The opening of Egypt’s Strategic Command Headquarters last week shows what Egypt has learned from its recent past and how it intends to deal with the changes impacting both geopolitics and the way that wars are fought. The multibillion-dollar project was opened by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former military leader, but has been criticised as an “extravagance” in a country servicing a debt mountain, in need of loans and investment.
The complex is widely known as the Octagon. Similar to the Pentagon in the United States, it gets its name from its architecture, being built around eight outer buildings, each shaped like an octagon (an eight-sided figure). The eight buildings represent the eight branches of the Egyptian armed forces. Covering 22,000 acres, it is now the largest defence facility in the world.
Surrounded by dozens of motorcycles on 4 July, Sisi’s car cruised along newly built desert roads in the blistering heat, shaping the background of Egypt’s New Capital, a megacity nearly the size of Singapore. Two Apache helicopters flew over the motorcade, like a scene from a movie. Sisi wore army fatigues, a rare sight these days, but one seen as a message about Egyptian sovereignty and military power. The complex will be the first and last line of defence for a state whose threats are digital as much as physical, where information is as important as conventional war tactics.
Strategic doctrine shift
Surrounding two command structures, these eight buildings are connected by corridors. The architecture draws from ancient Egyptian and Islamic motifs, probably for cultural symbolism and to denote order and continuity. It is made of 13 operational and logistical zones with a hardened construction and subterranean facilities, all protected by the Republican Guard.
The complex is designed to serve as a centralised national command hub for military operations, crisis management, and intelligence coordination, and its construction offers insights into the evolution of the armed forces’ doctrine, which is driven by past events, current conditions, and future predictions. It “constitutes a major shift in how Egypt plans its military operations, making them proactive, rather than reactive,” said Gen. Nasr Salem, a former reconnaissance commander. Speaking to Al Majalla, he said it would help the army stage effective cyber-operations.
