Doctrine directs planners and commanders to factor in the environment, but that breaks down in deployed locations, where environmental issues are seen as secondary and perhaps as retarding mission accomplishment and are carried out begrudgingly if they are executed at all. Joint Publication 3-34 stresses the strategic implications of compliance or noncompliance. Entire endstates can be affected, and the longer engagements and increased post-deployment involvement characteristic of modern conflicts heightens the danger to coalition personnel and the need for long-term planning for environmental responsibility.

The Army fashioned Human Terrain Teams (HTT) to assist in garnering public support in Iraq and Afghanistan. The teams gather sociocultural understanding, which is essential to protecting host populations and obtaining their cooperation, but the knowledge takes time to develop and must be updated and shared among units. HTT's contribution can be increased by learning from user experience and maintaining a peacetime sociocultural knowledge regimen that can quickly transition to an HTT capacity in wartime. Vital information risks being lost if the program is further curtailed to save resources, while an enduring capability will be invaluable in future irregular operations. Without a sustained effort, needed information will repeat the past by arriving too late to be of much help.