Military leaders have identified a need for socio-cultural sensemaking capabilities to support operations in irregular conflicts. However, training programs lack practical applied techniques for such sensemaking. For example, observational training programs such as Combat Hunter instruct warfighters to set socio-cultural baselines, but provide little specific instruction on relevant sensemaking processes; furthermore, little of the existing or proposed socio-cultural training robustly integrates field-tested methodologies and concepts from anthropology or other social sciences. A related issue involves the overemphasis that training and policy recommendations place on “culture� as a rigid concept. Warfighters may overcompensate by focusing too much on culture over other relevant factors, and often treat culture as a fixed entity that can be read at a superficial level. Culture, however, is a fluid construct without fixed boundaries that constantly interacts with other factors and situational exigencies; the complexity of social systems alongside cultural mixing and shifting within operational environments demands a more holistic model. In a 2012 I/ITSEC paper, our team outlined a concept of archetypal, cross-cultural Patterns of Life for training in virtual environments. In this paper we propose a revised concept of Patterns of Life as a critical thinking framework that extends beyond culture to incorporate human and non-human actors, practices, functions, environmental interactions, and temporal, cultural, and situational contexts that better reflect social science theories. We also draw on prior perceptual training and ethnographic methodologies to define an Ethnographically-informed Sensemaking Protocol consisting of a nested, iterative process of framing and baseline construction that supports both individual encounters and the entirety of a warfighter’s deployment; this will improve sensemaking and framing baselines in complex, uncertain environments, and allow applicability across operational environments. We discuss the theoretical foundations of this revised approach, and then provide a brief summary of the current state of the framework and protocol.