DoDBuzz: “Hybrid War” Throwdown

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“Hybrid War” Throwdown
By Greg Grant Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 5:17 pm
Posted in Policy

RAND’s Russell Glenn posted an article to the Small Wars Journal web site this week, titled “Thoughts on Hybrid Conflict,” questioning the utility of hybrid warfare as an intellectual construct. Glenn contends that while the term “hybrid conflict” may accurately describe certain modes of fighting at the tactical level, it should be thought of as a subset of irregular warfare, rather than a new operating concept or introduced into formal doctrine.

Frank Hoffman, the intellectual godfather of hybrid war, wrote a response on the same site, saying Glenn gets it wrong. Hybrid war is not, and was never intended to be, an operating concept, but rather is a way to conceptualize a new threat and mode of warfare and as such is intended to break the military community out of its too rigid and binary approach to thinking about either conventional or irregular warfare.

The potential impact both Glenn and Hoffman have on future force structure, organization, doctrine and strategy elevate this debate well above that of an interesting intellectual exercise. Glenn works for Gen. James Mattis at Joint Forces Command, specifically in the new Joint Irregular Warfare Center. Hoffman advises the Marine Corps Combat Development Command and his hybrid war concept has been publicly embraced by SecDef Gates and Joint Chiefs chair Adm. Mullen as a way to think about future threats.

DoD Buzz readers should be familiar with the term hybrid war, as I’ve written about it a few times. Hybrid wars feature a blending of guerrilla and conventional war. Guerrilla wars feature elusive adversaries that blend into local populations, prefer hit-and-run ambushes to stand-up fights, sniper attacks, roadside and random car bombs, and battle to sway the local populace into their camp, or at least not the government’s camp. The guerrilla has a very long time horizon, hoping to wear down counterinsurgents and the populace by maintaining a demoralizing level of violence and instability kept at a low simmer for many years. The war in Iraq from summer 2003 to spring 2008 is a good example.

Conventional wars feature big battles between nation states, with armies organized along the hierarchical and rigid lines established way back in the Napoleonic era and largely unchanged since. Massing formations and fire, or maneuvering to a condition to enable superiority of fire, is considered the primary operational challenge. It is largely a war of machines operated by a crew of soldiers - tanks, artillery, helicopters, aircraft - as the weapons of conventional war, driven by the requirement for machines to kill other machines, are too heavy and cumbersome to be moved about by the individual.


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