Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

 As stated previously this site is not specifically focused on war and warfare, and most specifically, it has never been intended as one providing political commentary.  The “kind of war” – as essential element of  information- series is being extended because today’s war,  how we define it, and how we defend our country in that defined context is a critical element of survival in our tightly coupled system in unstable equillibrium  world. (PWH Edition #8, DaVinci’s Horse 5 by Dag von Lubitz)

To whatever extent you  believe or not von Clauswitz’s ”war as extension of politics by other means,” the political arenas of the world and war are certainly intertwined beyond separation.  In this kind of war – whatever ”this”  is -  a critical difference beween kinds is noted by the fact that there is no political entity on the other side to negotiate with to come to terms for cessation of conflict.  The war then continues so long as one side desires to carry out attacks. This is very distinctly different from the kind of war of Roosevelt’s World War II or Lincoln’s War Between the States.  How then do we win in the “war on terrorism”, how then do we make this end?  What are the boundary conditions of victory, defeat, co-existence, survival?

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010, The Washington Post Writers Group. He is a noted conservative writer and the Townhall.com article below  is very obviously a political OPED, but no matter your political affiliation or opinion on the current administration’s action, his points of distinction about “kind of war” need to be considered critically.

War? What War?

The Obama administration refuses to admit that we are at war.

By Charles Krauthammer

Janet Napolitano — former Arizona governor, now overmatched secretary of homeland security — will forever be remembered for having said of the attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit: “The system worked.”

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Tags: 4GW, Culture of Preparedness, Essential Elements of Information, Terrorism, worst case disasters

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

Fooling ourselves into thinking that terrorism is a just a criminal problem best handled by halfhearted security measures and civilian courts that rely on a “reasonable-doubt” standard is both naive and dangerous. 

Bob Brooks is the Sheriff of Ventura County California. He has a Master of Arts in Security Studies (Homeland Defense and Security) from the Naval Postgraduate School.  An excerpt of his Masters’ thesis Creating a Coordinated Game Plan: Improving the Effectiveness of Miliary Civil Support to Law Enforcement appeared in Edition #6 of this website. He has served as a Project White Horse 084640 advisor since first publication.

This article was originally published by the Ventura County Star on Wednesday Jan 6, 2010 and is presented with permission of the author.

Civilian Courts no place for terrorists - Sunday morning, I listened to the president’s top counterterrorism adviser say that there was no “smoking gun” that could have prevented the attempted mass murder of airline passengers approaching Detroit on Christmas Day.

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Tags: Essential Elements of Information, resilient communities, Terrorism

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

 “At this stage, the drug cartels are using basic infantry weaponry to counter government forces,” a U.S. government official in Mexico said.  “Encountering criminals with this kind of weaponry is a horse of a different color,” the official said. “It’s not your typical patrol stop, where someone pulls a gun. This has all the makings of an infantry squad, or guerrilla fighting.”

[From INTERSECTIONS II (Scenarios for Training to the Ace Level) – 4. The ‘Cat 5? Next Door: Drug Cartels’ New Weaponry Means War describing the on-going drug based vilolence in Mexico. ] 

 In “What Kind of War Is It,” EEI#15, it was offered for consideration  four broad types of user/method 4GW operations that include mixes of terrorism, insurgency, small unit tactics, media warfare, and cyber warfare.  These methods can be characterized as manifesting themselves as follows:

1) war-within-war to include counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism (Iraq, Afghanistan)

2) expeditionary attacks (Mombai, World TradeCenter/Pentagon)

3) lone wolf attacks (murders at Ft Hood)

4) adaptation of 4GW concepts and methods by criminal elements and gangs (Mexico’s drug war). 

As a continuation of “essential elements of information for a culture of preparedness,” and several previous posts under EEI on the impact of current high level government decisions on  how we fight in future conflict, the following three articles/links discuss the over-here aspects of continuing war, warfare, violence in the context of fourth generation warfare (4GW).  Discussion of counter operations then continues on the INTERSECTION pages: III. Crime and Fourth Generation Warfare- A really bad Intersection.

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Tags: 4GW, Culture of Preparedness, Essential Elements of Information, resilient communities

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

This site has stated that it is neither a military/warfare specific -oriented or focused site nor is discussion of war and warfare  its main operational theme.  Rather, the focus is decision making in severe crisis and disaster environments with issues of leadership as obvious necessary elements. So what then is the context for asking “so, what kind of war is it?” And how important are the words of war?

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Tags: Culture of Preparedness, Essential Elements of Information, resilient communities, Terrorism

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

Prior to Desert Storm, Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf created a small cell of four majors and a colonel to act as his intimate “brain trust” to plan his campaign. The group became known as the “Jedi Knights.” All were graduates of the School of Advanced Military Studies, essentially the Army staff college’s second year honors program. The success of SAMS was emulated by other services and became the model for a similar program at the Army War College focused on strategic studies.
Success of the SAMS model provides a good template for an advanced learning program for specially selected strategic staff officers.

EEI #5 – “The Big Picture”- The Nexus Between Education and Grand Strategy - begins with (Mark Safranski at Zenpundit) questioning our educational preparedness to deal with 21st century problems.

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.

From the beginning, a PWH continuing point of critical concern has been that our leaders – civil, military, and private sector had neither the experience nor education necessary and sufficient to match the problems presented, and were therefore un-prepared and “unready” on September 11, 2001, not only for the attacks themselves,  but for either near term or long term critial policy, strategic or operational decision making in the wake of the attacks.  With great hindsight (?) some now claim, the initial responses were the result of high level panic coupled with political motivation.  Could it be that we responded in a tactical sense based on complete lack of understanding as to the nature of the problem and defaulted to what we knew – a 20th Century mix of two violent  world wars and a fifty year Cold War?

As a second offering (for the first, see EEI#5) on a thread of “learning, unlearning, relearning,” as an Essential Element of Information for a Culture of Preparedness, this post provides an excerpt from Armed Forces Journal by retired Army Major General Robert Scales.  General Scales is a former commandant of the US Army War College, now president of Colgen Inc., a consulting firm specializing in land power, war gaming and strategic leadership, and is a  graduate of West Point, with a PhD in History from Duke University He served more than 30 years in the Army, commanding two units in Vietnam.

As a major theme he notes “The complexities of recent wars suggest that the reforms that dictated jointness, while necessary, are no longer sufficient. Today’s conflicts demand officers who can lead indirectly and perform in an uncertain, ambiguous, complex, chaotic and inherently unpredictable environment. Our educational system needs to produce more men and women who can anticipate conditions that do not yet exist. They must be capable of dealing with unfamiliar cultures and an enemy who is unconstrained by Western values and methods of warfare. To be sure, the services possess many talented, and indeed some brilliant, practitioners of the strategic art. But the demand for strategists is greater than the supply. Our system of professional military education produces too few officers capable of understanding and dealing with the complexities of war at the strategic level.”

To that I would add/ask  and is it not the same for all this country’s leaders?

I highly recommend the full article at Armed Forces Journal, but here in part:

Return of the Jedi

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Tags: Culture of Preparedness, Team of Leaders (TOL), TOPGUN

On September 11, the evacuation was real. A fireball erupted in the nearby tower, and all of Morgan Stanley’s employees were making their way down and out of the other tower. By the time the second hijacked airliner hit the south tower at 9:07 a.m., most of the company’s employees were out. But Rescorla’s work was not finished. Three employees were missing. Rescorla and two assistants went back to look for them. Rescorla was last seen on the tenth floor of the burning tower. He died when the building collapsed a short time later. But he had saved thousands of lives. Out of 3,700 employees, Morgan Stanley lost only six, including Rescorla.

In 1990, Rescorla as head of security for Dean Witter (merged with Morgan Stanley in 1997) in the World Trade Center called in an old Army friend with extensive counter-terrorism experience and jointly assessed the vulnerability of the tower to attack. Their determination – drive a truck with explosives into the basement. Less than three years later, on February 26, 1993, Rescorla got all of the company’s employee’s out after a truck bomb exploded in the basement. Followers of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a radical Muslim cleric in Brooklyn were convicted of the bombing.

Rescorla continued his concern and planned for and forced Morgan Stanley employees to practice evacuation like school children. Almost 3000 died on September the 11th, 2001, but 3700 lived because Rescorla ignored the Port Authority’s direction to stay in place after American Airlines Flight 11 impacted the first tower, and evacuated his people. He had managed a crisis before it became a crisis – a disaster.
Please read Rick Rescorla’s story – a story of the DAY - The Real Heros Are Dead

Tags: 4GW, Essential Elements of Information, resilient communities, Terrorism, worst case disasters

08:46:40

September 11, 2001

Tags: Essential Elements of Information, resilient communities, worst case disasters

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

“Man is a peculiarly constructed animal who cannot read the handwriting on the wall, until his back is up against it.” Unknown

 TAMPA – Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, speaking at the America Association of State Troopers Law Enforcement Training Conference asked law enforcement officials Monday if they’re ready for a hurricane.

 From the St. Petersburg Times:  (Inpart) Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, the man widely credited with restoring order to a chaotic post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, has a word of warning for Floridians who believe they have hurricanes figured out.

“The people in Florida think they’re smarter than the people in Louisiana,” the retired Army general who commanded Joint Task Force Katrina said Monday, addressing law enforcement officers at Tampa Airport Marriott. “No, you’re not. You just haven’t been hit by a Katrina.”

 Speaking before the National Law Enforcement Training Conference, which goes through Wednesday (August 12, 2009), Honore said complacency is the greatest challenge communities face when it comes to disaster preparedness.

 His new book, SURVIVAL: How a Culture of Preparedness Can Save You and Your Family from Disasters, (Atria Books, 304 pages, $25.00) – part memoir, part how-to manual – focuses on the responsibility of the individual to be ready in the face of disaster. Continue Reading »

Tags: Culture of Preparedness, Essential Elements of Information, General Honore, Hurricanes, Katrina, resilient communities, worst case disasters

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

Airliners flying into skyscrapers as a weapon in a new version of conflict/war - followed by horse-riding Special Forces “cavalry” calling in smart weapons air strikes by ancient B-52s in Afghanistan, shock and awe with tanks, Apache helicopters, and strike fighters, all moving North towards Baghdad along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, then vans filled with explosives in market places and hotel entrances, women with bombs strapped to their chests under burkas, unmanned aerial vehicles launching missiles at Taliban strongholds, and throughout it all, Grunts, infantrymen with rifles, dirty and hot, doing what they’ve always done moving to contact with the enemy one tiring step at a time – all these are representation of war and warfare in the 21st Century.

War is always violent, taking its toll on soldier and civilian alike, always messy, always complex whether the battlefield be at  Thermopylae, Gettysburg, Iwo Jima, or Fallujah.  But I would offer however, that both warfighter and citizen alike of the “Greatest Generation” understood well that the Battle of Britian was fighter warfare, the Battle of the Atlantic -submarine warfare, the war in the Pacific both aicraft carrier warfare and amphibious warfare. And of course whether island hopping or struggling through the snow at Bastogne, there was always the Soldier and Marine rifleman. Complex, yes, but also easier to understandand and put in context than the dynamics of events since September 11, 2001- in my opinion.

For this century we have created a somewhat confusing array of terms:  network centric warfare, fourth generation warfare, guerrilla warfare or counterinsurgency, all  mixed with conventional and unconventional warfare, all in context  with war on terrorism, and  further, now the attempt to differentiate with conventional warfare, there are irregular warfare and hybrid warfare.

While situations in both Iraq and Afghanistan have forced rethinking, then rebuilding – since warfighting in Vienam - counter-insurgency (COIN) capability, planning for future wars – structure, rolls and missions, and technology – require serious thought on what the next threat might be – state on state war (as in WWII) with an emerging China or rebuilding Russia, or more of the same  – mix of insurgents, terrorists, or non-state actor mix along with state on state uniformed force on uniformed force.

This series of EEI posts suggests strongly that understanding this process and the outcome is not only necessary for our government and military (at all levels), but also for a prepared community in acknowledging, mitigating, and finally accepting some level of risk.  As Col Frank Hoffman (USMC, Ret) states in closing the following article “The Sept. 11 funding spigot is about to be turned off, returning the Pentagon to the need to rethink its priorities and make tough choices. We no longer have the resources to simply buy everything and eliminate every risk. We will have to consciously wrestle with this challenge in the upcoming QDR (Quadrenial Defense Review). The time for hard calls has arrived.”

Col Hoffman’s article discussing current thinking, planning and multiple approaches is well worth reading in full under Striking a Balance on Armed Forces Journal. Key points are provided below.  For  further information and different opinions see:

• “Hybrid Warfare” -Col Hoffman’s defining concept in the PWH library
• Refresher on 4GW see Col G.I. Wilson’s previous PPT/article. and Dr. Chet Richards article
• Discussion on COIN and Anti-COIN Revolution
• For a book review on David Killcullen’s Acidental Guerrilla
• Counter insurgency focused blog: Abu Muqawama

Posturing the future force for COIN and conventional warfare (in part)

Tags: 4GW, COIN, Culture of Preparedness, Essential Elements of Information, Hybrid Warfare, Irregullar Warfare

 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 face a constellation of complex “high-intensity policing” problems such as counterterrorism, transnational organized crime and gangs that demand development of a true operational art and doctrine, rather than current focus on tactical response. The police service desperately requires an understanding of operational theory and must develop operational doctrine to successfully address contemporary threats.

We propose a model for urban police operational art that has a five-dimensional view of the operational space, focusing in particular on the doctrinally neglected elements of cyberspace and temporality.

Our intention is to summarize and clarify a wide array of military thought, incorporating it into an operational framework for police operational response. In particular we will examine the military theories of Robert Bunker, Robert Leonhard, and William McRaven

 

In the current edition of PWH, in the introduction to Postcard from Mumbai: Modern Urban Siege it was noted that the concepts provided break through thinking on survival in urban “war amongst the people.”  Authors John Sullivan and Adam Elkus continue their “intersectional” thinking  with two additional pieces in this series.

• Toward Operational Art for Policing at GroupIntel

• Police Operational Art for a Five-Dimensional Operational Space, at Small Wars Journal

Tags: 4GW, Culture of Preparedness, Essential Elements of Information, HLS, Intelligence, Medici Effect, resilient communities