Mega City MISO: One of the Next Frontiers

The Army feels that Mega Cities will be among the next major battlefields. Mega Cities are defined as cities with 20 million or more people. (see: http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140830/DEFREG02/308300027/US-Army-Sees-Megacities-Future-Battlefield)

In addition to dense populations, these cities would likely house significant masses of vulnerable populations. They would be served by all manner of major media to include TV and would likely overflow with mobile phones.

Notwithstanding their size, these population centers would like have informal or formal ethnic areas some of which evolved from internal migration, probably from rural areas and others may have developed due to international immigration both legal and not.

If the city is a battlefield, then it would be reasonable to assume a lack of government control, problems with infrastructure, and warlord or criminal organizations pretty much prowling around at will.

Implications for PSYOP here are huge.

Technology will be paramount with mesh networks and other ad hoc means of communications sprouting in ways not even considered today. Traditional media, especially ethnic and language appropriate TV will be important as well because of the loyalty that some TV programs and personalities engender and because of the power of imagery.

Individuals will more likely be connected to each other with mobile phones. Even the poorest of areas will have mobile phones even if they are shared much in the same way that party lines (old analog lines shared by several subscribers) used to be in the olden days.

From a content perspective “reachback” may be critical to develop and deliver the quality and quantity of products needed for operations in such an AO.

Given that no existing military has fought battles in this AO it would be appropriate to develop Command Post Exercises (CPX) based on a few cities. This would give a concrete basis for influence preparation of the battlefield. My nominees would be:

·      Jakarta

·      Karachi

·      Manila

·      Sao Palo

·      Mumbai

·      Bangkok

·      Lagos

·      Tehran

Be advised that the Regimental Blog will be in Italy for the next two weeks, so don’t be too surprised if we’re ‘dark’ for a bit.

Photo is of Lagos, Nigeria from Wikipedia.