Central Citadel or Discreet and Divergent
I have seen many errors occurring that remind me of why the old castles and city walled villages went from a strategic necessity to a tactic liability. These massive fortresses were built to withstand assaults from troops; cannons and even siege machines and are now redundant. Arms were made that cold destroy the defensive walls of the fort where any and all opposition to an assault would have to come from – thus a few good rounds placed from out of range and – zip, bang boom the fort was gone! War strategy and tactics developed very quickly to favor the fast, nimble, and more atomized assaults. The central citadel defense had given way to a discreet and divergent force that could be atomized or concentrated as needed.
The errors I see are as follows…
The cloud – yes it is a great tool, and I do you parts of the cloud to manage a divergent and diverse organization but if you fail to pay your fees or the cloud “aka your remote data center” gets hacked or blown down by a hurricane or blown up by being located next to a refinery that caught fire – you own a massive concentration of risk. When you use the cloud can your recover from a disaster – without the help of the “data center”?
Art warehouses have become a billion dollar business with massive and very secure faculties in Singapore, FTZ at the Swiss airport in Zurich, or South Hampton all have massive highly secure facilities. They have attracted a great deal of business and many smaller art warehouses and vaults have closed. The art concentrations once having been dispersed are becoming more concentrated and fire or disaster will destroy more art than ever before and also the concentration of value provides the impetus for more effort on the bad guy’s part to best the defenses.
Executive Protection is slipping in the same direction. More EP professionals are opting for the transport of clients in what I call Straßepanzers. These vehicles have been outfitted with all of the anti blast and anti weapons technology they can find – inevitably painted black. A recent classic was a fellow in Spain who was attacked after he pulled up in a black GMC Suburban with two other Black Suburbans. It seemed the attacker’s reason was if there was a convoy of big black cars there must be something worthwhile to go after inside the cars. The gentlemen were delivering three recently retrofitted used black GMC Suburbans to a funeral parlor – they were hearses. Further, all of the gear makes the cars very heavy, slower then is good, hard to corner, and prone to drive train failures do to the weight of the added equipment.
The best/worst recent event I saw was a new Ford Expedition that was outfitted with all of the amour as well as an RF jammer to protect from RF detonated bombs. During the demonstration while at speed the RF jammer was tuned on. Two things happened. None of the cell phones or radios worked, thus no calls for back up or support or medivac could be made. The second was several of the Expedition’s systems alarms started sounding. It seems the direct tire pressure monitors send the tire pressure via an RF signal to the cars computer and all of the anti collisions systems kicked in as the RF jamming also had some effect on the radar used in the front and microwaves used in the back. The Straßepanzer shut down under the weight of the defenses.
By using this tactic, and it is a tactic not a strategy, we are concentrating our assets in a big easy to spot citadel making a very visible well defined target. Any assault is less likely to be successful but far more disastrous if it is successful. In developing additional defenses we are failing to understand both the nature of threats and deploying technology that has tactical advantages – but is over all a strategic failure.
Lithe, nimble, stealthy and preparation is better than a big fat, obvious and slow target.
