Project White Horse Forum

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness
The military, facing a complex and intractable mixture of “wicked problems” on the battlefield, has responded with a doctrinal revolution in the production and practice of operational theory.  But most police agencies don’t incorporate the “operational level of maneuver” into their planning and concept of operations.   We [...]

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness
Terrorism – Current analysis posted with permission of STRATFOR
By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton
On the morning of July 17, a guest at the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta came down to the lobby and began walking toward the lounge with his roll-aboard suitcase in tow and [...]

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness
During the 1970s the iconic terrorist target became the international airliner. But as airline security increased in response to terrorist incidents, it became more difficult to hijack or bomb aircraft, and this difficulty resulted in a shift in targeting. By the mid-1980s, while there were still some [...]

   Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness
 This is the first in several planned posts under EEI on the impact on  how we fight in future conflict of decisions related to mission definition, policy, and force structure .

From  Stratfor (re-published with permission) Summary – U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ attempt to halt production of [...]

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness
Why would our societal orientation in complex, dynamic, fast moving situations be good when our educational system trains people only to think through simplified, linear, sequential problems? Strategic thinkers need to be able to see “the big picture” and handle uncertainty, or they cannot be said to be strategic thinkers.
The ship [...]

This current series of posts  links a discussion of culture of preparedness to both the resilient community concept and to the environment in which that community must persist.  For a wider perspective, the editors of Global Dashboard, Alex Evans and David Steven offer a perspective of the concept of resilience as the core of a new [...]

 
By Captain Charlie Meinema
Tacoma Washington Police Department

 
Disasters may be local, but few are.  Even local disasters are not local, as Yogi Berra might say.   This is often because criminals, explosions, terrorists and fires fail to respect jurisdictional borders, and / or because the crisis – even if inside one geographical or jurisdictional boundary – is [...]

The goal of emergency and crisis response is to reduce output variability in a context in which inputs are highly variable; to that end, crisis response is, in part, about creating an orderly arena within a chaotic environment. … research on High Reliability Organizations (HROs) has suggested that some complex, hazard-managing organizations, for which failure is [...]

Culture:  The sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguishes one group of people from another. Culture is transmitted, through language, material objects, ritual, institutions, and art, from one generation to the next.
In our case groups of people who defy being victims, those who realize survival is an ongoing team process, an ongoing learning endeavor [...]