Preparing the Brigade Combat Team for the Hybrid Threat

Abstract

Abstract : The United States Army is beginning to move away from the current fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. This will mean brigade combat teams will now shift their focus from winning the current fight to preparing for the next possible threat. Current United States Army doctrine and publications point to an adversary that simultaneously and adaptively employs a fused mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism and criminal behavior in the battle space to obtain their political objectives. This Adversary is being labeled as a hybrid threat. The tension that exists in preparing for the hybrid threat is that current U.S. Army training doctrine does not provide a link between current training tasks available for full spectrum operations and the skills required to defeat a hybrid threat. Brigade combat teams require research into past military conflicts in order to provide the linkage between current collective training tasks and the hybrid threat. The research provides commanders with the ability to critically think through building their training strategy. Current scholars on the subject of the hybrid threats hold up the 2006 Lebanon War and the 1994/1996 Chechnya War as models that provide insight into hybrid warfare. The review of these two conflicts point to five core skill sets to defeat the hybrid threat; combined arms maneuver, offensive operations in an urban environment, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance that can collect on a broad array of information, precision fires, and mission command on the move. In addition, the Army Force Generation cycle limits the amount of time available for a brigade combat team to prepare for deployment to 12 to 24 months. Therefore, these core skill sets should be prioritized above all other training until a level of proficiency is gained on these core skill sets in the limited time allotted.