We live in an era of implausible deniability and ambiguous warfare

[davidbfpo]

This is a link to a 2018 British Army Leadership Conference and a summary of the main speakers - via an ex-soldier and their blogsite. It opens with:

The conference theme was Successfully Leading through Change. Not every lesson was about leading change. There were some great insights no matter what you are leading. So, here are six lessons worth taking away from the day.

Link:https://thearmyleader.co.uk/change-leadership/

From my outside perch I am not convinced the UK, let alone the military recognises the pace of change and how to accept it. Conformity is still valued over non-conformity.

[davidbfpo]

First the good news:

General Andre Lanata, who took over as head of the NATO transformation command in September, told a conference in Berlin that his command demonstrated over 21 “disruptive” projects during military exercises in Norway this month. He urged startups as well as traditional arms manufacturers to work with the Atlantic alliance to boost innovation, as rapid and easy access to emerging technologies was helping adversaries narrow NATO’s longstanding advantage.

Then the traditionalists get in:

Participants also met behind closed doors with chief executives from 12 of the 15 biggest arms makers in Europe.

Link:https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-br...-idUKKCN1NJ0PY

[Bill Moore]

First the good news:

Then the traditionalists get in:
Link:https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-br...-idUKKCN1NJ0PY

In my opinion, the West is almost solely focused on technological innovation and missing the larger issue of advanced gray zone strategies that are frankly resilient to any technological solution. In sum, our innovation is focused on winning the next conventional war, while our adversaries are defeating us now with innovative strategies in the gray zone far short of conventional warfare.

We need to innovation in our holistic understanding of the security environment, how to recognize other than military threats to our national interests, and subsequent innovation in our strategic approaches. Learning to do the wrong thing better is not value added innovation.

[Bill Moore]

In my opinion, the West is almost solely focused on technological innovation and missing the larger issue of advanced gray zone strategies that are frankly resilient to any technological solution. In sum, our innovation is focused on winning the next conventional war, while our adversaries are defeating us now with innovative strategies in the gray zone far short of conventional warfare.

We need innovation in our holistic understanding of the security environment, how to recognize other than military threats to our national interests, and subsequent innovation in our strategic approaches. Learning to do the wrong thing better is not value added innovation.

https://www.usip.org/publications/20...common-defense

The recently released "Providing for the Common Defense," a bi-partisan review of the National Defense Strategy argues the following:

The convergence of these trends has created a crisis of national security for the United States—what some leading voices in the U.S. national security community have termed an emergency. Across Eurasia, gray zone aggression is steadily undermining the security of U.S. allies and partners and eroding American influence. Regional military balances in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Pacific have shifted in decidedly adverse ways. These trends are undermining deterrence of U.S. adversaries and the confidence of American allies, thus increasing the likelihood of military conflict. The U.S. military could suffer unacceptably high casualties and loss of major capital assets in its next conflict. It might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia. The United States is particularly at risk of being overwhelmed should its military be forced to fight on two or more fronts simultaneously. Additionally, it would be unwise and irresponsible not to expect adversaries to attempt debilitating kinetic, cyber, or other types of attacks against Americans at home while they seek to defeat our military abroad. U.S. military superiority is no longer assured and the implications for American interests and American security are severe.

Emphasis is mine

Followed by,

Proposed fixes to existing vulnerabilities—concepts such as “expanding the competitive space,” “accepting risk” in lower-priority theaters, increasing the salience of nuclear weapons, or relying on “Dynamic Force Employment”—are imprecise and unpersuasive. Furthermore, America’s rivals are mounting comprehensive challenges using military means and consequential economic, diplomatic, political, and informational tools. Absent a more integrated, whole-of-government strategy than has been evident to date, the United States is unlikely to reverse its rivals’ momentum across an evolving, complex spectrum of competition.

Again the emphasis is mine. Many of us have been repeating the same arguments for years. The default answer is not always more and better destroyers, more and better bombers, more armor brigades that we may not be able to project forward unless we can defeat formidable anti-access technologies to begin with, etc. Foremost, innovation needs to be focused on strategic approaches to compete in the gray zone, and new war fighting doctrine. Better toys to reinforce legacy war fighting doctrine, which arguably is currently or close to being obsolete is a losing proposition.

The most important innovations and the most difficult to execute is adapting our interagency / whole of government command structure and decision making processes so we can move at the speed of relevance. Frankly, some of our agencies, departments, and bureaus are outdated and need to either go away or evolve into something very different than they are today. We do not not have an ideal organization, or collection of organizations, for competing effectively in the gray zone. We do not have a functional interagency process to appropriately leverage and synchronize the authorities of the existing government entities. It is past time for deep change, and we need to stop worrying about temporary hurt feelings and bruised egos that will come with this change.

During the Cold War, the U.S. military developed detailed concepts for overcoming formidable operational challenges.

Today, Russia and China are capable of challenging the United States, its allies, and its partners on a far greater scale than any adversary since the Cold War. . . . Detailed, rigorous operational concepts for solving these problems and defending U.S. interests are badly needed, but do not appear to exist.

It is a tougher problem today, as we have multiple threats that operate globally and in new and multiple domains. Narrowing down our problems to two or three that we can focus on is not realistic and perhaps irresponsible. I tend to think the 2010 Capstone Concept for Joint Operations pretty much got it right when it described the problem (paraphrased) as,

determining how the future joint force, with constrained resources, will protect U.S. national interests against progressively capable and globally dispersed traditional and non-traditional adversaries in a security environment that is complex, uncertain, rapidly changing, and increasing in competitiveness and transparency. Conflicts may arise with both state and non-state actors that are accumulating more and more power and will have access to advanced weapons.

It may not be the problem the legacy force wants, but it is the problem we must contend with.

[davidbfpo]

I have not seen this phrase before and it comes from IISS in an introduction to the forthcoming publication 'Strategic Survey'.

It opens with:

The methods by which countries gain strategic advantage are often both innovative and brazen. The ways in which such state action can be deterred or countered are still in development. Uncertainty is heighted by the fact that some geopolitical moves have no obvious or immediate counter. ‘Tolerance warfare’, a style of geopolitical challenge that appears to be a preferred technique of the status quo disrupters, is becoming more prevalent. Tolerance warfare can be defined as the persistent effort to test the tolerances for different forms of aggression against settled states. It is the effort to push back lines of resistance, probe weaknesses, assert rights unilaterally, break rules, establish new facts on the ground, strip others of initiative and gain systematic tactical advantage over hesitant opponents. The purpose of tolerance warfare is to stress-test the ability of the target to deter and defeat these efforts, and then to win advantage either by diverting the target’s resources away from a central strategic purpose, or by creating new conditions that cannot be reversed except by expensive strategic effort that is perhaps disproportionate to the loss otherwise sustained. Sometimes tolerance warfare is conducted overtly and is in effect ‘declared’; often tolerance warfare is conducted through proxies or partners, especially in the most immediate theatres of operations.

Going local for a moment:

Indeed, an ancillary feature of tolerance warfare is the deliberate effort to create diversionary narratives that are aimed at obfuscating the facts and sowing confusion in international public opinion. All this will continue for the foreseeable future.....The year 2018 will be remembered as a turning point: new measures were found by Western states to drain power and capacity away from Putin and his circle, however difficult that might be.

Link:https://www.iiss.org/publications/st...8-005056be3f90

[Bill Moore]

I have not seen this phrase before and it comes from IISS in an introduction to the forthcoming publication 'Strategic Survey'.

It opens with:

Going local for a moment:
Link:https://www.iiss.org/publications/st...8-005056be3f90

David,

The author captures the essence of today's conflict, but sadly he or she plagiarized the numerous papers on gray zone competition or warfare and simply renamed it tolerance warfare. I guess that could get author a speaking engagement somewhere. Nonetheless, a well written piece.

[AdamG]

You like asymmetry?

All it takes is a Bic lighter and some gumption.

With a long history of the terror group encouraging wildland arson, al-Qaeda supporters circulated a new poster through media channels highlighting "California burning."

"They will question you about the mountains. Say: 'My Lord will scatter them as ashes,'" says the text citing the Quran, imposed over news photos from the blazes.

The al-Qaeda propaganda comes shortly after one of the many media groups supporting ISIS operations online claimed that the deadly wildfires in northern and southern California are retribution for coalition bombings in Syria.

The image circulated online by Al-Ansar Media uses a photo of a burning building and misspelled the state "kalifornia."

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-securit...fornia-burning