Project White Horse Forum

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 a backpack slung across his chest. Sensing something odd about the fellow, alert security officers approached him and asked him if he required assistance. The guest responded that he needed to deliver the backpack to his boss and proceeded to the lounge, accompanied by one of the security guards. Shortly after entering the lounge, the guest activated the improvised explosive device (IED) contained in the backpack, killing himself and five others. Minutes later, an accomplice detonated a second IED in a restaurant at the adjacent Ritz-Carlton hotel, killing himself and two other victims, bringing the death toll from the operation to nine — including six foreigners.

The twin bombings in Jakarta underscore two tactical trends that STRATFOR has been following for several years now, namely, the targeting of hotels in terrorist attacks and the use of smaller suicide devices to circumvent physical security measures. The Jakarta attacks also highlight the challenges associated with protecting soft targets such as hotels against such attacks.

Hotels as Targets Continue Reading »

Tags: 4GW, Essential Elements of Information, Terrorism

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 incidents involving aircraft, the iconic terrorist target had become the embassy. But attacks against embassies have also provoked a security response, resulting in embassy security programs that have produced things …which some have labeled “fortress America” buildings due to their foreboding presence and their robust construction designed to withstand rocket and large IED attacks.

 …Overall, however, this trend of making embassies hard targets has caused yet another shift in the terrorist paradigm. As STRATFOR has noted since 2004, hotels have become the iconic terrorist target of the post-9/11 era. Indeed, by striking an international hotel in a capital city, militants can make the same type of statement against Western imperialism and decadence that they can make by striking an embassy. Hotels are often full of Western businessmen, diplomats and intelligence officers, providing militants with a target-rich environment where they can kill Westerners and gain international media attention without having to penetrate the extreme security of a modern embassy. ( extract from STRATFOR analysis -next EEI post)

Mumbai, Jakarta – Improvised Exposive Devices, Suicide bombers, whether 9-11 expeditionary style attacks or home grown, despite the “end” to the usage of “Global War on Terrorism” the world cannot ignore that attacks aimed at women, children, all are still the mode of operation for non-state terrorist organizations. Staying aware and continuing to learn is crucial. Please continue to the following  PWH Essay (JEB). Continue Reading »

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

   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 the controversial F-22 “Raptor” air-superiority fighter got a boost July 21 when the U.S. Senate voted against funding additional airframes. It appears that the Senate is heeding U.S. President Barack Obama’s promise to veto the defense authorization bill if it includes additional funds for new F-22s.  

Why would  the cancellation of additional buys of Air Force F-22 fighters be considered an essential element of information for a culture of preparedness on a website focused on time critical decision making in worst case disasters? Consider this from STRATFOR’s article:

Gates is attempting to change not just what the Pentagon is buying, but its fundamental understanding of what it is procuring weapon systems for and why. Cold War-era weapons with such focused utility as the F-22 are not what he believes the Pentagon needs with an uncertain future, while the promised flexibility of the F-35 is appealing to him.

With so much in flux, fixed force structure requirements have gone right out the window, even as the Air Force struggles to reconcile what it wants with what it can afford. Meanwhile, Gates is attempting a more fundamental reorientation of the entire Pentagon, with greater emphasis on the current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, ‘hybrid wars’ and ‘fourth-generation’ warfare (embodied by the 2006 Israeli conflict with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon).

(PWH emphasis added)

As we move in time from 9-11, the DOD force structure decisions will impact decisions on risk mitigation, risk management, level of risk acceptance the homeland security, public safety and first responder organizations nation wide will have left on their plate. Understanding these issues, it would seem, is then essential and critical for citizens, private sector and local government. Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) was the focus of the Fall ’07 PWH edition beginning with Dr. Chet Richards’ article and has been offered repeatedly as a necessary ”window” for understanding the problems of this century.   The nature of warfare and the decisions on future force structure decisions and the potential impact on disaster response will be a continued focus in future EEI posts.

For the entire STRATFOR article Continue Reading »

Tags: 4GW, Adaptability, Culture of Preparedness, F-22, Future Warfare, Raptor, STRATFOR

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 of state has been steered, over the last forty or so years, into an epistemological cul-de-sac and we are headed for the rocks. America needs a grand strategy for a competent citizenry in order to reach the point where it can again have a grand strategy to deal with an unruly world.

If ever there was an essential element of information for a culture of preparedness  Mark Safranski—aka “Zenpundit” discusses it here.  Please see: Zenpundit

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

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 doctrine for managing transnational risk and global instability

In The Resilience Doctrine, we argue that globalization is both unstable and inevitable, and that governments have little choice but to build collaborative platforms to manage risk. We conclude with a dozen guidelines for building an international system fit for the 21st century.

The introduction …

In a Time of Crisis – In the past year, we have witnessed a global emergency, with the world experiencing the worst economic meltdown since the 1930s. This crisis will not be a one-off. Over the next 20 years, we will be confronted with a series of systemic and interlocking risks that will cross national borders with alacrity. As a result, the divide between domestic and international policy will largely be erased.

To carve out a strategic response to these risks requires huge effort. Our assumptions about the world were formed in another age and are ill-suited to contemporary challenges. The international system, meanwhile, is inveterately short-term in its outlook, national governments are myopic and complacent, and the media is unforgiving towards politicians who fail to conform to the dictates of an increasingly frenetic news cycle.

Leaders therefore need a new lens through which they can view the task of creating security in the 21st century. The projection of power, and attempts to balance the power of others, no longer provides a useful perspective. Instead, the concept of resilience should be at the heart of a new doctrine for managing transnational risk and global instability.

Resilience offers a guiding principle for informing strategy and animating alliances. It also provides a yardstick for measuring success. At present, much of what governments do internationally inadvertently increases vulnerability. This must change if globalization is to be saved from itself.

For their recommendations and a link to the full article on World PoliticsReview, see The Resilience doctrine on Global Dashboard

Tags: 4GW, Culture of Preparedness, Essential Elements of Information, resilient communities, Team of Leaders (TOL), worst case disasters

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 too big for any one agency to handle with troops available at the time of the incident.  We staff according to anticipated ‘normal’ work load.  Any major event immediately stresses the system, because we have to send pretty much all we have and that leaves everything else insecure.   We just can not staff to crisis level unless we are SURE the crisis will occur – and when do we know that?  After it has happened.   Continue Reading »

Tags: 4GW, Culture of Preparedness, Essential Elements of Information, HLS, Resilient Community, Team of Leaders (TOL), worst case disasters

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 not an option, can do precisely this through a process of relentless preoccupation with failure and ongoing training for the unexpected … Observations of HROs provide an important bridge between traditional organizational leadership and decision-making under complex conditions and the extraordinary complexity of the transboundary event such as a pandemic or a natural or anthropogenic disaster.

For a community to believe they have the wherewithall to “create an orderly arena within a chaotic environment”  would be the essence of a culture of preparedness, would it not? Disasters are often discribed as “local” no matter the level of state or federal participation, but in complex events, as stated above the event and the “arena” most probably  cross multiple boundaries of various nature.  To that end, our first element of essential information for a culture of preparedness introduces the idea of “transboundary crisis, transboundary response.” Continue Reading »

Tags: Culture of Preparedness, Essential Elements of Information, HLS, resilient communities, Resilient Community, worst case disasters

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 …

This post is intended to set the stage for a new group of FORUM articles/discussions expanding on the recently introduced Culture of Preparedness thread.

Since first publication in Fall 2006, Project White Horse 084640 has focused on providing multiple and varied perspectives on severe crisis environments and the decision making processes required.  With the introduction of the “resilient community” concept as a major theme, we began usage of this FORUM to bring multiple discussions and articles between editions with intent to move beyond “perspective” to exploration of workable approaches for “survival on our own terms.” (Boyd)

The latest edition offers that a culture of preparedness is the necessary link between the threat generated environment (whether by accident, acts of nature, or purfoseful acts of man) and the threatened community. We have offered multiple perspectives to assist in understanding the problem, but one must ask, what actually defines a resilient community, what are the quantifiable ingredients, what is the make up of this culture, we state that we need?

Consider the following, borrowed from Department of Defense definitions:

Essential Elements of Information:  The critical items of information regarding the enemy and the environment needed by the commander by a particular time to relate with other available information and intelligence in order to assist in reaching a logical decision – required to plan and execute an operation.

These next FORUM offerings will expand the original PWH theme-defining triangle of worst case events, time criticality , and leader team response by offering multiple “elements of essential information” that seem inherent -yet not necessarily obvious – in the make-up of a Culture of Preparedness.

As always your thoughts and inputs on the elements and future inclusions will be most welcome at projectwhitehorseatroadrunnerdotcom.

Tags: Culture of Preparedness, Essential Elements of Information, Project White Horse, resilient communities, Team of Leaders (TOL), worst case disasters

I’m very pleased to announce that Project White Horse 084640 Edition #8 – A Culture of Preparedness and Intersectional Ideas  – is now on line.

The last two editions have provided perspective on “resilient communities” and leadership required. In Edition #8 we shift from providing “perspective” to creating actionable understanding and answers. The first part of the Edition #8 focus (and) title borrows from General Russ Honore’s stated goal – developing a culture of preparedness. As Russ’s words have been featured on the site, having “a culture…” seems to highlight the very essence of developing and nurturing a resilient community. As such, “culture of preparedness” can be seen to complete a “strong triangle” with the additional sides of “resilient communities,” and Team of leaders. Faced with severe crisis, that model demands creative approaches. We must look beyond the norm to multiple fields and experience bases and find ideas and answers at the intersections.

Intersectional ideas are those resulting from combining concepts from multiple fields – areas of specialization gained through education and experience – as compared to those created traditionally by combing concepts within a field – noted as directional ideas. Success in intersectional idea generation is dependent upon breaking down barriers of association that would more than likely indicate a “non relationship” or at best limited context between or among fields. Continue Reading »

Tags: 4GW, combat training centers, Culture of Preparedness, HLS, Intersections, Medici Effect, Project White Horse, Resilient Community, Team of Leaders (TOL), worst case disasters

Invest in preparedness, not prediction…I will never get to know the unknown since, by definition, it is unknown. However, I can always guess how it might affect me, and I should base my decisions around that.”     The Black Swan, Nassem Nicholas Taleb

In  2001, the Defense Science Board investigated what they termed  “a revolution in training.”  

The superb performance of our military in the 1990s was not just a result of technological superiority but equally of TRAINING SUPERIORITY.   Analysis of air, submarine and other combat showed that individuals who survived an engagement in which a kill was achieved were much more likely to win the next one. This had been originally thought to be battlefield Darwinism. But the combat training approach invented some 30 years ago (now 40 years, see  Scream of Eagles – Happy Birthday TOPGUN ) beginning with TOPGUN, showed this can be a function of learning. 

It is possible to train to the “ace” level without bloodshed

But they also noted that while there had certainly been a “Revolution”  (Top Gun, Red Flag, National Training Center {NTC}),  the results had not been appreciated nor expanded to other areas such as for joint warfare training. Indeed, today, there certainly appears to be no awareness of the truly spectacular results by the Department of Homeland Security, nor the public sector in general beyond that related to Maverick and Goose.

In this light, worth considering is a recent story based on remarks by new Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the December 2008 Defense Science Board  report Challenges to Military Operations In Support of National Interfaces:    Continue Reading »

Tags: 4GW, combat training centers, Intersections, Medici Effect, TOPGUN, TOPOFF, worst case disasters