The current war in Ukraine is proving, once again, that all the military power of tanks, combat vehicles and missile launchers is just an expensive pile of scrap metal without adequate logistics. Of course, this also means loss of life for the side that suffers from it.

The same is true for the executive protectionThis is on a smaller scale, as it also involves the loss of life of both escorts and protégés who failed to generate protective logistics in their critical operations.

Logistics, this queen without glory, accounts for most of our daily operational activities, yet it is hardly ever mentioned, let alone practiced in most training courses. executive protectionThe team was too focused on infantile tactical exercises and not enough applied to day-to-day work.

One of the main objectives of protective logistics is to reduce the executive's exposure to risk. Failure to do so can cost lives. I will give two unfortunate examples that occurred in the Mexico City metropolitan area in the past year alone: the attack against Mexican businessman Martin Rodriguez in the Nápoles neighborhood y the murder of an escort in Metepec.

The businessman was killed as he left a gymnasium before boarding his vehicle, and the escort was killed as he accompanied his protégé on the street to withdraw a large sum of money from the bank.

A more extensive analysis of both cases can be found in other articles of this blog, but, for the purpose of this text, it is important to highlight that in both tragic cases the approach was tactical, not logistical. In both cases, they relied only on a tactical response, i.e., that there is an armed escort that will respond to any aggression, so no planning or logistics is required. This mistake proved fatal.

In both cases, it was a critical phase of the operation: routine exposure, in the first case, and the risk involved in the withdrawal of cash, in the second. The logistical approach would have been applied, for both cases, in finding suitable facilities for the planned activities that will not involve exposure to the highest risk conditions, such as the street (in both incidents), adapting the user's activities in such a way that the risks would have been significantly reduced. Having sufficient agents, operating in properly guarded facilities, with integrated parking and excellent coordination with both the driver and the escort would drastically reduce the risks.

Of course, to operate prioritizing the logistical approach requires a great deal of communication and coordination with the client and his staff, which implies negotiation and persuasion skills on the part of the protection agent; however, there is no alternative to this approach. By shifting the focus from the tactical to the logistical, we can create a safer profession for both protectees and protectors.