Hybrid Warfare (merged thread)

[UrsaMaior]

UrsaMajor:
a.) All I do and write is predicated on that fact I think we (US and UK) need a good deal of change. We are not good. We are far less good than we think we are, and we were never that good, back when we thought we still were. Some day soon, some bunch of semi-competent clowns, will kick our ass. If that's the case then we could be in real trouble with anyone really good.

With all respect Wilf it is Ursa Maior, the stellar constellation meaning big bear. Being 190 cms with 130kgs it is my nick since ages.

I was told by a senior hungarian (70+) general that between 1973 and 1982ish it was common belief that WP can break through the Fulda-gap. All they were afraid of was the nuclear retaliation after they reached the french border. In the second half of the 1980s they were working on what should they do after Berlin was occupied by the imperialists. You never really know how good you are unless you can match yourself against true peers.

I can put something valuable on it that your "semi-competent clowns" will not be a regular army but a bunch of kids / every day guys/gals out there
- for fun (like that russian guy who broke the unbreakeable 27 digit code of WiFi networks using a modified 3D graphics card)
- for profit (like MS-13)
- for the greater glory of some unknown minority (I dont have the slightest idea say pirese )
- on the payroll of a gov't (like that youth group responsible for shutting down half of Estonia's internet).

Of course ICBMs, YAL-1s, MLRSs and JDAMs and F-22s are good against some future advesary once in a decade, but it won't be a littoral combat ship or a Stryker MGS that will save your / our ass, but determined, creative, well educated and at last but not at least well paid grunts who will know what to do at the right time at the right place, and it won't be a targeted kill by a Hellfire or a collapsing building by a Tomahawk cruise missile, much rather a well placed video in a filesharing site or one single shot through a window by a good ol' 7,62×51 NATO round put into the right person and not into some bystander or even a one line news on the stock exchange billboard heralding the untimely death of an overzealous broker.

b.) Hybrid, 4GW, EBO, SOD and all the other silly ideas are obstacles to effective change because they are all founded on a series of false premises. They are simply wrong!
They all assume we are currently competent but that the "rules" have somehow changed. They have not! We just cannot seem to pull our heads out of our collective asses, because we think that "new war" is the problem, when in fact we are the problem.

Additionally they seek to divert us from getting the really important stuff right. We cannot do that if we are paralysed by silly ideas like "war is now more complex." War has always been complex, and we mostly suck at being good it. - to be good, we just have to suck less than the others - so yes. Irony!

All for change, but let's base it on what we know works. Not silly pet theories which are forcing mechanisms for the terminally stupid.

Sorry Wilf these are the words of Echevarria, col. Gentile and others who say 'if it ain't broke don't fix it!'. Well it is broke. If not now then in 2-5 yrs all of you will see exactly how REALLY broke it is in the very moment when your semi-competent clowns will kick our NATO/US/UK/Israeli a$$. You say these 'nonsenses' direct that much needed attention from REAL changes. I say these are really serious issues and I don't have the slightest doubt that among others William S Lind or Martin van Creveld (including some high ranking officers of the hungarian army) would stop spending time on it as soon as direct evidence shows that they are an obstacle in the way of better security. If the much predicted $hit happens you and the paleoconservative military thinkers cannot just simply say sorry we were wrong. I say let these unorthodoy theories have a try, thank God conventional deterrence and security measures work well enough giving us some time. If these acronyms turn out be a fool's errand you can still say we told you in advance but if not and the world nowadays is way more complicated than you think what then? I am sorry I am not willing to put my kids' future on your perception.