According to JP 3-13, Information Operations, the term is defined as “the integrated employment of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception, and operations security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own.”

Randy, I don't disagree with what you wrote above, actually I agree strongly with much of it; however, the entire point of this thread was to address the confusing definition of IO (first post).

I would argue what your writing about falls under the Army's definition of:

Influence Operations: to effect the behavior of the intended audience through coercion, information engagement, presence and conduct.

AND

Information Engagement: the government's use of integrated employment of public information programs, psychological operations, and support leader and government activities (reparing a school, security force behavior) to influence a target audience.

Unfortunately some of our staffs are using the doctrinal definition of IO as the guiding principle for how the staff is structured, and this simply makes no sense. Why is the EW guy working next to the PSYOP guy and CA guy? The overlap and need for coordination is minimal to zero. Posted by Schmedlap
Schmedlap, I think this sums up the issue nicely. Staffs are "supposed" to use doctrine as a "guiding" principle, so if IO doctrine makes no sense, we're back at the first post and I agree with you.

Quite simply, "render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's". We need the original definiton of IO for joint "warfighting", even if it doesn't fit nicely with small wars. For small wars we need something closer to information engagement and influence operations. The round peg doesn't fit into the square hole. When we were conducting offensive operations against Saddam's conventional forces we used IO effectively; however, the tech heavy info tech advantage still plays a role, but it isn't as dominate in stability operation; however, information engagement is critical. How do we task organize for that? I have seen some decent ideas posted here, but I think many would still argue we're still the realm of PSYOP and public affairs, and we don't want to be in that realm if we can help it. We want to be the realm where squad leaders are trained and empower to engage the population without asking permission from the Commander, who will painfully deliberate over the possible second order effects, although he is sitting in a FOB somewhere away from the engagement. Sometimes you have to recon by fire, so if a squad leader puts something else that is poorly perceived, adjust fire. It better than where we're at now.