How can governments ensure their armed forces are protected in the field? By behaving like the tentacled marine animal, argues a marine scientist.
W
When American soldiers were killed in Iraq by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, it was the slow, bureaucratic, centralised nature of the Department of Defense that failed them, says Rafe Sagarin, a marine ecologist at the University of Arizona. It was only once soldiers were authorised to make their own decisions – a move known as the Petraeus Doctrine, after the general who invented it – that they could communicate effectively with locals in order to find out in advance where IEDs might be…[continue reading here]
