Hybrid war

Hybrid warfare is a military strategy that employs political warfare and blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyberwarfare with other influencing methods, such as fake news, diplomacy and foreign electoral intervention. By combining kinetic operations with subversive efforts, the aggressor intends to avoid attribution or retribution. Hybrid warfare can be used to describe the flexible and complex dynamics of the battlespace requiring a highly adaptable and resilient response. There are a variety of terms used to refer to the hybrid war concept: hybrid war, hybrid threats, hybrid influencing or hybrid adversary (as well as non-linear war, non-traditional war or special war). US military bodies tend to speak in terms of a hybrid threat, while academic literature speaks of a hybrid warfare. For the purposes of this article, these terms will be used interchangeably.

There is no universally accepted definition of hybrid warfare which leads to some debate whether the term is useful at all. Some argue that the term is too abstract and only the latest term to refer to irregular methods to counter a conventionally superior force. The abstractness of the term means that it is often used as a catch all term for all non-linear threats.

Hybrid warfare is warfare with the following aspects:

The U.S. Army Chief of Staff defined a hybrid threat in 2008 as an adversary that incorporates "diverse and dynamic combinations of conventional, irregular, terrorist and criminal capabilities".The United States Joint Forces Command defines a hybrid threat as, “any adversary that simultaneously and adaptively employs a tailored mix of conventional, irregular, terrorism and criminal means or activities in the operational battle space. Rather than a single entity, a hybrid threat or challenger may be a combination of state and nonstate actors".The U.S. Army defined a hybrid threat in 2011 as "the diverse and dynamic combination of regular forces, irregular forces, criminal elements, or a combination of these forces and elements all unified to achieve mutually benefiting effects".NATO uses the term to describe "adversaries with the ability to simultaneously employ conventional and non-conventional means adaptively in pursuit of their objectives". Former U.S. Army Chief Gen. George W. Casey talked of a new type of war that would become increasingly common in the future: "A hybrid of irregular warfare and conventional warfare." According to the 2017-inaugurated European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, "[h]ybrid threats are methods and activities that are targeted towards vulnerabilities of the opponent" where the "range of methods and activities is wide."

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