What you must focus on is not what you want the enemy to think but what you want him to do.”

Dudley Clarke

Course outline

Our core professional course provides military delegates with underpinning knowledge and tools to develop innovative deception and influence Courses of Action (CoAs) for their Combat estimates.

Whether your interest stems from MILDEC, Info Ops, PSYOPS, Information Manoeuvre or Cyber Ops duties, our system for psychological combat will give you that edge.

Within the course sessions you will encounter innovative ideas and rigorous theories from established fields of social science that are specifically designed to fuse with a practical tradecraft curriculum. There are also ample opportunities for practical workshops, where you can apply our techniques to operationally realistic challenges.

All our courses utilise the Artifice™ System. Our unique system of models and tools augments, enhances and leverages deceptive thinking for operational planning, where deceptive thinking is the development of cunning, crafty, and creative ways and means to get adversaries to do what you want. Our approach enables the realisation of new forms of competitive advantage in the adversarial setting of complex modern warfare.

Who the course is aimed at

The course has been designed for those conducting, planning or supporting specialist military operations and other members of the national security community that support those activities. Our programmes are accessible to a diverse range of delegates that find themselves considering the challenges of behaviour change within the adversarial settings of complex modern operations.

You will find the course really useful if you already have well developed tradecraft and analytical skills but lack the human factors background that would enhance your professional practice when seeking to dominate the cognitive battlespace.

If you are in the front line of interpreting the commander’s intent and delivering behaviour-based COAs and intelligence analysis judgements against wicked human factors problems in time-critical demanding operational roles – you have to get on to this course!

Course outcomes

The course provides comprehensive support to those planning military deception and influence activities. Our materials and approach are applicable to all defence contexts irrespective of your specialist role. Over the 3 days you will be given the conceptual models and practical tool sets to amplify and extend your work as a modern day warfighter. We help you to think deceptively, in order that you can:

• improve the probability of success when you plan and conduct deception, influence activities or wider effects operations
• identify the opportunity and any inherent risks in deception-related activities in a covert or influence context
• distinguish the environmental factors that indicate when deception and influence activities could be utilised
• categorise target audience and specify intelligence RFIs relevant to deception and influence target sets
• apply principles of deception influence to your broader combat estimate or collection plan
• evaluate the practical, legal, moral and ethical considerations that relate to your use of deception and influence activities in an intelligence or operational context
• employ concepts from the behavioural, cognitive and wider social sciences in the conceptualisation of deception and influence activities
• formulate measures for monitoring and evaluating your deception and influence activity
• create an intellectually robust and systematic deception and influence plan.

Get in touch