14 November 2017

HYBRID WARFARE – OLD WINE IN A NEW BOTTLE

US Army is very fond of using new terminologies. Remember LICO, SASO. MOOTW, Asymmetric, irregular, unconventional, long, small then came 4GW and now Hybrid. Add to it Chinese unrestricted warfare and our copy of Israeli sub conventional warfare.

What is wrong with good old CI Ops. Of course there will be different hues of it. J&K and NE and Punjab all will be different. It will change with time also.

Please tell me what do you call operations in J&K. Proxy, subconventional, 4GW, Hybrid or CI/CT Ops?

Let us not imitate Uncle Sam blindly. Please tell me when did they successfully fight a CI Ops. Granada? 

There are not many success stories of fighting CI Ops. We in Indian Army can rightfully claim some notable victories like Punjab, Mizoram. Nagaland is under control. There are others which are kept under reasonable control. Which country can have such success stories.

Time to articulate out strategies, tactics, even jugad properly. This we singularly lack, our Cat A ests , ARTRAC, DGMT have failed miserably. Can you tell me what was the strategy adapted in Punjab, anywhere well articulated for future. 

I am waiting when some smart alecs start propagating Gray Area Warfare in India which is being written about by US Army War Colleges or Multi Domain Battle propagated by US Army. It takes generally couple of years to imbibe these terminologies by us.

We must have respect on our own abilities, we must have our own terminologies, if we can articulate our strategy, tactics, techniques and procedures the whole world would come to us. Nobody has more success stories in CI Ops in this world than us. When Lt Gen Arjun Ray was thrusting down our throats SADBHAVNA many of us did not like. Later the yanks took a cue and said WHAM! Lo and behold we also started talking about WHAM. My contention is at least terminologies we use should be Make in India. If one wants to be called soldier scholar, I have no issue on that. But why copy yanks, coin an Indian term! West Point says : It's all about honoring the school's "soldier scholars."

The United States Army and West Point are indivisible. To separate the Army from West Point is to take away the purpose of the United States Military Academy. Since its founding in 1802, West Point has produced soldier scholars for America. The best education in the nation hones the intellect, while the tough physical and military training creates the warrior. The Army West Point primary mark perfectly portrays the soldier scholar ideal. Athena's helmet symbolizes wisdom while the sword represents the warrior ready for battle.

Here is my take on Hybrid Warfare.


HYBRID WARFARE – OLD WINE IN A NEW BOTTLE

- Maj Gen P K Mallick,VSM (Retd)

The concept of Hybrid Warfare is about decade old. A retd Lt Col Frank Hoffman from US Marine Corps floated this concept. One of those initial papers is available at : http://www.potomacinstitute.org/images/stories/publications/potomac_hybridwar_0108.pdf. The other papers were : Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis and Frank Hoffman, “Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Warfare,” Naval Institute Proceedings, November 2005, pp. 30-32; Frank G. Hoffman, “How the Marines are Preparing for Hybrid Wars,” Armed Forces Journal, April 2006; Frank G. Hoffman “Preparing for Hybrid Wars,” Marine Corps Gazette, March 2007. Thisconcept came up after the 2006 summer conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Since I was following this development those days I had kept 60 odd papers on Hybrid Warfare in my warfare page of Knowledge on Line available at : http://indianstrategicknowledgeonline.com/_viewresult_warfare.php?t=Hybrid%20Warfare

I had given three star rating to one of the 24 page presentations titled Irregular Warfare, COIN, Hybrid, Asymmetric Warfare, and "COIN next available at : http://indianstrategicknowledgeonline.com/web/DIRIWCSCBriefv3.pdf. Request read it.

Since those days Fourtg Generation Warfare was the toast of any discussion on counterinsurgency I flagged two more papers on the relationship between 4GW anf Hybrid warfare. You may like to read FROM FOURTH GENERATION WARFARE TO HYBRID WAR available at http://indianstrategicknowledgeonline.com/web/FROM%20FOURTH%20GENERATION%20to%20hybrid.pdf

I found an excellent paper on The real threat of hybrid conflict which was also put dutifully on my knowledge on line site available at : http://indianstrategicknowledgeonline.com/web/real-threat-of-hybrid-conflict.pdf. The author writes and I quote : The challenge of so-called hybrid war is that it's reminded us of the need to consider these two questions together: firepower and maneuver, attack and defense, target identification and force protection. Artillery and air power are used in close combination with ground forces to pin down the enemy, force him to keep his head down and allow friendly ground forces to maneuver on his position. But how to separate him from the population, to force him to come out and fight? Well-trained infantry must be capable of meeting the enemy in his sanctuaries – whether forests or mountains or urban areas – to identify, isolate, and fix him for destruction. These are the fundamentals of combined-arms land warfare, as useful for Americans in 2018 as for Germans in 1918.

I also recommend reading the following : 

Confessions of a Hybrid Warfare Skeptic available at : http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/confessions-of-a-hybrid-warfare-skeptic

Assessing Russian Hybrid Warfare: A Successful Tool for Limited War available at : http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/assessing-russian-hybrid-warfare-a-successful-tool-for-limited-war

US Department of Defense (DOD) officials had discussed the need to counter the continuum of threats that U.S. forces could face from nonstate and state-sponsored adversaries, including computer network and satellite attacks; portable surface-to-air missiles; improvised explosive devices; information and media manipulation; and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high yield explosive devices. In light of references to “hybrid warfare” by senior military officials and possible implications it could have for DOD’s strategic planning, DOD requested US Government Accounting Office(GAO) to examine: 

Whether DOD has defined hybrid warfare and how hybrid warfare differs from other types of warfare. 

The extent to which DOD is considering the implications of hybrid warfare in its overarching strategic planning documents.

The GAO findings are: DOD has not officially defined hybrid warfare at this time and has no plans to do so because DOD does not consider it a new form of warfare. Rather, officials from OSD, the Joint Staff, the four military services, and U.S. Joint Forces Command told us that their use of the term hybrid warfare describes the increasing complexity of future conflicts as well as the nature of the threat. Moreover, the DOD organizations we met with differed on their descriptions of hybrid warfare. For example, according to Air Force officials, hybrid warfare is a potent, complex variation of irregular warfare. U.S. Special Operations Command officials, though, do not use the term hybrid warfare, stating that current doctrine on traditional and irregular warfare is sufficient to describe the current and future operational environment. Although hybrid warfare is not an official term, we found references to “hybrid” and hybrid-related concepts in some DOD strategic planning documents; however, “hybrid warfare” has not been incorporated into DOD doctrine. For example, according to OSD officials, hybrid was used in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report to draw attention to the increasing complexity of future conflicts and the need for adaptable, resilient U.S. forces, and not to introduce a new form of warfare. The military services and U.S. Joint Forces Command also use the term “hybrid” in some of their strategic planning documents to articulate how each is addressing current and future threats, such as the cyber threat; however, the term full spectrum often is used in addition to or in lieu of hybrid. DOD concurred with the report. You may read the report at : http://www.gao.gov/assets/100/97053.pdf. I thought this should bury the debate.

Same thing happened with 4GW. I do not find much reference to 4GW in official documents of DOD or the Armed Forces.

Since the beginning of the Russian operation in Crimea in 2014, Hybrid warfare became a buzzword used in all transatlantic security policy circles. For many in the West, the Crimea operation came as a surprise and the term “hybrid warfare” was meant to intellectually embrace this shock. I recommend the following papers :

Nothing 'Hybrid' About Russia's War in Ukraine available at https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/nothing-hybrid-about-russias-war-in-ukraine-46913

HYBRID WARFARE: WHERE’S THE BEEF? AVAILABLE AT : HTTP://WARONTHEROCKS.COM/2015/04/HYBRID-WARFARE-WHERES-THE-BEEF/

Hybrid Warfare: A Known Unknown? available at : http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2016/07/18/hybrid-warfare-known-unknown/


I would go by a recent paper on the topic by NATO, Hybrid war – does it even exist? available at : 


Where it states : 

At a recent event sponsored by NATO and organized by the Atlantic Council, attendees were told that “there is no agreed definition of terms related to hybrid warfare.” In other words, the 28 members of the North Atlantic Alliance cannot agree on a clear definition of what they are facing. How can NATO leaders expect to develop an effective military strategy if they cannot define what they believe is the threat of the day?

So my recommendation is that NATO, and other Western decision-makers, should forget about everything “hybrid” and focus on the specificity and the interconnectedness of the threats they face. Warfare, whether it be ancient or modern, hybrid or not, is always complex and can hardly be subsumed into a single adjective. Any effective strategy should take this complex environment into account and find ways to navigate it without oversimplifying.

In 2009 CLAWS organised an international seminar on insurgency or terrorism I don't exactly remeber. Lt Col Thomas X. Hammes, again of US Marine Corps who had been writing extensively on 4GW and authored a much talked about book The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century came to deliver a talk. I asked him the same question, why is US Armed Forces reinventing the wheel. What is wrong with good old Counter Insurgency Operations. He was candid enough to reply that after the first gulf war, everybody was gaga about technology. RMA, System of Systems and all that. The very important aspect of counterinsurgency were being forgotten. They had to find a sexy terminology. He agreed essentially there is not much difference. Lt Gen Rostum Nanavatty who was chairing a session, in his own inimitable, soft, measured, crisp tone echoed the same sentiment of mine, I thought.

I can bet on one thing. Within a couple of years CLAWS will organise a seminar on Grey Zone Warfare and Multi Domain Battle. Please read the following papers : http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB1303.pdf






Why Vallabhbhai Patel strongly opposed Nehru's 'suicidal policy' of appeasement over China and Tibet

By Claude Arpi

For several reasons, very little scholarly research has been done on the internal history of the Congress party. The main cause is probably that a section of the party would prefer to keep its history under wraps. Even the acute difference of opinion between Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru hasn't reached the public. Royal Tour to India, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, are pictured with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Pandit Nehru (left) and Krishna Menon

CHINA IS REINFORCING ITS BORDER WITH INDIA

Claude Arpi 

The Middle Kingdom is winning the trust of the locals to safeguard its border. This must worry India. But can China win over the Tibetans who have largely been sympathetic towards India? At the end of the 19th Congress, Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to emerge the winner on most fronts. First and foremost, the 19th Congress approved an amendment to the Party Constitution, enshrining ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Er’.

Iran's Bottom Line in Afghanistan

BY ALEX VATANKA

Due to proximity and historical ties, no other country is as well placed as Iran to play a dominant role in Afghan society, as Middle East Institute senior fellow Alex Vatanka shows in his new paper, "Iran's Bottom Line in Afghanistan."

However, Tehran is focused on short-term tactical gains at the expense of a sustainable, holistic strategy, reflected in its use of Shia Afghans as a proxy elsewhere in the region, and it is generating concern in Kabul about rising sectarian tensions in Afghanistan.

Read the Publication (PDF)

Closure of Pak terror sanctuaries key to maritime security in IOR

M. ASHRAF HAIDARI

Maritime security — on which much else depends — is interconnected with events in landlocked countries. Afghanistan is a prime example: Over the past 40 years, geopolitical tensions have imposed destructive conflicts on what is one of the most naturally endowed countries at the heart of rising Asia.

Recently, this author participated in an international maritime conference — SAGAR Dialogue organised by the Forum for Integrated National Security (FINS) — that discussed “security and growth for all” in the Indian Ocean region. The conference aptly took place in India’s coastal city of Goa with a long history of maritime trade and commercial exchange among different civilisations of the South, East and West. Coming from a landlocked country, Afghanistan, it was a unique learning experience for the author, as he listened to speaker after speaker on the challenges and opportunities that involve blue oceans.

The Sino-Indian Clash and the New Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific

BY BHARATH GOPALASWAMY AND ROBERT MANNING

On June 18, 2017, an Indian patrol disrupted construction of a Chinese road along the disputed border of Sikkim, a remote state in northeast India, reigniting a border conflict between China and India. This incident rapidly evolved into a standoff, with the apparent threat of militarized escalation between the two countries. The tension dissipated without consensus on the substantive issues, but under an interim diplomatic arrangement whereby India withdrew troops and China halted its road building, thus ending a seventy-one-day impasse. Read the Publication (PDF)

Xi’s new PLA strategy: Implications for India

MANOJ JOSHI

The 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), that concluded on October 24, was about electing a new Central Committee (CC), Politburo (PB), and Politburo Standing Committee(PBSC). But an important ancillary function was to select new military members of the Central Military Commission, which is chaired by General Secretary Xi Jinping, who is the Commander-in-chief of China’s armed forces. The other body selected at the same time is the Central Commission for Discipline and Inspection (CCDI), the party’s top-most anticorruption outfit which has a significant role in Xi Jinping’s strategy in keeping the PLA close to himself.

Is China Marching Towards The Worst World War In History? British Historian Max Hastings Examines How The New Superpower Became Emboldened And Embittered — And How Its Leaders’ Desire For Global Domination May Lead To A Conflict With America


As POTUS Trump engages in perhaps his most important foreign trip of his presidency, eminent British historian Max Hastings recently wrote an article in London’s the DailyMailOnline, articulating a thoughtful, but worrisome outlook regarding a potential military clash between the U.S. and China. In an October 20, 2017 article posted on the publication’s website, Mr. Hastings warned about Chinese leader Xi’s consolidation of power; and, his elevation to ‘extraordinary heights,” making President Xi China’s most powerful leader since the reign of Mao. Mr. Hastings wrote that Xi “wields absolute authority, amid ever more draconian restrictions on dissent and free speech, even within the [Communist] Party hierarchy. ‘China needs heroes,’ he [Xi] has written,” Mr. Hastings noted, ‘such as Mao Tse-Tung.’

China Takes an Expansionist View of Geopolitics


Former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski managed to capture thousands of years of Chinese history in about 10 words. In his seminal work, The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski characterized China's geopolitics through the ages as "cycles of reunifications and expansions, followed by decay and fragmentations." The assessment gets at the heart of the the country's recurring struggle to unify an insurmountably vast landmass under a centralized authority — a struggle that continues to this day. Nearly 70 years after its most recent unification, following more than two centuries of decay and five decades of fragmentation, China is now on the verge of another period of expansion. And as its influence on the global stage increases, China will have to adapt to a new view of geopolitics.

What the End of ISIS Means

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

Unless you’re someone who thinks beheading people is an appropriate way to advance a repressive political cause, the imminent demise of the Islamic State is welcome news. But we should be wary of a premature “Mission Accomplished” moment and be judicious in drawing lessons from an outcome that otherwise merits celebration.

Toward that end, here is a preliminary assessment of what the defeat of the Islamic State means, in the form of five questions and some provisional answers.

Was the Islamic State a genuine “revolutionary state”?

Profiling Lebanon: The Western Front of a Proxy War


By Kamran Bokhari

If the Middle East is at least in part a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, then Lebanon may be called its western front. For nearly two generations, Riyadh and Tehran have vied for influence there, as the country has been, with a few interruptions of stability, at once a hostage to and the object of their competition. The competition resumed this week, and it appears that Saudi Arabia is losing.

Entanglement: Chinese and Russian Perspectives on Non-nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Risks


The entanglement of non-nuclear weapons with nuclear weapons and their enabling capabilities is exacerbating the risk of inadvertent escalation. Yet so far, the debate about the severity of this risk has been almost exclusively limited to American participants. So Carnegie teams from Russia and China set out to examine the issue and answer two questions: How serious are the escalation risks arising from entanglement? And, how do the authors’ views compare to those of their countries’ strategic communities?

Defining Entanglement

Entanglement has various dimensions: dual-use delivery systems that can be armed with nuclear and non-nuclear warheads; the commingling of nuclear and non-nuclear forces and their support structures; and non-nuclear threats to nuclear weapons and their associated command, control, communication, and information (C3I) systems. Technological developments are currently increasing the entanglement of non-nuclear weapons with nuclear weapons and their enabling capabilities.

Russia’s Unlikely Withdrawal from Syria

By Emil Avdaliani

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Moscow’s intervention in the Syrian civil war boosted the reputation of the Russian military, afforded it valuable training, and enhanced Moscow’s political clout in both the conflict zone itself and the Middle East more generally. With that said, Syria threatens to become a quagmire for Russia, and Moscow is looking for an exit. This will be difficult to pull off as Russia faces considerable geopolitical constraints.


A War Plan Orange For Climate Change


Hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold Stark promulgated his guidance through a famous cable: “EXECUTE AGAINST JAPAN UNRESTRICTED AIR AND SUBMARINE WARFARE.” Although the attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, the idea of war with Japan was not. The war in the Pacific was guided by War Plan Orange, a secret strategy the U.S. military had been developing, refining, and updating since 1906.

Can Two Nuclear Powers Fight a Conventional War?

BY MARCUS WEISGERBER
Source Link

The Pentagon just wargamed that scenario as part of its effort to determine what it needs for 21st-century deterrence. As the U.S. military reviews the makeup of its nuclear arsenal, among the questions being asked is: Can two nuclear powers fight a conventional war without going nuclear? Just last week, this scenario was among the mock battles when U.S. Strategic Command ran its annual Global Thunder nuclear wargame, Army Brig. Gen. Greg Bowen, the command’s deputy director of global operations, said Thursday at the Defense One Summit.

Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses (CTTA) – Volume 9, Issue 11



The recent territorial losses and defeat of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria signify a tactical win in the long-term battle against the group. IS will however continue to recruit and conduct attacks through its wilayats, affiliates and supporters in parts of the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. Part of this was seen in the recent truck attack in New York City which killed eight people and injured 11 others. IS has claimed responsibility for this attack and many others such as the vehicular attack in Barcelona, Spain (14 killed), and the suicide bombing in Quetta, Pakistan (15 killed) in August, and the bomb explosion in London (30 injured) in September. IS continues to pose not only a significant terrorist threat, but also a long-term ideological challenge, which is evident in the traction for its diverse online propaganda (magazines, newspapers, videos and statements) that continues to call for the establishment of the ‘caliphate’, and war against non-believers. It is therefore necessary to neutralise IS on both the terrorist and ideological fronts by preventing its armed attacks as well as negating key Islamic concepts that IS has manipulated to win supporters, sympathisers and legitimacy amongst its followers.

The Civilian-Military Gap Closes in a War-Weary Nation

By David Craig

“Many Americans believe that the military instrument of power is currently playing a disproportionately large role in U.S. foreign and security policy.”

–Barry R. McCaffrey, “American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era,” edited by Suzanne C. Nielsen, Don M. Snider

October 7, 2001 marked the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and the first of the wars in response to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. The U.S. is now in its 17th year of war, which has expanded well beyond the originally targeted hotbed of terrorism and Osama bin Laden’s base of operations. Most recently, the loss of American lives during operations in Niger has brought heightened attention to the extent of the U.S. military’s role in conflicts under the auspices of Congress’s authorization for use of military force (AUMF), also in its 17th year.

Why NATO’s Cyber Operations Center is a Big Deal

By Rachel Ansley

NATO’s newly announced cyber operations center will allow the Alliance to “respond more effectively” to cyber attacks by integrating cyber measures with conventional military capabilities, according to an Atlantic Council analyst. 

The Alliance has “always had significant conventional capabilities—land, air, and sea—now cyber can be included,” said Franklin D. Kramer, a distinguished fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security and an Atlantic Council board member. 

“The value of the cyber operations center is that it will integrate the cyber capabilities with all of the rest of NATO’s military capabilities,” he said. 

The Rise Of Super-Stealthy, Digitally Signed Malware — Thanks To The Dark Web


“It’s digital code-signing certificates,” he wrote.

“A recent study conducted by the Cyber Security Research Institute (CSRI) this week revealed that digital code-signing certificates are available for anyone to purchase on the Dark Web for $1,200,” Mr. Khandelwal wrote. “As many of you know,” he adds, “digital certificates issued by a Trusted Certificate Authority (CA) are used to cryptographically sign computer applications and software; and, are trusted by your computer [device] for execution of those programs without any warning messages. However,” he notes, “malware author[s] and hackers are always in search of advanced techniques to bypass security solutions have been abusing trusted digital certificates [especially] during recent years.”

Cyber and electronic warfare an increasing global challenge

by Guy Martin

Cyber and electronic attacks are increasingly factors in warfare, such as the sabotaging of Iran’s nuclear facilities and the attack on the Ukraine’s electricity grid. This, according to defence analyst Helmoed Romer Heitman, begs the question of when is an electronic attack an act of war and how should a nation respond?

Heitman, at the Aardvark Roost Electronic Warfare South Africa 2017 International Conference and Exhibition on 7 November, looked at some of the key trends in electronic and cyber warfare. He said that electronic warfare, in all its forms, from intelligence gathering through jamming to electronic or digital attack, is increasingly a factor in war. This has long been understood in the conventional warfare environment – including communications disruption and more recently jamming of GPS signals and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) command lines – but today challenges are arising from irregular forces, disabling attacks on electronic systems and remote attacks on non-military systems.

Google's 10 Biggest Acquisitions

by Niall McCarthy

By taking over the division that develops Pixel smartphones, Google will gain 2,000 HTC employees including half its research and development team, roughly equivalent to a fifth of HTC's total workforce.

Even though Google is not acquiring HTC's manufacturing assets, the move does illustrate the company's push to become more innovative in order to compete against Apple and Samsung. The following infographic shows where the partial HTC purchase ranks on the list of Google's largest acquisitions. Google will be hoping to avoid repeating the mistake of buying Motorola mobility for $12.5 billion before being forced to sell it off to Lenova for $3 billion just two years later.