Operations Order

An Operations Order, often abbreviated as OPORD, is an executable plan that directs a unit to conduct a military operation. An Operations Order will describe the situation facing the unit, the mission of the unit, and what activities the unit will conduct to achieve the mission goals. Normally an Operations Order will be generated at a regiment, brigade, division, or corps headquarters and then given to lower echelons to implement. Each lower echelon as they receive an operations order will in turn develop their own Operations Order which removes extraneous detail and adds details focused on what and how that subunit will implement the higher level OPORD. So an Operations Order at a particular level of the military organization will trigger units involved in the operation to develop their own Operations Order which will borrow from the Operations Order given them so far as the situation and mission but will then add additional details for the activities a specific unit is to conduct.

A standardized multiparagraph format is used by the United States Department of Defense's armed services and most other military forces. An OPORDER is designed to organize both generalities and specifics of a mission into five standard topics (paragraphs): Situation, Mission, Execution, Sustainment (formerly Service Support), and Command and Signal. Higher level units which have extensive lists or details in a topic will move most of the material to an Annex or an Appendix to the order. This also allows an order be customized to a recipient by easily removing extraneous information for that recipient.