text: Chapter 4
  * Promoting the legitimacy of the missions of the security force assistance brigade and the foreign
  security force among the IPI.
  * Understanding civil knowledge of the civil component to update the common operational picture.
  4-33. Understanding the civil component of the OE requires comprehension and analysis of civil considerations
  within METT-TC. Civil considerations reflect the influence of human-made infrastructure; civilian institutions;
  and attitudes and activities of the civilian leaders, populations, and organizations within an AO on the conduct
  of military operations. CAO staff organizes data collection for mission analysis according to groupings of
  ASCOPE (for example, cities and population sizes, resources, capacities, ethnicities, and cultural nuances as
  they apply to the IPI). CAO planners and staff must understand the strengths, vulnerabilities, opportunities, and
  threats of the civil component with respect to each category represented by ASCOPE.
  4-34. Army forces use operational variables to understand, analyze, and evaluate the broad environment in
  which they are conducting operations. They use mission variables to focus analysis on specific elements of
  the environment that apply to their mission. Military planners describe the OE in terms of operational
  variables. Operational variables describe the military aspects of an OE and the population’s influence on it.
  Joint doctrine identifies the operational variables as political, military, economic, social, information, and
  infrastructure (PMESII). U.S. Army doctrine adds two variables to the joint variables, physical environment,
  and time (PT), to make PMESII-PT.
  4-35. The application of the elements of ASCOPE during civil considerations analysis identifies the key and
  decisive civil areas, structures, capabilities, organizations, people, and events of each operational variable.
  For example, analysts would apply ASCOPE to the entire concept of economics. The staff would ask the
  questions—
  * Where are the key and decisive areas of economic activity?
  * Where are the key and decisive structures associated with economic activity?
  * What are the key and decisive economic capabilities that forces must engage and restore (for
  example, banking)?
  * What are the key and decisive economic organizations?
  * Who are the key and decisive economic people?
  * What are the key and decisive economic events?
  4-36. These questions would lead to effective CAO supporting plans to the CONOPS of the commander,
  identify measures of effectiveness, and provide the basis for troops-to-task analysis.
  4-37. An operational and mission variable analysis approach integrates people and processes by using
  multiple information sources, collaborative analysis, and evaluation to build a common, shared, holistic
  knowledge base of the OE. Operational variable analysis emphasizes a multidimensional approach toward
  situational understanding, distinguished by an analysis of the six interrelated characteristics of ASCOPE
  within each variable. Table 4-1 depicts a PMESII/ASCOPE analysis.