Looking for Psyop Results

The Air Force Special Operations School at Hurlburt Field, Fla., last week was the site for the 20th annual gathering of NATO officials concerned with psychological operations. A key point for attendees was addressing how to maximize scarce resources. They want to look beyond measures such as how many leaflets were dropped to interpretations of how the leaflets changed a target audience’s behavior. However, Capt. Stephanie Allison, the school’s information operations course director, acknowledged that the military penchant for “instant results” is “hard to do with pysop because results take time.” (AFSOC report by 1st Lt. Amy Cooper)