Managing the Wheel

Fort Mentality - System of Systems

In those olden days, forts were built with tunnels and deep vaults that offers much protection and confort from the numerous cataput missiles and arrows, hurled and shot at the defenders, in great concentration that one will think the weather had turned suddenly bad and had started to rain.

Such forts, offer fantastic protection, while at the same time offers little ability or capability to the defenders in situational awareness.

Below shows a picture of a typical fort.


Noticed that the fort had certain characteristics.


1) Bunker mentality : Limited observation posts

Forts normally have little windows or any other openings for the sake of maximising wall protection surface. Providing protection to its inhabitants is the main objective for a fort. But unfortunately, it is also the greatest liability to its inhabitants. A walled structure prevents the inhabitants hiding in the fort from having a view of the world outside of the fort, thus not able to dicipher or predict the outcome of the battles, and what they will be facing when they come into contact with the enemy forces.

Viewing the fort as an entity on the whole, this greatly cuts down on the productivity and limits the capability of the inhabitants in the fort. Only the limited few will have the opportunity to be selected to serve in the observation role, with the rest hunkering down in the bunkers deep within the fort.

Most of the soldiers and inhabitants having the talent for scouting and reporting, will not have the opportunity to contribute their services for the benefit of the fort. An organisation with this setup tends to limit creativity and is not an enabler for its member to contribute ideas and feedback for the betterment of the organisation. Even if the scouts and observers are specially choosen for the job, the elites of elites, and are highly dependent, still the incoming information flow are proned to be reduced to a traffic jam when any of the limited elities are cut down or the limited observation posts destroyed by enemy fire.

Fighting such an organisation, a well trained enemy force will not have to go through much effort to blind the organisation, or to deceive its decision making process.


2) Vunerable Chain of Communication

The windows are normally small in size, and situated near to the top of the fort. This is so, so as to minimise loopholes in the walls whereby arrows and flying missile projectiles can be launched at and penetrated into the fort interior. While this is ideal for protection, it allows limited number of observers, scouts, and commanders, from having a good view of the besiging enemy forces, and understanding and predicting their situations. Because of such contraints, the obervation and reporting of the situation are normally assigned to the few tower observers, whom will serve as the eyes and ears of the entire inhabitants within the fort. These limited number of observers, having the most updated view, are isolated from the rest of the troops, inhabitants and commanding authority hidden deep within the fort.

Thus, the operation and decision making committee, deep within the bunkers in the fort, might have to do with making decisions based on information passed on to them from the messengers, who in turn had to obtain the information from the group of observers on watch in the towers. In this fast pace commercial world, delayed information received, and thus leading to delayed actions and counter-actions set by the commanding authority. This will definitely be the equivalent of slow poison in the decision making organ of the organisation, as counter actions are put forth slower at every decision making turn and cycle, while the enemy is probably at the start of the second stage of execution of their decision making cycles. In such a situation, it is not difficult for the enemy to over decision the sluggish decision making cycles of the fort, and to evenutally force it into a reaction battle. This will be equivalent to a tennis player, forced by the opponent to dash to the right and then left and then right again, to intercept the ball, and thus wearing himself or herself out.




3) Isolation

Forts are normally situated high above the plains. On high ground, on top of a hill, or perched dangerously on a cliff. In any battle, seizing the high ground will be a key and primary objective in any warfighting commander or business planner's battle plans. Having a strategic position on a high ground with respect to the enemy will allow :
- Ease of observation of the enemy. The force size, force movement, can be seen from the high ground.
- Early warning, enemy's plan to approach the fort will be seen miles away.
- Ability to direct troops in the plains below by flashing lights, or hosting flags. A sort of primitive long range command and control of forces from the command post in the fort.
- Natural barrier. Enemy forces needs to ascend the high ground before they are able to attack the fort.

All the above points shows the advantage that a force or business possessed by encamping its command element on high ground. However, looking at these points closer, we realised that out of the 4 points suggested, the first 3 points are related to observation and situation awareness. If the fort does not have adequate observation post, or offers and facilitates opportunities for the inhabitants to levarage on the advantage that the high ground offers, then encamping on high ground will have not much purpose at all. In fact, a blinded fort or establishment will probably have its troops withdrawn deep into its underground chamber to be protected from the sieging enemy forces and this results in isolation of the fort from the rest of the world.

To fight such an enemy, the opposing force has first got to target the observation capability of the fort, whereby the destruction of such capabilities will reduce the situation awareness of the commanding authority within the fort which will in turn,
- led to a gradual cut off in the ability to command and direct the other forces operating beyond the walls of the fort,
- as well as the ability to liase and rally the civilian populance in the plains below.

posted by Pencil @ 10:29 PM