1-28. Commanders and leaders charged with providing or ensuring protection must begin with a thorough understanding of the OE, the risks and opportunities resident there, and the ways and means available for preserving combat power through protection. Army doctrine recognizes the eight operational variables of political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time (PMESII-PT) for analyzing and understanding any OE. To support military plans, missions, and orders, relevant information from these operational variables can be filtered into the categories of the six Army mission variables of mission, enemy, terrain and weather, troops and support available, time available, and civil considerations (METT-TC). Using the METT-TC factors, leaders examine the environment as it relates to their mission and begin the process of identifying threats and hazards. Joint and Army doctrine recognizes the need to understand sociocultural factors, which are key to understanding populations proximate to friendly forces. It can be easy to focus on known enemy capabilities or adversaries and heavily concentrate analytical efforts in that direction. However, applying due diligence in operational variable and sociocultural analyses can help identify potential threats from previously unknown hostile groups, neutral groups, and isolated groups within a larger, friendly population. These analyses provide an understanding of the OE that helps to identify current, developing, and potential hazards and threats and enable the protection tasks to be taken to mitigate or eliminate them. (See ATP 2-01.3, ATP 3-05.20, and JP 2-01.3 for additional information.)