Mission systems and coordination
Giving field organisations a shared view of the situation and means of coordination that survive degradation.
The issue
The problem as it presents itself.
In crisis management, the difficulty is not producing information but sharing the same understanding between organisations that have neither the same tools, nor the same procedures, nor the same chain of command.
Intended outcome
What the organisation gets.
A shared view of the situation, a documented decision chain, and coordination that keeps working in degraded mode.
Before committing
Four preliminary questions.
An organisation that cannot answer these questions does not yet have a programme: it has an intention. Formulating them costs less than discovering them mid-delivery.
- 01In a crisis, do the organisations involved share one reading of the situation, or does each hold its own?
- 02Who decides when the usual chain of command is interrupted?
- 03Have your coordination procedures been tested in joint exercise, with the other services?
- 04What happens if communications are lost for several hours?
Our role
What we take on.
- Analysis of decision chains and of where responsibility actually sits.
- Consolidation of a common operating picture from authorised sources.
- Inter-agency coordination procedures and joint exercises.
- Operation in degraded mode and under loss of communications.
- Structured lessons learned after an exercise or an event.
Security
Principles applied.
- Separation by level of sensitivity and by organisation.
- Human control over decisions with significant effect.
- Traceability of decisions and of the information they were founded on.
- Resistance to loss of communications and to compromise of a single position.
Deployment
Available modes.
- On site, in an isolated environment.
- In a deployable configuration for operations away from base.
The mode depends on the organisation’s own sovereignty, continuity and classification requirements. It is settled before design, not after.
Service level during an incident
Levels, from top to bottom:nominal servicereduced service, essential functions maintainedservice interrupted
- Prepared organisation
- Unprepared organisation
- Before
- Critical assets are inventoried and the response has been rehearsed.
- Detection
- The anomaly is seen by monitoring, not reported by the user.
- Containment
- The affected perimeter is isolated; essential functions hold.
- Recovery
- Restoration follows a tested procedure, within a defined time.
Transfer of skills
End of engagement.
Training of operators and commanders, adoption of the procedures by the client organisation, and exercises run by its own officers.
Related domains.
Consultations · Pre-qualifications · Partnerships
Continue the conversation.
Detailed material — methodology, references, capability statement — is provided within a controlled framework, at the request of an identified organisation.