I know that the journal Spectrum at the National Defense University is also very interested in something called "Phase Zero Warfare". I'm not sure if this is the same thing as this thread is talking about. I admit to being woefully uninformed about the topic.

As I integrate the elements of conflict into the framework of cyber-power I realized having met with the Spectrum editors that nobody had looked at pre-engagement and the elements of decision processes leading up to a conflict other than as contingency planning.

Sidebar: I contend that small wars is the only paradigm where hybrid warfare is fully ensconced as a principle of conflict. Other conflict proponents refer to "joint" warfare which is not the same as hybrid warfare. I think that the use of cyber-power is inherently a hybrid form of warfare similar to space and air (that ought to raise a few hackles).

So, I'd like to know what the structures and principles of this "before operations" begin likely are. How do you know you're pre-conflict unless you've already decided you're entering conflict (seems circular)? What are the operational steps? I've seen lots of operational plans but they are either assessments "blue sky" that are then "operational plans" but then that brings up the whole circular argument again. That leads to what it means to avoid something via military planning. If you're avoiding it doesn't that mean you've already approached it? I can talk about polar cases (political leadership, military leadership and their failures) but where the defining lines are and how deescalation works in the small wars spectrum works? In large scale conflict of nation state "large" war there is a significant literature but the mechanisms seem ill suited to small wars.

Well that's how it appears.