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INTERNAL LOOK is a biennial JCS sponsored, CENTCOM coordinated, and Command Post Exercise (CPX) based on a real-world contingency plan. Its operational concept is focused on joint battle staff warfighting at the strategic and operational level. The primary training audience is CENTCOM's combatant commander and the USCENTCOM headquarters staff. The secondary training audience is composed of CENTCOM service and functional component commanders, their staffs and selected allied forces. INTERNAL LOOK is CENTCOM's major CPX and facilitates training the full battle staff for CENTCOM and its components. It also allows Third Army to exercise its deputy joint land forces command responsibilities. 

Exercise Internal Look is designed to exercise the command, control and communications ability of Central Command Headquarters and all of its different component commands who are spread throughout its AOR (area of responsibility) in other parts of the world. The exercise tests and exercises CENTCOM's ability to communicate on the modern battlefield. 

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On November 23, 1988, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army, became USCENTCOM’S third commander-in-chief (USCINCCENT). Spurred by the rapid diminution of Soviet aggressiveness under Mikhail Gorbachev, Gen. Schwarzkopf worked to supplant USCENTCOM’s primary war plan, which involved a war against the Soviets in Iran, with a more realistic scenario. The strategy of the original plan called for five and two-thirds divisions to march from the Arabian Gulf to the Zagros Mountains and prevent the Red Army from seizing the oil fields of Iran. Instead, Gen. Schwarzkopf began to plan for what he thought was a far more likely situation: Iraq, emerging from eight years of war against Iran with the world’s fourth-largest and most battle-hardened army, moving south to capture the rich oil fields whose output was essential to the industrial world.

Gen. Schwarzkopf first tested this new strategy in INTERNAL LOOK, a command post exercise held from July 9 through August 4, 1990 at Fort Bragg and at Hurlburt and Duke Fields in Florida. The events that led to creation of a new joint air campaign target planning organization began in July 1990, when General Schwarzkopf conducted the large joint command post exercise, "Internal Look," at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The exercise tested aspects of the plan for the defense of the Arabian peninsula. General Schwarzkopf quickly determined that neither the CENTCOM nor the CENTAF staff was fully capable of planning large joint air operations for an Iraqi invasion scenario.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Third Army prudently anticipated the Gulf War crisis that occurred in 1990. The initial Third Army plans drawn up to support Internal Look and operations plan (OPLAN) 1002-90 for CENTCOM recommended a heavy armored force whose closure would be in question due to sea-lift limitations. However, this force offered more combat power and an offensive capability that Army planners believed previous planning forces lacked. This prudent planning by military professionals was reflected in the Army Desert Shield force deployments and closure through the end of October 1990. Internal Look showed Saudi Arabia could be defended against Iraqi invaders, but at great cost.

As the exercise unfolded, the real-world movements of Iraq’s air and ground forces eerily paralleled the scripted scenario of the war game. So closely did actual intelligence reports resemble the fictional exercise messages, the latter had to be prominently stamped "Exercise Only." During the last few days of INTERNAL LOOK, Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded and captured Kuwait on 2 August 1990. Suddenly in possession of Kuwait’s oil fields, Iraq was poised to acquire the even more valuable prize of the Arabian Peninsula. General Schwarzkopf’s immediate requirements were to develop a military strategy and courses of action to stop the potential Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia.