I wonder what the heck kind of awesome products we could come up with if Singapore were to devote the same kind of design thinking to Defence. Our defence requirements are so unique -- from a unique strategic perspective on deterrence coupled with neutrality, down to the physical constraints of a tiny island where you run from jungle to mall to jungle in the span of a kilometre. What kind of intricate networks of technology and communications could you put together to come up with defence uniquely applicable to a country like that -- and from that, what kind of new defence policies could you establish?
What if defence could, for a day, be taken just as cavalierly as any other design project with the aim to please, and thinkers from so many aspects of the problem could come together and brainstorm, just the way designers do? Think of the perspectives that could be shared, between policy makers and hardware designers -- two people that never mix.
I imagine there could be things like.. individual soldiers as information points. Each one has an idea of the lay of the land, represented as players on a virtual field, which are delegated by a central commander. Think playing war games, but applying that speed of deployment to real life. If every soldier is aware, more satellite groups could break off or coordinate, independently relating with supplies or with strategists. Translate from the hub and spoke model to a grid network. What technologies can immediately tell you the pertinent status of your troops -- think of the decision trees you could draw in seconds based on established factors that could tell you whether to make use of one troop or another, or to be able to even preempt the support they may need.
Anyway I don't know as much about military strategy as I'd like to yet in order to innovate on the lay of the land, I have no idea how efficiently systems function today. But I definitely want to learn a lot more about it now.
And before any of this even happens, it would be amazing to try and think up how you might establish this kind of design cooperation within the defence community itself, in a way that we can work off one another seamlessly. What kind of red tape needs to go away, what kind needs to be put in place? In such a traditionally straight laced, results oriented, and top-down infrastructure, how can we play and tweak with policy and mindsets to allow the fruit of new perspectives and design analysis to grow? Strategy needs to be based on technology, which needs to be based on strategy.
Oh imagine if we could reinvent defence with all the emerging benefits of design, operations, and strategic thinking. And the way you would go about it would be so unique too. Unlike the head over heels changes that occurs within certain corporations, change to a defence organisation needs to be handled in a much more delicate fashion, changing strategic points at strategic times that make sure the paramount defence capability is never lost. How would you seamlessly introduce a change in methodology, and likely more importantly, control the reception to it? Changes in one thing today could mean a whole new paradigm shift if a war were war to break out tomorrow and what will you do if everyone is not equipped to incorporate it? How can all that be changed within the additional setting of international policies and coalitions? The interplay is amazing.
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