Challenges and Opportunities in Gray Zone “Combat”

Abstract

The Gray Zone lies between peace and war, where and when adversaries increasingly orchestrate campaigns using multiple elements of power to achieve political-security objectives minimizing the risks of engaging in direct kinetic warfare. Actions motivated by a Gray Zone campaign are deliberately ambiguous - sometimes deceptive - to hide the ultimate intent, cloud attribution, or leave the target of the campaign a choice among only acquiescence or escalation. Recent Gray Zone campaigns include the Russian occupation in the Ukraine and the expansion of Chinese influence and control in the South China Sea. In this paper we define competition in the Gray Zone, characterize the concurrent interactions between campaigns and counter-campaigns of two adversaries, and provide an Indications and Warnings (I&W) framework for detecting Gray Zone campaigns early. We propose combining bottom-up analysis, such as changes in the intensity and tone of messaging in media, economic investments, and other actions in the Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic (DIME) spectrum, with top-down analysis of the master narratives of nation states and other actors. We propose that interdiction of a Gray Zone campaign is best structured by analogy to the approach for disrupting the cyber kill chain.