy force locations.
  * Attriting enemy resources by continuously engaging high-payoff targets.
  * Conducting electromagnetic warfare to degrade the enemy force’s ability to command and control
  forces.
  * Employing counterfires to engage and destroy enemy artillery and mortar systems attempting to
  deliver suppressive fires.
  * Providing fires in support of the unit’s security operations, such as a unit conducting the tactical
  mission task of counterreconnaissance.
  8-91. Units may want to wait to execute a counterfire mission until an engagement begins in the MBA.
  However, when defending forces enjoy qualitative advantages in fire support, the advantages gained from a
  counterfire battle usually outweigh the risks to the defending force. The defender’s ability to mass fires
  quickly and then rapidly reposition forces is a major factor in disrupting enemy forces and establishing the
  conditions for successful defensive operations.