How can we reduce the Burden?

CBRN(E) challenges for military and civil medical services in the 21st century - silent weapons or occupational hazards?

The last two decades has seen a paradigm shift between ‘Cold War’ concepts of operations and those that we practice today. This implies that there is a need then to break out of the 20th Century mindset of manoeuvre warfare and to develop a philosophy that meets the needs of defence, in its widest sense, for the 21st Century. TX Hammes thesis on 4th Generation Warfare, Rupert Smith’s utility of force in war amongst the people and Philip Bobbit’s articulation of the move from industrialized sovereign states to the market state provide the philosophical foundation for this discussion piece. This was summarized well at the recent Royal United Services Institute Annual Resilience Conference in London which suggested that 18th Century ‘Enlightenment’ models may be more appropriate than the staid concepts of manoeuvre that we continue to practice and teach. A more open-minded approach might
provide us with the requirements sets needed to be more responsive against the most likely threats rather than the worst case scenario which is arguably unaffordable in both political and financial terms in the 21st Century.