Knowing the enemy's characteristics to disrupt their system

Outline

• Hook: In the current tempo of conflict, orienting the enemy isn’t about guessing; it’s about reading the entire system they depend on.

• Core idea: Orienting the enemy means knowing their characteristics to disrupt their operating picture and plans.

• How it looks on the ground: patterns, decision loops, and vulnerabilities; the edge comes from anticipation, not luck.

• What it isn’t: it’s not primarily about allied quirks, tech parity alone, or alliances with neutrals.

• The toolkit: intelligence, analysis, and deception as means to reveal and exploit the enemy’s system.

• Mindset and culture: humility, adaptability, and disciplined curiosity.

• Real-world analogies and cautions: chess, weather forecasting, and the human factor.

• Close: turning knowledge into decisive action while staying honest about uncertainty.

Orienting the Enemy: It’s About Reading the System, Not Just the Moves

Here’s the thing: in warfighting, orienting the enemy is less about predicting a single move and more about understanding an entire system—how an adversary thinks, what they value, how their organs of effort fit together, and where their vulnerabilities live. When you truly know the enemy’s characteristics, you create a kind of pressure that disrupts their plans without necessarily overpowering them with brute force. It’s a strategic arc that starts in intelligence rooms and ends on the battlefield, where small, well-timed actions can cascade into real advantages.

What does orienting the enemy involve?

• It’s about knowing the enemy’s characteristics to disrupt their system. Think of the enemy as a network, not a single wire. If you learn the pattern of how a rival gathers supplies, makes decisions, and communicates under stress, you can throw a wrench into one or more of those gears. The goal isn’t to outshoot them every step of the way; it’s to interrupt their rhythm, confuse their priorities, and force them to operate in a way that favors your plans.

• It includes the enemy’s behaviors and systems, not just their weapons. The mind behind the weapon matters just as much as the weapon itself. If you can forecast how they react to pressure, you can anticipate where they’ll invest effort or where a spoiler—like misinformation or deception—will land.

• It’s dynamic, not static. The moment you think you’ve “got them,” they’ll adapt. Orienting the enemy means watching for those adaptations and adjusting your own approach in near real time. This is where tempo and initiative become strategic tools, not just battlefield niceties.

How orienting looks when you’re in motion

Let me explain with a practical picture. Imagine a commander surveying a theater with multiple fronts, electronic signals, and shifting alliances. The commander isn’t just tallying casualties or weapon counts. They’re constructing a living map of the enemy: their preferred channels of communication, the choke points in their supply lines, the timing of their reinforcements, and the likely places where information leaks or misreads will occur.

• Patterns and decision cycles. The enemy isn’t random. They own routines—where they expect cover, where they look for weakness, how they confirm a move before committing. By recognizing these cycles, you can align your actions to muddle their decision process.

• Exploiting vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities aren’t always glamorous chinks in armor. Sometimes they’re timing gaps, bottlenecks, or overreactions to pressure. If you can push the enemy to respond in a way that reveals their next move, you gain clarity and space.

• Misleading the opponent about your actions. Deception isn’t about trickery for trickery’s sake; it’s about shaping their expectations so they misallocate effort. If they believe you’re pursuing one course, you can pivot to a different one that lands harder.

• Intelligence as a lens, not a mouthpiece. Information should illuminate what the enemy is really trying to do, not merely confirm what you want to hear. The best analysts question assumptions, model plausible counterfactuals, and track contradictions in the enemy’s story.

Not the same as other strategic ideas

There are related ideas that sound adjacent but aren’t the core concept of orienting the enemy. Understanding allied forces, for instance, is essential for harmony and speed, but it isn’t the central task of orienting the foe. Minimizing the enemy’s technological advantage is a noble aim, yet the essence of orienting is broader: it’s about exposing the enemy’s own patterns and using them to disrupt their system. Building alliances with neutral parties can matter for the larger strategic picture, but orienting the enemy is about decoding the adversary’s structure so you can press them where they’re weakest. If you focus only on weapons parity or external partnerships, you might miss the deeper leverage that comes from understanding how the enemy operates as a whole.

A practical toolkit for orienting the enemy

• Intelligence fusion and analysis. Gather signals from many sources—human intel, signals intelligence, open-source information, and field observations. Then cross-check and challenge the narrative. The goal is a coherent picture of how the enemy operates, not a single data point you’re certain about.

• Mapping the decision cycle. Identify who makes decisions, how they validate options, and what constraints shape their choices. The better you map the cycle, the more you can predict the move before it happens.

• Red teaming and adversary emulation. Have teams simulate how the enemy might respond to different actions. This isn’t theater; it’s a way to expose blind spots and generate robust options that survive counter-moves.

• Deception as a deliberate tool. Not every misdirection is a cheat; some are a necessary element of shaping the battlefield. The right deception helps you reveal the enemy’s cadence, so you can plan with greater confidence.

• Vulnerability analysis and leading indicators. Look for choke points in the enemy’s systems—logistical, informational, or psychological. Early leaks there can guide you toward decisive objectives.

• Real-time feedback loops. A plan should be observable, reviewable, and adjustable. If you can’t see what’s working and what isn’t, you’ll be playing catch-up, not staying ahead.

A few mental models to keep in mind

• The chessboard mindset. Think several moves ahead, not just the next capture. Each action should constrain the opponent’s options while expanding your own.

• The weather forecast analogy. The enemy’s behavior shifts with pressure, terrain, and information flow. You’re reading the forecast and scheduling actions when storms are most favorable.

• The human factor. People—whether on a staff, in a platoon, or in a detainee relationship—drive outcomes. Understanding motivation, fatigue, and morale helps you predict choices more reliably.

What orienting the enemy looks like in practice (with caveats)

The path isn’t glittering. You’ll face noise, uncertainty, and conflicting reports. It’s tempting to overfit a narrative to a single trend, but orienting the enemy demands caution and humility. Misreading the enemy’s priorities can push you toward sharper miscalculations. So, yes, there are limits to what you can know—and that’s not a failure; it’s reality. The trick is to stay agile, keep options open, and let new information guide updates to your view.

A few concrete examples help anchor the concept without drifting into abstractions:

• In a contested region with limited reach, the enemy’s supply chain might reveal a predictable point of friction. By focusing operations near that friction, you not only slow them down but also learn in real time how they reallocate resources.

• In a cyber-evangelic environment, even small data anomalies—timing quirks, consistent latencies, or predictable maintenance windows—can betray routines. Spotting these tells a lot about how the enemy allocates effort and what assumptions they’re baked into their planning.

• In a multi-domain setting, where air, sea, and cyber intersect, orienting the enemy means watching how pressure in one domain ripples through the others. A well-timed action in one domain can force a suboptimal choice in another, creating opportunities for your team to press.

Balancing speed with caution

Speed is a weapon, but rushing can be a liability. Orienting the enemy doesn’t demand perfect certainty; it leans on timely, credible understanding. The best practitioners mix decisive action with a readiness to revise: “If that assumption is wrong, what else could be true, and how would that shift our next move?” That kind of flexibility is why disciplined teams stay ahead even when the fog is thick.

Emotional cues and human tone, used sparingly, can help teams stay grounded. A quick, honest acknowledgment—“We’re not sure about that piece yet; let’s verify”—keeps momentum without venturing into overconfidence. And yes, it’s okay to pause and re-evaluate when new information arrives. Orienting the enemy is not a single act; it’s a dynamic habit.

Why this matters in the bigger picture

In the grand scheme, orienting the enemy isn’t just a tactic; it’s a philosophy about decision-making under pressure. If you truly understand the adversary’s patterns, you gain the edge to shape events rather than chase them. You don’t have to outnumber your opponent everywhere at once—you just need to outthink their system where it matters most.

Toward a confident but cautious mindset

• Stay curious. The enemy is a moving target, and so should be your understanding. Ask questions, test assumptions, and welcome surprising data.

• Stay methodical. Rely on evidence, not rumors. Build a narrative that fits multiple data points, and be willing to discard it when new facts don’t align.

• Stay grounded in ethics and judgment. The aim isn’t cruelty or cleverness for its own sake; it’s effectiveness that respects the realities of warfare and the people involved.

A closing thought

Orienting the enemy is about turning knowledge into influence. It’s not glamorous in the sense of dramatic last-minute gambits, but it’s powerful in its reliability. When you can name the enemy’s characteristics and anticipate how those traits will shape their actions, you’re not just reacting—you’re shaping the battlefield. You’re choosing options they have to confront, not merely the ones you hoped they’d encounter.

If you’re exploring this topic through study or professional reading, you’ll recognize the thread: understanding the enemy’s system is the key to creating real, lasting effects. It’s a disciplined, ongoing craft—one that blends evidence, judgment, and a steady nerve. And yes, it’s as much about what you don’t do as what you do. The most effective orienting often hinges on recognizing when to wait, when to push, and when to listen for a hint that changes the entire picture. In short, orienting the enemy means reading their system, and using that reading to disrupt their plans before they can lock in their next move. It’s a subtle art, and it can be incredibly, stubbornly effective.