Built to Outlast: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

Abstract

Abstract : There is a healthy debate about hybrid warfare in American military journals and publications. Much of this discussion describes hybrid threats as a nascent phenomenon, citing the Israeli Defense Force's 2006 struggle against Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon as a bellwether for future conflict. Significantly, much of this debate also focuses on an adversary's means and capabilities in hybrid war, rather than the cognitive fusing of mixed forms of warfare that hybrid threats employ. Consequently, there is a lack of discourse on operational approaches to hybrid warfare. This monograph utilizes oral history interviews and discussions with theorists and practitioners from the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in southern Lebanon, the American experience in Vietnam, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The author was able to develop these case studies by taking advantage of research opportunities in the United States, United Kingdom and Israel financed by the Command and General Staff College and the Joint Special Operations University. The resulting historical qualitative analysis provides a fresh inquiry of hybrid warfare through the lens of operational art. To gauge suitable operational approaches to hybrid warfare, this study develops explanatory fundamentals to counter future hybrid threats by evaluating the aforementioned conflicts. These fundamentals of an operational approach include disrupting the hybrid threat's logic in the forms of warfare it employs, rather than focusing on physical methods to counter the hybrid threat's means and capabilities. Additionally, it includes pursuing a strategic aim by arranging tactical actions within the context that led to a hybridized threat. Finally, it avoids uniform and prescriptive approaches across time and space.