A New Generation of Unrestricted Warfare

In 1999, two Chinese colonels wrote a book called Unrestricted Warfare, about warfare in the age of globalization. Their main argument: Warfare in the modern world will no longer be primarily a struggle defined by military means — or even involve the military at all.

They were about a decade and a half before their time.

Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui argued that war was no longer about “using armed forces to compel the enemy to submit to one’s will” in the classic Clausewitzian sense. Rather, they asserted that war had evolved to “using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.” The barrier between soldiers and civilians would fundamentally be erased, because the battle would be everywhere. The number of new battlefields would be “virtually infinite,” and could include environmental warfare, financial warfare, trade warfare, cultural warfare, and legal warfare, to name just a few. They wrote of assassinating financial speculators to safeguard a nation’s financial security, setting up slush funds to influence opponents’ legislatures and governments, and buying controlling shares of stocks to convert an adversary’s major television and newspapers outlets into tools of media warfare. According to the editor’s note, Qiao argued in a subsequent interview that “the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.” That vision clearly transcends any traditional notions of war.

Unrestricted Warfare was an explicit response to the reigning Western military orthodoxy of the time. The preface is dated January 17, 1999, which the authors note was the eighth anniversary of the outbreak of the 1991 Gulf War. In many ways, their argument refuted many of the Western lessons drawn from that conflict: that wars could be short, sharp, and dominated by high-technology weaponry used with stunning precision to shatter an enemy’s armed forces in hours or days. By 1999, U.S. military thinking was dominated by the revolution in military affairs and network centric-warfare, which relied on advanced technologies to give the United States total battlefield dominance.

But Qiao and Wang argued that the battlefield had fundamentally changed. It was no longer a place where militaries met and fought; instead, society itself was now the battlefield. Future wars would inevitably encompass attacks on all elements of society without limits. Military battles resembling those of 1991 might become secondary elements of conflict — if they even occurred at all.

A lot has changed in the past 17 years. The United States has fought two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and weathered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, for example. But perhaps the most fundamental change to the way we live has been the explosive growth of the internet and our utter dependence on the cyber domain. When Qiao and Wang wrote their book, today’s cyber world was barely imaginable, and then only in the minds of visionaries and the most imaginative computer geeks. In 1999, AOL was still mailing those annoying cdswith its software to every address in America, since almost three-quarters of American households did not have internet access the previous year.

Today, the United States, and increasingly the rest of the world, thoroughly depends on web connections built in cyberspace. The internet dominates all aspects of global trade, economics, communications, and even societies. And that makes Unrestricted Warfare even more relevant today than when it was published — because waging war without limits is now simpler and easier than even its authors could have envisioned. In 1999, the ability to assault all elements of an opponent’s society seemed to require the resources or sponsorship of a powerful nation state. Now, an increasingly interconnected world allows adversaries at keyboards — from states to terrorist groups to disgruntled citizens — to instantly vault oceans and continents to strike at any element of another nation and society without ever having to encounter defending military forces. A basement hacker in Sarajevo can target the City of London’s financial networks one moment and a Brazilian municipal power grid the next — and never change out of her pajamas.

The nation will always need military forces to defend against foreign military threats. But the U.S. armed forces — which remain the strongest and best-resourced in the world — provide virtually no defense against the cyber vulnerabilities that affect every American business and household. And the ever-expanding Internet of things (IoT) only increases those vulnerabilities. A very small example: One of your loyal Strategic Outpost columnists just joined the IoT by installing a Nest thermostat in her home. The next day, she woke up to a freezing house, and immediately wondered whether she’d already been hacked. One cold columnist does not signal a national security crisis, of course. But our massive and ever-growing national reliance upon the cyber domain fundamentally alters the nature of what must be defended for the nation to continue to function — and makes it far easier to conduct the type of unrestricted warfare that Qiao and Wang described 17 years ago.

These deep national and global vulnerabilities require us to think about conflict and warfare in a much more holistic way than ever before. We still think of warfare as primarily military in nature, channeling our 20th-century experience. But our adversaries can now bypass the military domain completely and can directly attack how we live our lives. And now, unlike in 1999, nearly anyone with a smart phone or laptop can join that fight.

In our inaugural Strategic Outpost column, we asked a provocative question: Is traditional warfare dead? Our conclusion today remains the same: No, it is not dead, but it is increasingly irrelevant for average Americans. The utility of military power is becoming increasingly limited, confined to foreign battlefields and directed against armed adversaries. In an age of unrestricted warfare, how will we protect our country and our increasingly cyber-centric way of life at home from those same adversaries who can attack and disrupt us without firing a shot? Against those who realize that they no longer need to build an army, navy, or air force to wage a potentially catastrophic war against the United States?

Seventeen years ago, Qiao and Wang warned us that these myriad new forms of non-military warfare were coming. Today we all now live on that battlefield — an unlimited zone of conflict that can reach each one of us in every aspect of our lives and work. The unconstrained notions of modern war articulated in Unrestricted Warfare have now arrived. Boundaries between soldiers and civilians, combatants and bystanders have all but disappeared in this dangerous new world. Providing effective national security in this unprecedented environment of mass exposure requires our policymakers to plan for unrestricted warfare. This growing and nearly boundless threat requires us to develop better policies, better deterrent capabilities, and far more developed defenses. We can’t wait for the first big attack of the next war to throw society into chaos — rethinking what war now means in our interconnected world demands the attention of our civilian and military leaders today.

Read the Original Article at War on the Rocks

The Long History of “Little Green Men” Tactics and How They Were Defeated

In both Crimea and the subsequent fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine, Russia’s signature tactic has been the use of so-called “Green Men,” soldiers without identifying insignia whose identity as Russian soldiers the Kremlin denied. Ukraine, Georgia, and even NATO members like Estonia now fear that they could be the next target for Russia’s Green Men.  NATO, alarmed by the need to prepare for this unexpected tactic, has committed to develop new countermeasures to defend against this threat. Green Men, or deniable forces, are a central part of what has come to be called “hybrid warfare” in the “gray zone” between war and peace.  All of this seems to be a new and innovative departure from traditional tactics, perhaps even a new model for conflict in the 21^st century.

However, deniable forces are nothing new. Nor, in fact, is the specific phenomenon of using them to seize a piece of territory, as Russia did in Crimea. There is a long history of hybrid warfare in general and of intervening with deniable forces in particular. This history points not just to the enduring nature of the threat, but also to the contours of a “counter-hybrid” strategy to defeat it.

In the course of a broader research project for which I compiled data on every land grab since 1918, 105 land grabs in total, I found three instances before Crimea of deniable forces seizing territory. In 1999, Pakistani forces crossed the Line of Control in the Kargil region of Kashmir, occupying positions overlooking strategically important roads in Indian territory. Like the Russians, Pakistan used deniable forces that they described as Kashmiri insurgents. Unlike the Ukrainians, the Indians counterattacked, absorbing heavy casualties to expel the Pakistanis.

 Read the Remainder at War on the Rocks

The Rise of the Hybrid Warriors: From Ukraine to the Middle East

The Iraqi Army defenders of Ramadi had held their dusty, stony ground for over a year and become familiar with the increasing adeptness of their opponents waving black flags. At first, these Iraqi Army units simply faced sprayed rifle fire, but then it was well-placed sniper rounds that forced these weary units to keep under cover whenever possible or risk a death that only their comrades — but never the victim — would hear. Tired, beleaguered, and cut off from reinforcements from Baghdad, they nonetheless continued to repulse attack after attack.

The last months witnessed a new weapon — car bombs. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, had long been the masters of using car bombs, but almost always against isolated checkpoints or undefended civilians. But an old tactic found a new situation. Car bombs, now parked against outer walls and driven by suicide bombers, were thrown against the Iraqi Army’s defenses in Ramadi.

The defenders were professional soldiers, and the last decade of war had taught them a great deal about the use of concrete barriers to defend against explosives of all kinds. So while the car bombs created a great deal of sound and fury, they availed little.

Then one bright day in May 2015, the defenders awoke to a new sound. Crawling forward slowly toward the heavily barricaded road was a bulldozer followed by several large cargo and dump trucks. The soldiers began to fire as the bulldozer entered the range of their machine guns and rifles, but it was armored by overlapping welded steel plates. The bullets bounced off the advancing earthmover. The defenders lacked one key weapon system — an anti-tank missile that could penetrate the armor of the tracked vehicle.

So while the soldiers kept up a steady volume of fire, they were helpless as the dozer began to remove the concrete barriers that blocked the road between their positions and the row of large armored trucks. One layer of concrete was removed after another until the road was clear.

And so the trucks begin to pour through. While creating vehicle-borne bombs is an ISIL specialty, the technology is actually remarkably simple, as each truck carried in its five-ton bed the same basic formula used two decades ago by Timothy McVeigh at Oklahoma City — ammonium nitrate fertilizer soaked in gasoline. As each truck closed on the defenses, its suicide bomber detonated the payload, shocking beyond reason those who were not killed outright. As truck after truck delivered its lethal payload, black-clad fighters poured from behind the trucks to exploit the newly created hole in the defenses. The survivors fell back and tried to maintain some semblance of order, but it was far too late to have any hope of saving this day. Ramadi had fallen.

The explosion of ISIL onto the international scene in June 2014 informed the world that a new type of force had arrived. In some ways, this should have been less of a surprise. ISIL had seized Fallujah the previous January, and there were also several clear precursors of this type of force. The Israelis had experienced a near-defeat in their fightagainst the non-state actor Hezbollah years earlier. And only a month after the fall of Mosul, Russian-backed separatist forces in Ukraine would shoot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

None of these actors — ISIL, Hezbollah, or the Ukrainian separatists — can be classified as traditional insurgent groups, guerrillas, or terrorists. All three groups possess capabilities that take them beyond more familiar non-state actors without qualifying them as full-fledged armies. Whether the bulldozers and social media savvy of ISIL, the missiles and electronic warfare of Hezbollah, or the high-altitude air defense of the Ukrainian rebels, all these forces have deployed capabilities traditionally associated with nation-states. The hybrid warriors have merged these capabilities with traditional insurgent tactics in their fight against nation-state forces.

While the debate rages on about the utility of the concepts of “hybrid warfare” and “gray zone conflict,” this article is not about these debates. This article is agnostic as to whether these types of warfare are best called “hybrid wars” or “political warfare.” It is similarly agnostic as to whether the “gray zone” concept is “hopelessly muddled “or “real and identifiable.” These debates, while important, are not what this piece attempts to settle. Rather than discuss the strategies and operations conducted in these ambiguous physical and legal spaces, this paper is concerned with the new actors emerging in said spaces. This essay maintains that there is something interesting and new occurring, as it relates to the actors operating in this space. While calling them “hybrid warriors” when the larger concept of “hybrid warfare” is still deeply contested may be linguistically problematic, there is no necessary linkage between the terms. That these fighters are a “hybrid” of insurgent and state-sponsored strains seems very clear, and therefore appropriate, regardless of distinct and separate debates over the characteristics of the environment.

Hybrid warriors are new (or at least new to us). These non-state hybrid warriors have adopted significant capabilities of an industrial or post-industrial nation-state army that allow them to contest the security forces of nation-states with varying degrees of success. Retaining ties to the population and a devotion to the “propaganda of the deed” that characterizes their insurgent and terrorist cousins, these non-state hybrid warriors present a challenge unfamiliar to most modern security analysts (though those who fought against either America’s 19th-century native tribes or the medieval Knights Templar, might see similarities).

Hybrid warriors specialize in the ambiguity of the “gray zone,” a term this essay will continue to use despite its definitional issues. While they can both administer territory (at the low end of the spectrum) and fight conventional war (at the high end), it is in the spaces in between that they truly excel. Girded by their relative safety from police forces, immunity from international norms (characteristic of all places where the state and rule of law are weak), and the active or passive support of the population, these hybrid warriors enjoy a low degree of risk, at least when compared to open warfare against Western interests. Within their sanctuaries — so long as they survive the occasional airstrike or commando raid — hybrid warriors face few security concerns, save when local armies probe the boundaries of their loosely controlled terrain. And yet — as the United States clearly learned on 9/11 — non-state groups possess a new ability to launch attacks against the integrated state system. These hybrid warriors live among the insurgents and counter-insurgents, terrorists and counter-terrorists, spies, saboteurs, propagandists, organized criminals, and money launderers — but while they may participate in any number of these activities, they are not limited by them.

Read the Remainder at War on the Rocks

 

It is Time for the U.S. Military to Innovate like Insurgents

These three Army captains built a gun that kills drones. It took them ten hours and cost $150. What can the Army learn from them?

The recently concluded meeting of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) has become a yearly tradition for senior military leaders, congressional staff, and members of foreign armies to meet and participate in professional development opportunities, while also providing visibility to over 500 members of the defense industrial base and their products and services. Drawing listeners with interactive displays and swag, vendors enthusiastically pitch their latest wares for supporting the warfighter.

As the incumbent power in a market of limited competition, the defense industrial base has enjoyed decades of unfettered access to government resources, assisted in part by both regulatory and technological barriers to entry for outside parties. Of course, there is a time and a place for large organizations creating complex systems; for example, creating a next-generation combat aircraft is beyond the reach of small groups or individuals. However, recent Defense Department pushes toward rapid innovation, such as those seen in Silicon Valley, are challenging the status quo.

Amidst the sea of defense contractors at this year’s AUSA expo, we — three young new players in this market — stood. We weren’t vendors, contractors or legislators, but rather active-duty Army captains, all members of the new cyber branch assigned to the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, the Army’s agent for change in cyberspace operations. Huddled around a shared U.S. Army demonstration area in the shadow of the sprawling defense contractor mega-booths, we employed a new tool they developed just weeks before the expo: the Cyber Capability Rifle. Successfully able to remotely disable an overhead UAV, we developed this proof-of-concept device in a dusty backyard garage, as amateur engineers and do-it-yourselfers, in about 10 hours with about $150 of spare parts. Encouraged by the cyber branch’s innovative spirit and entrepreneurial culture to explore the technological possibilities and enabled by the resources of the Army Cyber Institute, as makers we demonstrated the possibilities of unconventional thought and experimentation. For the Army to be prepared to “operate across a range of operations … anywhere around the world any time,” it must develop asymmetric acquisition methods that enable warfighters to make their own tools at the tactical edge in a timely and cost-effective manner requiring as little red tape as possible.

Read the Remainder at War on the Rocks

Asymmetrical Warfare Moves Into Your iPad

 

Now that the Internet is so ubiquitous that you must accept direct deposit for your paycheck, and your refrigerator has to get online to check for sales on cottage cheese, we find ourselves totally dependent on a service that we don’t understand and can’t live without. System engineers, whether they work for huge companies such as Microsoft, or corporations that process payrolls for small businesses are heedlessly endangering not only our privacy and finances, but now our physical wellbeing. Much like the cigarette manufacturers in the recent past worked to make their product more addictive while denying the deadly consequences, software companies are pushing faulty products on unwary consumers and blithely shrugging off the dangers.

We are alerted daily to new innovative ways that cyber attacks are personally affecting us in ways other than through the computer hacking of financial records, which we have come to expect. The attacks that are gaining prominence today could cause injury or death tomorrow

For several years now reports have been widespread of major corporations like Sony, Target, Anthem, JP Morgan Chase, Home Depot and even the U. S. Office of Personnel Management being the victim of cyber breaches. Each has cost the company dearly in terms of credibility, not to mention actual financial loss, while leaving the average customer defenseless as their personally identifiable information (PII) has been compromised for criminal activity.

Read the Remainder at Medium