Hybrid Warfare (merged thread)

[Ron Humphrey]

I don't think Frank is wrong, but I think it might not be useful, because he has not couched the idea of "Hybrid" conflict in a reality that can built upon in terms of doctrine.

EG: You have COIN, Hybrid, and War Fighting.

These are premised as being separate, discrete activities, that are part of a spectrum. - (Yes I know that makes no sense, yet that is what is conventionally suggested. Hybrid assumes a mix of two or more separate and discrete entities.)

Why not just suggest that as a professional army, you will have to fight many different types of enemies, with many differing aims and means. All the fundamentals stay the same.



Good point, but this must be held to rigour in the same way other professions, such as medicine, or engineering. Because we don't we end up with 4GW, EBO and other clown-like "concepts" all claiming to shiny new better ways of doing stuff.

Does anything think the whole new and shiny sales pitch and different terms all stems from the fact that in western culture we have taken the whole premise of how to get buy-in from superiors too far.

Almost everyone has those times when they recognize something that has been dealt with before and they learned about it but the only way they can get it across is to figure out a way for their leaders to make the idea their own.

How do you get change to take place or at least be understood without reshaping, renaming, or repackaging it in one form or another.

Just thinking about it

[William F. Owen]

Does anything think the whole new and shiny sales pitch and different terms all stems from the fact that in western culture we have taken the whole premise of how to get buy-in from superiors too far.

Almost everyone has those times when they recognize something that has been dealt with before and they learned about it but the only way they can get it across is to figure out a way for their leaders to make the idea their own.

How do you get change to take place or at least be understood without reshaping, renaming, or repackaging it in one form or another.

Just thinking about it

Excellent points. Again, this is a major problem area for me, because in my understanding, albeit limited, I am not aware that you see the same thing in Philosophy for example. There, all the serious practioners have a very good understanding of all the serious work. In military thought,

a.) a minute amount of people have a good and clear understanding of the core works. EG: I doubt my own understanding of Clausewitz because I have had to study him in isolation. This means my understanding of Foch is not as clear as perhaps it should be, though I'd argue that with anyone on the planet, bar Robert Leonhard!

b.) There is no general or widespread acceptance of which core works and thinkers are or were useful. EG, you go from the Genius of Carl Von C, to the idioacy of Liddell-Hart, and end up with the irrelevance of Boyd.

c.) I am not aware (and there maybe, just I don't know it) of any academic of valid Military institute that actaully teaches classes or courses on Military Thought. Therefore, because it is not studied, the playing field is open to the concetp designers to play as they please.

[Maximus]

I'm a believer that "war" is "war" is "war" and that all talk of counterinsurgency, hybrid, multi-modal, etc. should be unnecessary. However, I see all too often that many in the U.S. military think of "war" only as Gettysburg, the Battle of the Bulge, the seige at Khe Sanh, Desert Storm, initial push during OIF-I, etc. We all know that "war" involves much more. This is why I'm often a fan of using terms like "3 or 4 block war", COIN, "hybrid" war, etc. Much good comes out of the discussions and debates about the validity of these terms and thus forces many in the military to truly think about the characteristics of the wars we've fought and those that we'll fight in the future.

Semper Fi,
Scott