A warning that a customer is unlikely to pay an overdue invoice may require immediate action from a local finance manager but be an unnecessary distraction for the organisation’s chief financial officer (CFO). Conversely, an assessment of long-term currency and interest-rate risks would inform the CFO’s financial planning while offering little practical value to finance teams handling day-to-day transactions.
This issue is something we want to avoid as intelligence practitioners. Sending intelligence to the wrong level of decision-maker risks wasting the customer’s time, burying important findings, and drawing senior leaders into decisions that should be dealt with by more junior staff.
This risk can be mitigated by categorising intelligence requirements and products according to the customer’s responsibilities, using the Three Levels of War concept.
The Three Levels of War
The Three Levels of War is a military framework that connects individual actions on the battlefield with campaigns and wider strategic objectives. It divides warfare into three broad levels:
Strategic: Political leaders and senior commanders establish the objectives of the war and decide how national resources will be used to achieve them.
Operational: Commanders plan and conduct campaigns and major operations that translate strategic objectives into achievable military aims.
Tactical: Commanders and personnel plan and conduct battles, engagements, and individual actions that contribute to those operations.
Diagrams illustrating the relationships between the three levels of warfare taken from The Journal of Military Operations
These levels are often associated with different ranks of command, but rank alone does not determine the level. The purpose and scale of the decision are more important. A relatively junior commander may make a decision with strategic consequences, while a senior commander may become involved in a tactical matter.
The boundaries are also permeable. Tactical actions contribute to operational results, which support strategic objectives. Information and feedback also travel in both directions: events at the tactical level may force operational plans or the wider strategy to change.
Case Study: Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
German art of the sinking of the Linda Blanche on 30 January 1915 by Willy Stower
During the First World War, Germany employed a strategy known as “unrestricted submarine warfare” to attack merchant ships carrying supplies to the United Kingdom. German leaders hoped that disrupting the country’s imports of food, fuel, and raw materials would weaken its economy, reduce public morale, and force it to seek peace. This can be broken down under the Three Levels of War theory:
At the strategic level, German leaders sought to weaken the United Kingdom sufficiently to force its withdrawal from the war or secure a settlement favourable to Germany. Submarine warfare formed part of a wider effort to overcome Britain’s maritime power and reduce its ability to continue fighting.
At the operational level, naval commanders planned and coordinated submarine campaigns around the British Isles and along important Atlantic shipping routes. This involved selecting patrol areas, allocating U-boats, identifying concentrations of merchant traffic, maintaining submarines, and responding to British convoy routes and anti-submarine measures.
Planners also had to consider neutral shipping and the political consequences of sinking neutral or passenger vessels. Germany’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 caused heavy shipping losses, but it also contributed to the United States entering the war. This demonstrates how operational decisions can have unintended strategic consequences.
At the tactical level, individual U-boat commanders located, identified, approached, and attacked ships. They selected firing positions, launched torpedoes or used deck guns, assessed the risks posed by escorts, and attempted to evade destroyers, aircraft, and other anti-submarine forces.
This example also shows why the three levels must remain connected. A successful tactical attack could help disrupt an operational supply route, while a series of successful campaigns could advance Germany’s strategic objective. However, tactical success did not guarantee strategic success. Germany sank large amounts of shipping but failed to force Britain out of the war. Read more: Army University Press, Imperial War Museums, US Naval History and Heritage Command.
Application to Intelligence
Applied to intelligence, the Three Levels of War concept provides a useful framework for classifying intelligence according to the decisions it supports:
Strategic Intelligence
Strategic intelligence supports senior leaders responsible for establishing policies, priorities, long-term objectives, and the overall allocation of resources. It commonly addresses broad issues such as an adversary’s intentions and capabilities, long-term political or economic trends, emerging threats, and opportunities.
German leaders receive intelligence showing that the United Kingdom depends heavily on imported food and raw materials. They use this assessment to adopt a strategy intended to disrupt British maritime trade and weaken the country’s ability to continue the war.
Operational Intelligence
Operational intelligence supports the planning, coordination, and execution of campaigns and major operations intended to achieve strategic objectives. It may cover enemy deployments, infrastructure, supply routes, patterns of activity, environmental conditions, available resources, and the effectiveness of current operations.
German naval commanders receive intelligence identifying the principal routes used by merchant vessels carrying supplies to Britain. They use it to determine U-boat patrol areas, allocate submarines, and plan a sustained campaign against British shipping.
Tactical Intelligence
Tactical intelligence supports immediate decisions during battles, engagements, missions, and other individual activities. It is usually more detailed, localised, and time-sensitive than intelligence produced for higher levels.
An individual U-boat commander receives intelligence on the route, speed, composition, and escort arrangements of an approaching convoy. The commander uses it to select an interception point, plan an approach, and decide which vessels to attack.
The same subject may therefore appear in products at all three levels, with the content and detail adjusted for each customer:
Level | Key Question | Example |
|---|---|---|
Strategic | What should the organisation seek to achieve? | How dependent is Britain on maritime imports, and could disrupting them affect the war? |
Operational | How can the strategy be implemented? | Which shipping routes and patrol areas should the submarine campaign prioritise? |
Tactical | How should this particular activity be conducted? | Where and when can this convoy be intercepted, and what protection does it have? |
Levels Describe Use as Well as Content
The level of intelligence is determined by the decision it supports. A satellite image, intercepted message, or human-source report does not automatically belong to one particular level. For example, information about the location of a single enemy vessel may support:
a tactical decision to attack or avoid it;
an operational assessment of shipping patterns; or
a strategic judgement about whether another state is preparing to enter the conflict.
Analysts therefore need to understand who the customer is, what authority they hold, which decision they face, and when they must make it. These requirements determine the appropriate scope, detail, timeframe, and format of the intelligence product.
Relativity
Levels of intelligence can be applied relatively depending on whether you are talking about an entire organisation or one of its constituent parts. Take a intelligence requirements across a supermarket chain for example. Across the entire business, strategic level intelligence may be relevant for the CEO while tactical would be relevant for a store manager.
Level | Decision-Maker | Intelligence | Decision Supported |
|---|---|---|---|
Strategic | CEO | Research indicates that younger customers increasingly favour convenient meals, online ordering, plant-based products, and businesses with strong environmental policies. Competitors are gaining market share by responding to these preferences. | The CEO decides to make younger customers a priority market and approves investment in a new range of convenient, environmentally conscious products. |
Operational | Head of Marketing | Customer surveys identify the products, prices, messages, and online platforms most likely to appeal to the target audience. Regional sales data shows where demand is strongest. | The Head of Marketing plans a national campaign, selects the products to promote, allocates the advertising budget, and identifies priority regions and platforms. |
Tactical | Store Manager | Local sales data identifies which products appeal to younger customers, when those customers usually shop, and how they respond to particular promotions. | The Store Manager adjusts product placement, local promotions, stock levels, and staffing to implement the campaign within the store. |
However, when looking at an individual store, the store manager would then be the recipient of strategic level intelligence while tactical intelligence would be more relevant for a shelf-stacker.
Level | Decision-Maker | Intelligence | Decision Supported |
|---|---|---|---|
Strategic | Store Manager | Sales and waste records show that the store regularly orders more fresh food than it sells. Customer numbers vary considerably by day, while local events produce occasional increases in demand. | The Store Manager makes reducing fresh-food waste a store priority and sets targets for waste reduction and product availability. |
Operational | Head of Department | Department-level data identifies which products are frequently discarded, when demand rises and falls, and how deliveries and promotions affect sales. | The Head of Department revises ordering levels, introduces markdown times, reallocates stock, and adjusts staffing around expected demand. |
Tactical | Shelf-Stacker | Current stock information shows that several products are approaching their expiry dates, while live sales data indicates that some shelves are selling faster than expected. | The Shelf-Stacker rotates stock, places short-dated products at the front, applies authorised reductions, and alerts the supervisor when stock is likely to run out. |
This relativity means that labels should always be accompanied by a clear definition of the organisation, objective, customer, and decision under consideration.
Note on Terminology
Terminology varies between organisations and professional disciplines. Some use operational and tactical the other way around, while others add additional categories. Consistent definitions are more important than the labels themselves.
