To assist in moving intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) planning and execution forward from a fixed target and deliberate planning focus to one centered on emerging targets, the authors propose enhancing the collection management process with a strategies-to-tasks and utility framework. By linking collection targets to operational tasks, objectives, and top-level commander’s guidance with relative utilities, planning for the daily intelligence collections and real-time retasking for ad hoc ISR targets could be enhanced. When current tools are modified to provide this information, planners will be able to link collection targets to top-level objectives for better decisionmaking and optimization of low-density, high-demand collection assets, and intelligence officers will be better able to deal with time-sensitive, emerging targets by rapidly comparing the value of collecting an ad hoc collection with the value of collecting opportunities already planned.
