ISAF Campaign Plan Summary

[William F. Owen]

We used to talk about shaping the battlefield and meant by that what we could do to force our opponent to operate in certain ways that were beneficial to what we planned to do--for example, use a barrier plan to direct enemy movement along a certain avenue of approach, perhaps use MILDEC to get the enemy to think that he needed to position his reserve in one place when if fact that was exactly the wrong point to counter our intended main effort.

OK, but that is FIXING the enemy to allow you to more effectively STRIKE him.

To me "Shaping Fires" were a strange way of saying "Interdiction" or "Suppression", so I assumed there may be some other/yet another meaning.