These future effects will not be limited to only the traditional restrictions defined in US Army Field Manual (FM) 27-10, Laws of Land Warfare, but also will include more recent legal criteria pertaining to the issues of proportionality, \ufffddual-use\ufffd infrastructure, terror, and even environmental damage.

FM-6-20-10 notes that the responsibility to monitor the effects of friendly operations on the civilian populace is within the realm of the G-5 or civil affairs officer. As part of this responsibility, a G-5 officer is nominally placed in the plans cell of the division or corps main command post.[32] With regard to that representative\ufffds role in the targeting process, he or she is to \ufffdproduce input to the Restricted Targets List (RTL) and to coordinate [civil affairs] support for the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) and targeting process.\ufffd[33] In reality, however, it is difficult to envision how the G-5 or civil affairs representative could play any substantive role in a dynamic maneuver environment--either in the euphemistically vague mission of \ufffdcoordinating [civil affairs] support for the IPB and targeting process,\ufffd or in the more defined mission of providing input to the RTL.

As presently envisioned, the bulk of the civil affairs assets will be operating out of the rear command post, and will form the nucleus of the rear area operations cell (RAOC). While the RAOC is tasked to gather information from such sources as host-nation agencies, civil affairs units, interrogations of prisoners of war, and defector reports, most of this information relates to a static battlefield environment. This information, while valuable, may be days old, and will not be of particular use in tracking various transient civilian or protected objects (refugee gathering areas, mobile medical facilities or shelters, governmental or nongovernmental organizations, humanitarian relief assets, etc.). In addition, the RAOC will normally be to the rear of the main command post, and consequently well removed from the current operations cell, the intelligence cell, and the analysis control element. Without constant access to these sources of combat information and tactical and operational intelligence on the enemy side of the forward boundary, it is difficult to envision how accurate monitoring and tracking of these civilian personnel and objects could be accomplished. At the same time, such information assembled at the RAOC must be available in a timely manner to the plans, current operations, and targeting cells, where it can be integrated into the commander\ufffds view of the battlefield environment and factored into his or her decisionmaking process.