“Every age has its own kind of war“
(Clausewitz)
“Water has no constant shape, war has no constant dynamic”
(Sun Tzu)
The million dollar question every security officer asks himself on a daily basis is “who is
Russian plane crash
the attacker” And even more importantly, how can we identify and stop them?
As for the “Who?” there are many answers to these questions; extreme jihadist, political derived movements and even drug cartels,
And as to the “How?” the most effective system is to focus our efforts on High Potential Risk persons.
The fact is that the modern adversary adopts guerilla tactics based on elements of surprise to overcome the security deployment.
Surprise is achieved by employing a stratagem that is in effect the essence of the operational goal of attack. The stratagem always includes risk taking and its objective is to act on the opponent’s state of mind, in other words to strike at the point that will instill fear not only as a result of the attack outcome itself but from the position of inferiority in which it finds itself. The object of the stratagem is therefore to put the defender off balance and strike it in this position of inferiority.
The question is what is the most effective course of action the defender/security provider can take against an attacker trying to surprise?
The answer is easy to say but extremely difficult to achieve:
The defender must surprise the attacker.
Surprise can only be achieved if the defender takes a proactive approach, aimed at disrupting the attacker’s first moves in order to foil his plans, to undermine his state of mind, or even to change it.
This defensive proactive approach has been used by several entities in the aviation sector in the past years enabling them to create an effective security deployment. The ability to screen large numbers of the public such as passengers in airports, while at the same time enhancing screening abilities to be able to detect the adversary has become the epicenter of Aviation Security.
We assume that looking for a single element is impossible or at least it will take a tremendous amount of effort so we select a bigger group we define as “High Potential Threat”. This also allows the security deployment to enhance its deterrence by selecting several passengers and not a singular person while at the same time avoiding pitfalls such as claims for discrimination.
The asymmetrical alignment between terrorist attacker and security systems creates an equation that can only be evened establishing a proactive approach. Only a proactive system allows for effective alongside efficient security.
The use of proactive approach requires professionalism and professionalism means constant appropriate recruitment-education-training-maintaining capabilities and innovation.