JSOU Report 13-4 Hybrid Warfare McCulloh and Johnson

Hybrid Warfare

Timothy McCulloh and Richard Johnson 

JSOU Report 13-4

August 2013

Joint Special Operations University

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Joint Special Operations University

Brian A. Maher, Ed.D., SES, President

Kenneth H. Poole, Ed.D., Strategic Studies Department Director

Robert Nalepa, Lt. Col., U.S. Air Force, Ret., Director of Research

Juan Alvarez, Colonel, U.S. Air Force, Ret.; William Knarr, Ed.D., Colonel, U.S. 

Army, Ret.; Mark Moyar, Ph.D., History; Jason Quirin, Ph.D., Chemical Engineering; 

Richard Rubright, Ph.D., Strategic Studies; Joanna Gutierrez Winters, M.A., 

International Relations and Diplomacy, M.A. Economics, Resident Senior Fellows

Anna-Marie Wyant, JSOU Press Editor

Editorial Advisory Board

Roby C. Barrett

Ph.D., Middle Eastern & South Asian History 

Public Policy Center Middle East Institute 

and JSOU Senior Fellow

Joseph D. Celeski

Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.

JSOU Senior Fellow

Chuck Cunningham

Lieutenant General, U.S. Air Force, Ret. 

Professor of Strategy, Joint Advanced 

Warfighting School and JSOU Senior Fellow

James J.F. Forest 

Ph.D., Higher Education Administration

Associate Professor, School of Criminology and 

Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts 

Lowell and JSOU Senior Fellow

Thomas H. Henriksen

Ph.D., History, Hoover Institution 

Stanford University and JSOU Senior Fellow

Bernd Horn

Colonel, Canadian Dept. of National Defence 

Ph.D., War Studies

Director, CANSOFCOM Professional 

Development Centre

Russell D. Howard

Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Ret.

JSOU Senior Fellow

John D. Jogerst

Colonel, U.S. Air Force, Ret.

James Kiras

Ph.D., History, School of Advanced Air and 

Space Studies, Air University and 

JSOU Associate Fellow 

William W. Mendel

Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret. 

JSOU Senior Fellow

Alvaro de Souza Pinheiro

Major General, Brazilian Army, Ret.

JSOU Associate Fellow

James F. Powers, Jr.

Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.

JSOU Senior Fellow 

Thomas Sass

Ph.D., International Relations

Richard H. Shultz, Jr.

Ph.D., Political Science

Director, International Security 

Studies Program, The Fletcher School, 

Tufts University and JSOU Senior Fellow

Robert G. Spulak, Jr.

Ph.D., Physics/Nuclear Engineering

Sandia National Laboratories 

and JSOU Associate Fellow 

Jessica Glicken Turnley

Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology

Galisteo Consulting Group 

and JSOU Senior Fellow 

Francisco R. Wong-Diaz

J.D., Ph.D., Political Science

Professor of international affairs and law and 

JSOU Senior Fellow

Rich Yarger

Ph.D., History 

JSOU Senior Fellow
On the cover. A Special Warfare Combatant-craft crewman mans his 

GAU-17 minigun during live-fire patrol training along the Salt River in 

northern Kentucky. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 

2nd Class Jayme Pastoric.

JSOU Report 13-4

The JSOU Press

MacDill Air Force Base, Florida

2013

Hybrid Warfare
This monograph and other JSOU publications can be found at https://jsou.

socom.mil. Click on Publications. Comments about this publication are 

invited and should be forwarded to Director, Strategic Studies Department, 

Joint Special Operations University, 7701 Tampa Point Blvd., MacDill AFB, 

FL 33621.

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The JSOU Strategic Studies Department is currently accepting written works relevant to special operations for potential publication. For more information please 

contact the JSOU Research Director at jsou_research@socom.mil. Thank you for 

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This work was cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

ISBN: 978-1-933749-77-8
The views expressed in this publication are entirely those of 

the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy 

or position of the United States Government, Department of 

Defense, United States Special Operations Command, or the 

Joint Special Operations University. 
Recent Publications of the JSOU Press

Smart Power and U.S. National Strategy, August 2013, Francisco Wong-Diaz

Retooling for the Future, May 2013, Francisco Wong-Diaz

21st Century SOF: Toward an American Theory of Special Operations, April 2013, 

Harry R. Yarger

Irregular Warfare: The Maoist Threat to India’s Internal Security, December 2012, 

Prakash Singh

Iran: Illusion, Reality, and Interests, September 2012, Roby Barrett

Knowing Your Partner: The Evolution of Brazilian Special Operations Forces, 

August 2012, Alvaro de Souza Pinheiro

2012 JSOU and NDIA SO/LIC Division Essays, July 2012

USSOCOM Research Topics 2013

Confronting the Terrorism of Boko Haram in Nigeria, May 2012, James J.F. Forest

Strategic Culture and Strategic Studies: An Alternative Framework for Assessing 

al-Qaeda and the Global Jihad Movement, May 2012, Richard Shultz

Understanding the Form, Function, and Logic of Clandestine Insurgent and 

Terrorist Networks: The First Step in Effective Counternetwork Operations, April 

2012, Derek Jones

“We Will Find a Way”: Understanding the Legacy of Canadian Special Operations 

Forces, February 2012, Bernd Horn

Winning Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan and Elsewhere, February 2012, Thomas H. 

Henriksen
vii

Contents

Foreword ................................................................................ix

About the Authors...................................................................xi

The Inadequacy of Definition and the Utility of a Theory of 

Hybrid Conflict: Is the “Hybrid Threat” New?

1. Introduction........................................................................ 1

2. The Israel-Hezbollah War (2006) – A Well-Trod Example 

Revisited............................................................................... 19

3. World War II Eastern Front (1941-1945): A First Look at the 

Soviet Partisan Network as a Hybrid Organization ................ 27

4. Validation of a Theory ....................................................... 35

Endnotes............................................................................... 41

Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

1. Introduction...................................................................... 49

2. The Nature of Hybrid Warfare: Built to Last....................... 55

3. The Nature of Operational Art: Built to Outlast.................. 65

4. The American Experience in Vietnam: The Bull and the 

Toreador............................................................................... 71
viii

5. Operation Iraqi Freedom: The School of Piranhas.............. 85

6. Synthesis: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare .... 101

Endnotes............................................................................. 109
ix

Foreword

Major Tim McCulloh and Major Rick Johnson’s combined contributions to this monograph on Hybrid Warfare benefit from a combination of both an overarching theory as well as an operational perspective. 

The combination of the works into a single manuscript provides a synergy 

of the two perspectives. While the idea of hybrid warfare is not new, the 

authors together provide a clarity and utility which presents a relevant contextual narrative of the space between conventional conflicts and realm of 

irregular warfare.

Major McCulloh’s contribution in the first section entitled The Inadequacy of Definition and the Utility of a Theory of Hybrid Conflict: Is the 

‘Hybrid Threat’ New? lays the theoretical basis to bring a definition of Hybrid 

Warfare into focus while addressing the pertinent question of its historical 

origin. The theory presented uses historical trends, illustrated through two 

case studies, to postulate a set of principles to provide a unifying logic to 

hybrid behavior. In the first study, Major McCulloh examines the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006. Within this case study, Major McCulloh’s six principles 

of hybrid warfare are defined as: (1) a hybrid force’s composition, capabilities, and effects are unique to the forces context; (2) each hybrid force has a 

specific ideology that creates an internal narrative to the organization; (3) 

a hybrid force always perceives an existential threat to its survival; (4) in 

hybrid war there is a capability overmatch between adversaries; (5) a hybrid 

force contains both conventional and unconventional components; and (6) 

hybrid forces seek to use defensive operations. To test the theory, Major 

McCulloh then examines the Soviet partisan network on the Eastern Front 

from 1941-1945. With the two case studies examined under the same theoretical framework, Major McCulloh asserts that the framework can be used 

as tool for anticipating emergent hybrid organizations while demonstrating 

historical continuity.

With a theoretical underpinning having been argued by Major McCulloh, 

the strategic studies question of “so what?” is addressed at the operational 

level by Major Johnson. In Major Johnson’s section entitled Operational 

Approaches to Hybrid Warfare, the author uses historical examples and 

case studies to form a basis for approaching hybrid threats through a lens 
x

of U.S. oriented operational art. Major Johnson uses case studies of U.S. 

efforts in Vietnam and Iraq to illuminate operational approaches to defeating hybrid threats. Much like Major McCulloh, Major Johnson utilizes the 

Israel-Hezbollah conflict of 2006 as a starting point, contextualizes hybrid 

warfare vis-à-vis other mixed forms of warfare, addresses the nature of 

operational art, and then delves backward to find validation of the author’s 

propositions. In examining the case of Vietnam, Major Johnson examines 

the synergistic effects of Communist organization, strategy, and operational 

flexibility in depth which serves to highlight the concurrent political and 

military efforts used by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese. In the Iraq case 

study, Major Johnson examines a profoundly complex and varied adversary 

juxtaposed to the organizational harmony presented in the Vietnam case 

study. Major Johnson examines two radically different conflicts and develops 

three “imperatives” for operational art in hybrid warfare: (1) an operational 

approach must disrupt the logic of the forms of conflict the hybrid threat 

employs; (2) tactical success and strategic aims must be developed within 

the same context which gave rise to the hybrid threat and; (3) a successful 

approach should avoid prescriptive measures across time and space.

Many may argue that the concept is not needed or is redundant to other 

definitions of mixed forms of warfare, or offers nothing unique. However, 

in this case the authors do contribute to the understanding of warfare as a 

spectrum of conflict rather than a dichotomy of black and white alternatives. 

This gray area is sorely needed in the complex and multifaceted conflict 

environment prevalent in the world today.

Kenneth H. Poole, Ed.D.

Director, JSOU Strategic Studies Department
xi

About the Authors

Major Timothy B. McCulloh began his 

Army service in 1993 as a Combat Medical Specialist in the Army National Guard. In 

1998, he graduated from Cornell College and 

was commissioned as an Army Officer through 

the University of Iowa Reserve Officer Training Program. Major McCulloh was assigned 

to the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at 

Fort Campbell, Kentucky where he served as a 

Platoon Leader, Assistant Battalion Operations 

Officer, and Battalion Personnel Officer in the 

3rd Brigade Combat Team (187th Infantry Regiment). In November 2001 he 

deployed to Afghanistan as a Rifle Platoon Leader in support of Operation 

Enduring Freedom. 

Following his deployment to Afghanistan, Major McCulloh served as an 

Infantry Basic Training Company Commander and completed the Infantry 

Captain’s Career Course at Fort Benning, Georgia. Major McCulloh was 

then assigned to the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team at Fort Wainwright, Alaska as an Assistant Brigade Operations Officer, Headquarters 

Company Commander, Stryker Company Commander, and Brigade Plans 

Chief. During this time, he deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom 

from July 2005 to December 2006 in Mosul and later in Baghdad, Iraq as the 

first unit in the “Surge.” 

Major McCulloh then served as a Plans Officer and a Plans Branch Chief 

in U.S. Army Central (ARCENT) at Fort McPherson, Georgia. During this 

time he deployed in support of Multinational Forces-Iraq, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, and multiple other commands 

throughout the Middle East conducting Contingency Planning, Operational 

Planning, and Theater Security Cooperation Activities.

After ARCENT, Major McCulloh attended and graduated from the U.S. 

Army Command and General Staff College. He remained at Fort Leavenworth to attend the School of Advanced Military Studies during which he 

completed the monograph upon which this publication is based. 
xii

Major McCulloh holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in Biology, Psychology, 

and Origins of Behavior from Cornell College; a master’s degree in Business 

Administration from Touro University; and a Master of Military Arts and 

Science from the School of Advanced Military Studies. Major McCulloh 

is currently assigned to the 101st Airborne Division Headquarters (Air 

Assault) where he is deployed as the Task Force Executive Officer in Bagram, 

Afghanistan.

Major Richard Johnson began his Army 

service in 1999 upon graduation from 

the United States Military Academy with a commission in the Field Artillery. After graduation 

from the Field Artillery Officer’s Basic Course 

and Ranger School, Rick was assigned to the 1st 

Armored Division in Idar-Oberstein, Germany 

where he served as a Platoon Leader, Battery 

Operations Officer and Battalion Fire Direction 

Officer with service in West Baghdad during 

Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

After completing the Field Artillery Captain’s Career Course, Major Johnson was assigned to the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina where he served as a Battalion Fire Support Officer, Assistant Battalion 

Operations Officer, and Battery Commander in the 3rd Brigade Combat 

Team. During this time, he deployed to New Orleans in support of Hurricane 

Katrina recovery efforts and Tikrit for Operation Iraqi Freedom 2006-2008. 

He continued serving the 3rd Brigade Combat Team as the Headquarters 

and Headquarters Company Commander and the Assistant Brigade Fire 

Support Officer in another deployment to East Baghdad for Operation Iraqi 

Freedom 2008-2009.

Upon successful completion of those duties, Major Johnson attended and 

graduated from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He was 

selected for the Art of War Scholars program, and completed his thesis “The 

Biggest Stick: The Employment of Artillery Units in Counterinsurgency,” 

which was published by the Combat Studies Institute in 2012. He remained at 

Fort Leavenworth to attend the School of Advanced Military Studies, during 

which he completed the monograph upon which this publication is based. 
xiii

Major Johnson holds a Bachelor of Science in Systems Engineering from 

the United States Military Academy; a Master’s Degree in Management and 

Leadership from Webster University; a Master of Military Arts and Science 

from the Command and General Staff College; and a Master of Military Arts 

and Science from the School of Advanced Military Studies. Major Johnson is 

currently assigned to the 82d Airborne Division where he serves as a Plans 

Officer.

1

McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

1. Introduction

This monograph will attempt to answer the question of why hybrid 

actors, or hybrid threats, function in the specific manner that they 

do. In doing so, it proposes a theory of hybrid warfare which will set forth 

a series of principles observable in historical trends that provide a unifying 

logic to hybrid behavior. As this monograph outlines a theory of hybrid 

warfare, it explores the contemporary relevance of hybrid military organizations, the existing body of literature referring to hybrid threats, and historical 

examples of hybrid threats as they exemplify the proposed theoretical principles. This monograph will then conclude with a discussion of the proposed 

theory and the potential applications of a theory of hybrid warfare within 

the U.S. military.

The U.S. military is an organization which exists to support and defend 

the Constitution of the U.S. against all enemies, foreign and domestic.2

Within this broad charter, there exists a requirement to confront real and 

potential adversaries. In order to do this, the U.S. must identify and understand likely threats in order to best prepare for this confrontation. Typically, 

across the spectrum of armed conflict contemporary threats are placed in 

one of three different categories—conventional, hybrid, and unconventional.3

Military planning documents and strategies further indicate that hybrid 

threats will likely define the contemporary operating environment as the 

preponderance in number and type of security threats that will be faced in 

the future; however, definitions of hybrid threats and hybrid warfare vary 

The Inadequacy of Definition and 

the Utility of a Theory of Hybrid 

Conflict: Is the “Hybrid Threat” 

New?

The most likely security threats that Army forces will encounter are 

best described as hybrid threats.1
2

JSOU Report 13-4

and contradict each other.4 This variance and contradiction stymie the ability 

of military planners to prepare specifically to meet this challenge. Thus, this 

monograph will seek to clarify the discussion of hybrid organizations and 

hybrid warfare through the formulation of a theory suggesting principles 

of hybrid warfare.

In order to establish parameters for the following theoretical discussion 

and to avoid confusion during the following discussion, this monograph 

defines certain terms regarding a theory of hybrid warfare. Throughout this 

paper, the terms regular force and conventional force will be used interchangeably to define military organizations whose behavior conforms to 

national or international laws, rules, norms, or customs, and whose weapon 

systems and equipment conform to a commonly accepted standard of capabilities.5

 The terms irregular force or unconventional force involve a military 

type organization that does not conform to commonly accepted standards 

in either equipment or behavior.6 This paper discusses the ample definitions of a hybrid force during the literature review of this paper. However, 

for the purposes of initiating the discussion of hybrid warfare, a hybrid 

force is a military organization that employs a combination of conventional 

and unconventional organizations, equipment, and techniques in a unique 

environment designed to achieve synergistic strategic effects.7 This definition 

relies on previous research and discussions by hybrid theorists on hybrid 

warfare as useful starting points for thinking about hybrid warfare within 

the spectrum of modern conflicts so that this monograph can add to the 

working knowledge of hybrid warfare within the defense community.

Certain observations can be made from this brief, albeit broad, definition of hybrid warfare. A hybrid threat uniquely focuses on organizational 

capability and generally attempts to gain an asymmetrical advantage over 

purely conventional opponents within a specific environment. This advantage not only asserts itself in the realm of pure military force, but also in a 

more holistic manner across all the elements of national power including 

diplomatic, informational, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and 

law enforcement/legal. The advantage generates the effect of transitioning the 

rules of the battlefield from those of a conventional fight to those realms of a 

hybrid’s choosing—primarily in the categories of tempo, depth, and intensity. 

As a result, a weaker military opponent can stand against a stronger one for 

an indefinite period and continue to generate effects that a more conventional 

opponent could not generate in the same situation. This hybrid capability 
3

McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

poses significant difficulties for large conventional military organizations 

such as the U.S. military because these large conventional structures are 

oriented primarily on symmetrical type adversaries, or in the lesser case 

asymmetrical type adversaries, but never on an efficient combination of the 

two. Thoroughly understanding this capability can offer insight into methods 

of understanding and predicting hybrid organizations.

Historical examples of hybrid type warfare reach back to antiquity, even 

though the term hybrid threat is relatively recent.8 In ancient Rome, a hybrid 

force of criminal bandits, regular soldiers, and unregulated fighters employed 

tactics ranging from that of fixed battle, roadside ambush, and the employment of stolen siege engines against Vespasian’s Roman Legions during the 

Jewish Rebellion of 66 AD.9 In the Peninsular War of 1806, a hybrid force 

of Spanish guerillas combined with regular British and Portuguese forces 

to generate decisive military effects on Napoleon’s Grand Armee.10 During 

World War II, the Soviet Army on the Eastern Front integrated and synchronized an ill-equipped irregular force with its conventional military forces 

in order to generate multiple hybrid type effects from 1941 to 1945.11 During 

the Vietnam War, the People’s Army of Vietnam—the North Vietnamese 

Regular Army—synchronized its operations with the Viet Cong, an irregular 

force, in order to sustain a lengthy conflict against the superior conventional 

forces of two separate First World nations: France and the U.S.12 The nonstate actor in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, Lebanese Hezbollah, combined 

the aspects of conventional and unconventional war to fight against the 

premier conventional military power in the Middle East, the Israeli Defense 

Forces.13 In each of these historical cases, trends emerge which, arguably, 

suggest why and how hybrid forces exist, enabling observers and analysts to 

anticipate the manifestation of hybrid threats in the future.

Regardless of the plentitude of historical examples, a persistent obstacle 

to understanding the hybrid threat has been a seeming inability to classify 

what a hybrid threat is and why a hybrid threat coalesces in the first place. 

The conflicting definitions for this age-old construct have stymied the ability of military theorists and planners to properly envision a common set of 

hybrid threat motivations and potential actions.14 Fundamentally, the problem is the gap that exists between the cognitive logic of “definition” and the 

uniqueness of each context in which “hybrid” manifests itself. No definition 

can be adequate to multiple contexts that differ in time, space, and logic. 
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JSOU Report 13-4

This indicates the need for a theory suggesting principles that shed light on 

the nature and manifestation of hybrid organizations in hybrid conflicts.

This problem of the shortcomings in current thinking about hybrid 

threats is particularly relevant now in a time of emerging non-state actors 

and changing state actor dynamics in the Middle East, Africa, and the 

Pacific. The exponential increases in the availability of information and 

communication technology and the proliferation of military tactics and 

weaponry enhance an already strong tendency for Western militaries to 

substitute information for understanding as well as identify technical solutions to discrete military problems. So this dearth of insight into the nature 

and potentialities of hybrid conflict becomes even more problematic and 

dangerous. General George Casey, former Chief of Staff of the Army, highlighted the importance to the U.S. military of understanding hybrid threats 

when he stated that in the future the U.S. Army must, “prevail in protracted 

counterinsurgency campaigns; engage to help other nations build capacity 

and assure friends and allies; support civil authorities at home and abroad; 

[and] deter and defeat hybrid threats and hostile state actors.”15 Casey’s comment was reinforced by the February 2011 version of the U.S. Army’s Field 

Manual 3.0: Operations which states: 

The future operational environment will be characterized by hybrid 

threats: combinations of regular, irregular, terrorist, and criminal 

groups who decentralize and syndicate against us and who possess 

capabilities previously monopolized by nation states. These hybrid 

threats create a more competitive security environment, and it is 

for these threats we must prepare.16

As a result, from the Army Chief of Staff’s broad mandate to deter and 

defeat hybrid threats came the slightly more refined U.S. Army doctrinal 

response in the Unified Land Operations manual to use varying techniques 

to meet the different aspects of the hybrid threat. Specifically, the doctrine 

advises the utilization of “wide area security techniques in populationcentric Counter-Insurgency operations [to] confront the unconventional 

portion of the Hybrid Threat, while [using] combined arms maneuver techniques [to] confront and defeat the conventional portions of the Hybrid 

Threat.”17 Although this doctrinal approach offers a way of responding to 

hybrid threats, this prescription does not facilitate any understanding of the 

nature of the threat or a reference for anticipating contextually unique hybrid 
5

McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

organizations; only a theoretical approach will enable this understanding 

and provide the potential for a relevant response. Therefore, in order to 

enable a more effective, useful method of responding to this identified threat, 

this monograph proposes a theory of hybrid warfare.

The comprehensive analysis of historical examples of hybrid conflicts 

indicates that certain enduring principles of hybrid organizations and hybrid 

warfare exist. For example, under close observation, repetitive patterns of 

institutional motivation and tactical application emerge. Elucidation of 

these repetitive patterns may then offer insight into the underlying logic in 

a system of hybrid warfare and allow for the formulation of a theory. Such 

theory, then, could explain the logic of these repetitive patterns, and in doing 

so enable political and military practitioners to anticipate the manifestation 

and nature of future hybrid behaviors. 

Historical analysis taken with military professionals’ and analysts’ predictions indicate that hybrid organizations will likely comprise the preponderance of future challenges the U.S. military will face. Therefore, developing 

a theory of hybrid warfare and an understanding of the components of the 

hybrid threat will facilitate the training and development of future strategies 

against these potential threats—from both the conventional and unconventional viewpoint of military force.18 Understanding how a hybrid military 

force would likely form and operate in a given environment will offer clear 

insight into the effectiveness of elements of this strategy. This understanding could then enable the internal optimization of the U.S. military regular 

and Special Operations Forces (SOF) in terms of equipping and training. A 

theory would also assist in both the strategic and operational application 

of military force by the U.S. government and in the refined application of 

operational art by military leaders against these potential hybrid threats in 

context.

The Lack of Consensual Understanding: A Review of Existing 

Hybrid Warfare Thinking and Doctrine 

A watershed moment came in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) 

when its authors formally recognized the existence of hybrid type threat—the 

ideas represented in the volume constituted a paradigm shift. This newly 

emergent thinking was closely following by Frank Hoffman’s work on hybrid 

organizations. Although Western defense establishments—primarily in the 
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JSOU Report 13-4

U.S., the United Kingdom, and Israel—recognized both of these conceptual events, their thoughts did not represent a consensus in understanding. 

They assigned many definitions to hybrid scenarios, and provided as many 

descriptions of them, but each scenario was uniquely tied to both the perspective of the author and the specific milieu of the hybrid organization. As 

a result, no one single definition or description could be universally applied, 

or was universally relevant, to any and all potential hybrid scenarios; each 

scenario required some manipulation in order to fit the model. This lack of 

consensus and understanding constrained the ability of military professionals in the application of operational art in hybrid situations. This review 

highlights the evolution and the breadth of the discussion of hybrid warfare 

to propose a theory that enables the required understanding.

A review of the literature that addresses the fusion of conventional and 

unconventional warfare and the emergence of the idea of hybrid warfare 

begin to present principles that can inform a theory of hybrid war. Perhaps 

one of the useful ways to discuss this emergent theory is to capture it as a 

point on the evolutionary spectrum of theories of warfare. Based on literature as diverse as western military theory, historical narratives, and national 

policy statements, this monograph defines war as an organized conflict carried on between armed states, nations, or other parties over a certain period 

in order achieve a desired political/ideological end state.19 According to existing theories of modern warfare, war can then be broken into the categories 

of conventional and unconventional warfare. Historically, theorists may then 

further analyze warfare as an evolutionary process not only defined by both 

technology and the employment of forces, but also by social pressures. The 

dual understanding of warfare as both an evolutionary process and as an 

activity with many forms sets the stage for greater understanding of hybrid 

warfare as a sum of many evolving parts whose optimized synergy makes 

hybrid organizations much more than this sum total of form.

This review presents the existing literature focused on hybrid warfare as 

it developed chronologically in order to demonstrate the steady evolution of 

the accepted ideas about modern warfare. Following a discussion of existing 

military theory relevant to thinking about hybrid organizations in relation 

to war, the monograph will examine existing military doctrine that has 

emerged because of the hybrid warfare dialogue. This close examination of 

the evolution of the existing thinking and the resultant military doctrine relevant to hybrid conflict will serve to highlight how the idea and the premise 
7

McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

of application work together. It will also identify potential gaps between the 

theory and doctrine that warrant further investigation. 

A useful starting point on this evolutionary analysis is the generational 

theory of modern warfare which has been proposed by military theorist 

Dr. Thomas X. Hammes—a retired Marine colonel—in his book, The Sling 

and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century.20 Generally, the generational war 

concept hinges on transformational military technology and its tactical, 

strategic, and social effects in a wartime setting. Hammes argued that the 

first generation of modern warfare was a nation-state dominated activity 

that used the tactics of line and column in close order battle that relied on 

the technological advantage of rifle and machine gun, prominent primarily 

in the 18th and early 19th century.21 Thus, the generations of warfare construct 

began with the establishment of the Treaty of Westphalia that legitimized 

the inherent rights of nations to maintain and use military force, thereby 

essentially discriminating between state and non-state actors.22 The second 

generation of warfare built upon the first by utilizing the tactics of linear fire 

and movement with a focus on indirect fire via artillery that was prominent 

in the mid-to-late 19th century and early 20th century.23

Thomas Hammes characterized the third generation of warfare as an 

emphasis on the tactics of speed, maneuver, and depth to collapse enemy 

forces by attacking their rear areas, both military and civilian, with the 

addition of military air forces. This form of warfare was prominent during 

the 20th century.24 Finally, Hammes proposed a fourth generation of warfare 

which emerged in the mid to late 20th century where state and non-state 

actors used influencing tactics in addition to military tactics to offset technological capabilities.25 In this fourth generation of warfare, the ideas of guerilla 

warfare, insurgency, people’s war, and the long war fit to describe a mode of 

warfare where conventional military advantages offset by unconventional 

means of warfare are coupled with some unifying thought process that establishes the desired military/political end state. Actors in fourth generation 

warfare use military influencing operations and strategic communications in 

conjunction with the unconventional methods to both prolong the conflict 

and attrite the conventional force’s political and military support base. As 

a relevant contribution to theories of modern warfare, Dr. Hammes made a 

highly useful contribution to theories of modern warfare in that he established commonly accepted ideas regarding the likely type of warfare that 
8

JSOU Report 13-4

occurred in a certain timeframe and identified the logic of combination in 

the evolution of modern war.

Mr. Thomas Huber also contributed to this conceptual discussion when 

he coined the phrase “compound warfare” in his discussion of hybrid-like 

conflict in his book Compound Warfare: That Fatal Knot.

26 He defined compound war simply as the simultaneous use of conventional and unconventional forces.27 Under this rubric, actors use two types of forces separately 

under a unifying leadership structure to produce complementary advantages. 

In this construct, regular forces gain tactical and operational benefits from 

the intelligence, counterintelligence, speed, logistics support, and defensive 

nature of irregular forces. In turn, irregular forces reap the benefits of regular force strategic intelligence assets, military logistics structure, and the 

operational pressure of conventional force operations that force an enemy 

to operate in a consolidated manner. In essence, the idea of compound warfare builds upon the fourth generation warfare construct to highlight the 

effectiveness of unconventional forces and to emphasize the complementary 

nature of regular and irregular forces when they are used in conjunction with 

each other.28 However, this idea exists in contrast to the idea of hybrid warfare—which includes conventional, unconventional, criminal, and terrorist 

aspects. As such, compound warfare exists as a precursor to current thoughts 

on hybrid warfare and is qualitatively different from hybrid warfare.

The U.S. Department of Defense incorporated the concepts of fourth 

generation warfare and compound warfare in the 2006 QDR.

29 The 2006 

QDR espoused the threat categories of irregular, traditional (conventional), 

catastrophic (high-end/mass destruction), and disruptive (criminal/terrorist) 

challenges in contrasting the likelihood and impact of potential threats to the 

U.S. A quad chart listed the threat categories in terms of frequency and catastrophic effect, enabling a level of prediction regarding enemy threats for the 

U.S. military. This separate identification of threat elements reflected the idea 

of compound warfare in which different types of forces could coexist and 

complement each other on the future battlefield, but it also implied the idea 

that these categories could hypothetically blur and even fuse together.30 In 

doing so, the 2006 QDR opened the door to a spectrum of war that required 

military planners to think about mixed forces in complex environments—an 

explicit change from Cold War and Peace Dividend military policies that had 

laid the essential groundwork for the recognition of hybrid war as a fusion 

of capabilities. In terms of U.S. defense theories, this action represented 
9

McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

a paradigm shift from the Cold War policies that oriented on large scale, 

symmetrical, state actor threats and Peace Dividend policies that projected 

limited scope asymmetric threats. In doing so, the Department of Defense 

formally began a dialogue that would eventually lead to theorizations about 

hybrid warfare.

Mr. Frank Hoffman continued the theoretical evolution of warfare 

through the contribution of his ideas about hybrid warfare. Hybrid warfare 

emerged as a military term in the 2007 U.S. Maritime strategy, describing the 

convergence of regular and irregular threats using simple and sophisticated 

technology via decentralized planning/execution.31 Hoffman built this idea 

by positing hybrid warfare as the synergistic fusion of conventional and 

unconventional forces in conjunction with terrorism and criminal behavior.32 This fusion is oriented toward a desired objective through a political 

narrative, which simultaneously and adaptively unifies all the elements of 

the force. Additionally, he explained that either a state or a non-state actor 

at the tactical, operational, or strategic level could conduct this form of warfare.33 Hoffman’s blending effect is the combination, or rather optimization, 

of not only regular and irregular generational forms of warfare, but also the 

effects of socially disruptive actions of crime and terrorism, and the resultant 

strategic messaging effect.34 In essence, Hoffman’s ideas of hybrid warfare 

build upon the construct of compound warfare to include a synergistic fusion 

of the elements with the inclusion of terrorism and criminal behavior. His 

revolutionary approach not only introduced the concept of hybrid war, but 

also enabled a new dialogue between the conventionally and unconventionally oriented portions of the U.S. defense establishment.35

In the terms of hybrid warfare, Frank Hoffman’s work from 2006 until the 

present became the gold standard for understanding the concept of hybrid 

forces and the synergistic effects that they could produce. Hybrid warfare 

theorists writing after 2006—working in the U.S., the United Kingdom, 

or Israel—have used Hoffman’s benchmark to orient their work in order 

to agree, disagree, or attempt to expand on his concepts. However, for our 

discussion of theory, this work is not sufficient, as it is primarily descriptive 

and does not capture a concise form, function, and logic to explain a hybrid 

organization that conducts hybrid warfare. A better explanation of hybrid 

organizations will come from a theory composed of principles that enable a 

broad understanding or rationale for hybrid organizations’ existence. Much 

of the following professional literature on hybrid warfare builds or contrasts 
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JSOU Report 13-4

with Hoffman’s work. British military doctrine, in contrast to Hoffman’s 

premise, captures hybrid warfare as an aspect of irregular warfare. No true 

distinction is made between an irregular or guerilla force and any type of a 

better equipped force that uses a variation of asymmetric tactics. 

Hybrid warfare is conducted by irregular forces that have access to 

the more sophisticated weapons and systems normally fielded by 

regular forces. Hybrid warfare may morph and adapt throughout 

an individual campaign, as circumstances and resources allow. It 

is anticipated that irregular groups will continue to acquire sophisticated weapons and technologies and that intervention forces will 

need to confront a variety of threats that have in the past been 

associated primarily with the regular Armed Forces of states.36

As a result, the British do not consider a differing logic regarding the 

formation or utilization of a hybrid threat, exposing a gap in common understanding between the U.S. and its closest military ally.

Israeli military theorists describe hybrid threats and hybrid warfare as a 

method of social warfare which is unbounded by social constraints. Therefore, hybrid threats not only gain a physical advantage through the combination of conventional technology and organization with unconventional 

tactics and applications, but also gain a cognitive advantage by the very lack 

of social restrictions that conventional state forces must adhere to such as 

the Law of Land Warfare, Geneva Convention, and Rules of Engagement. 

Added to this dual advantage is the idea that hybrid forces operate as a networked system that is much quicker than a conventional force in utilizing 

and responding to popular opinion, its support base, and internal feedback 

or learning. This orientation toward systems thinking renders the placement of hybrid warfare on an evolutionary scale irrelevant because it only 

requires a cognitive basis rather than a material one normally ascribed to 

either a conventional or an unconventional military force. The Israeli view 

also points toward an effects-based understanding of the hybrid threat versus 

a functionally based understanding, which leads to a universal vice a tailored 

approach in responding to hybrid warfare. As a result, the Israeli description ultimately disagrees with U.S. points of view by focusing more on the 

synergy of hybrid components—to include the cognitive—in producing a 

military effect rather than on the differences in functional capability within 

the hybrid force itself.37 This disagreement allows a useful counterpoint in 
11

McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

the dialogue and again questions the utility and accuracy of a description, 

or definition, of hybrid warfare, pointing to a need for an understanding of 

the logic or theoretical nature of hybrid warfare rather than an overarching 

description that fails to transition from one case study to another.38

Hoffman’s ideas about hybrid warfare gained traction within the U.S. 

defense community, and several other military theorists expounded upon 

these ideas. Colonel Jeffrey Cowan continues the discussion in his monograph A Full Spectrum Air Force in which he outlines the spectrum of conflict as envisioned by the defense analyst Shawn Brimley.39 Brimley’s model 

includes low-end insurgent tactics and limited technology on one end and 

large conventional armies with high-level technology such as nuclear weapons, bombers, and aircraft carriers on the other end. In this model, modern 

conventional militaries attempt to cover the middle and higher end of the 

spectrum to guard against “most likely threats.”40 In the case of the U.S. 

military, the preponderance of the military forces straddle the middle portion of the model, and technological applications are used to control the 

higher end capabilities such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance 

platforms and paired high-end technology such as nuclear weapons and 

precision strike capabilities. 

Cowan explains the model in terms of hybrid warfare by arguing that 

the pressures of globalization allow potential hybrid threats to gain access to 

conventional military capabilities that normally reside closer to the middle 

of the spectrum through the use of global finance and the available proliferation of information and technology. Examples include air defense systems 

such as the rocket propelled grenade and the Kornet Anti-tank Missile, both 

used by Lebanese Hezbollah in the 2006 War against Israeli Defense Forces.41

He then explains that the globalization and the proliferation of weapons 

of mass destruction (WMD) technology—defined as nuclear, biological, 

chemical, radiological, and high explosive—have bent the high end of the 

spectrum toward the middle as non-state actors such as terrorists and hybrid 

threats compete with some Second and Third World nations to gain access 

to this end of the spectrum through the use of money and acquisition of 

available means such as technical knowledge and equipment. This idea is 

useful toward helping to explain the existence of hybrid warfare because 

of the dual pressures of globalization pressure and technological/information availability that have allowed low-end opponents to access both ends 

of the spectrum and to ignore the costly middle section. As a result, hybrid 
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JSOU Report 13-4

threats can potentially use depth to engage in conflict at almost any point 

on the spectrum. Cowan’s assertions are useful to an initial consideration 

of the underlying logic of the hybrid threat and enquiry into the factors that 

motivate and enable the formations of hybrids. 

In his monograph, Strategic Implications of Hybrid War: A Theory of Victory, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Lasica posits that hybrid force actors attempt 

to combine internal tactical success and information effects regarding enemy 

mistakes through the deliberate exploitation of the cognitive and moral 

domains.42 In this manner, he describes hybrid warfare simultaneously as 

a strategy and a tactic because of the blending of conventional, unconventional, criminal, and terrorist means and methods. A hybrid force is thus 

able to compress the levels of war and thereby accelerate tempo at both the 

strategic and tactical levels in a method faster than a more conventional 

actor is able to do. In this theoretical model, the hybrid actor will always 

gain a perceived strategic advantage over the conventional actor regardless of 

tactical results.43 Again, this effort to understand the logic of a hybrid force 

enables a glimpse of the motivating factors which drive a hybrid threat and 

how it forms.

David Sadowski and Jeff Becker, in their article “Beyond the “Hybrid” 

Threat: Asserting the Essential Unity of Warfare,” expand the discussion by 

decrying the “quad-chart approach” which put each type of threat category 

in its own simple, separate “box.”44 They assert, in contrast to Brimley, that 

the idea of simply seeing hybrid warfare as a combination of threat categories or capabilities fails to appreciate the complexity of the hybrid approach 

to warfare.45 Rather, they argue that the essential aspect of hybrid warfare 

is the underlying unity of cognitive and material approaches in generating 

effects. Such a unity of cognitive and material domains allows for flexibility 

in a strategic context in which social “rules” can be redefined in an iterative 

process to the hybrid’s advantage in terms of legality and military norms.46

The resulting flexibility facilitates iterative adaptation that allows the hybrid 

force to quickly take advantage of opportunities, both in terms of material 

equipping and in terms of cognitively influencing the environment. This 

combination of the cognitive and material domains in understanding is 

important in that it bridges the gap between U.S. and Israeli ideas and serves 

to expand the existing conceptions of hybrid warfare. 

The 2010 QDR follows these ideas by expressing hybrid warfare as: 
13

McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

the seemingly increased complexity of war, the multiplicity of actors 

involved, and the blurring between traditional categories of conflict. 

While the existence of innovative adversaries is not new, today’s 

hybrid approaches demand that U.S. forces prepare for a range of 

conflicts. These may involve state adversaries that employ protracted 

forms of warfare, possibly using proxy forces to coerce and intimidate, or non-state actors using operational concepts and high-end 

capabilities traditionally associated with states.47

The review continues with a discussion of the multiple challenges and 

complex combinations of approaches and capabilities that will likely emerge 

from a hybrid threat. It then directs that U.S. forces must tailor themselves to 

react flexibly across a varied range of potential conflicts. As a formal strategic 

document, the QDR not only offers a mandate to explore the potentials of a 

hybrid threat, but in directing a response from the military force—the QDR 

makes understanding the logic of a hybrid threat an imperative. Defense 

theorists then couple the strategic QDR language with the U.S. Army Capstone Doctrine for 2009-2025, which attempts to translate and outline the 

future threats that the U.S. military will face in this period. The doctrine 

paints a threat picture in which “Army forces must be prepared to defeat what 

some have described as hybrid enemies: both hostile states and non-state 

enemies that combine a broad range of weapons capabilities and regular, 

irregular, and terrorist tactics; and continuously adapt to avoid U.S. strengths 

and attack what they perceive as weaknesses.”48 This functional language 

endeavors to create a functional definition that users can then capture within 

operational and tactical doctrine that U.S. Army ground forces can employ. 

This offers some benefit in adding to the discourse a formal definition of 

hybrid threats. However, an understanding of the underlying logic is still 

missing—ultimately requiring a predictive theory that sets out principles 

that can act as a guide to explain the behavior of hybrid actors.

The military doctrine resulting from this strategic conception of hybrid 

organizations, U.S. Army Field Manual 5-0: The Operations Process, defines a 

hybrid threat as dynamic combinations of conventional, irregular, terrorist, 

and criminal capabilities adapting to counter traditional advantages.49 U.S. 

Army Field Manual 3-0: Operations then describes hybrid threats functionally as “a diverse and dynamic combination of regular forces, irregular forces, 

criminal elements, or a combination of these forces and elements all unified 
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JSOU Report 13-4

to achieve mutually benefitting effects. Such forces combine their abilities 

to use and transition between regular and irregular tactics and weapons.”50

In addition,

These forces may cooperate in the context of pursuing their own 

organizational objectives. Hybrid threats may use the media, technology, and their position within a state’s political, military, and 

social infrastructures to their advantage. Hybrid threats creatively 

adapt, combining sophisticated weapons, command and control, 

cyber activities, and combined arms tactics to engage U.S. forces 

when conditions are favorable.”51

As functional definitions, these documents describe a hybrid threat as a 

mix of military capabilities, but do not facilitate any comprehension of an 

underlying logic that drives a hybrid forces to manifest in a certain way. In 

this manner, the FM describes the symptoms of the threat, but the disease 

remains a mystery. As such, this monograph attempts to remedy this situation by providing a theory of hybrid warfare that will enable prediction of 

hybrid behavior.

A Theory of Hybrid War: New Ways of Explaining Hybrid 

Behavior

What follows is a proposed theory of hybrid warfare. Such a theory will 

provide for the elucidation of the formation and behavior of hybrid organizations. The principles which serve as the architecture of this theory will also 

be derived from historical trends. The resulting theory will then be explored 

and validated through an analysis of two case studies which represent examples of hybrid warfare. This logic will be shown through several principals 

derived from historical trends. The monograph then explores and validates 

the resulting theory through analysis of two hybrid warfare case studies. 

Following the review of available military theories on the different forms 

of warfare, it is appropriate to return to one of the most respected military 

theorists on war to construct a theory of hybrid warfare. Clausewitz defined 

war as “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”52 He theorized 

that the ultimate expression of war is “ideal” or “absolute” war where all 

available resources and assets are applied to achieve the desired end state 

of the war. However, Clausewitz stated that this ultimate expression of war 
15

McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

would often be counter to the desired political ends of a war thereby making 

it unrealistic, so he outlined the concept of “limited war” in which militaries optimize available means to meet limited political goals. As a result, the 

generalized categories of “ideal” or total war, “limited war,” and military 

operations that occur underneath a level of declared war have come to be 

accepted generalizations regarding warfare. This idea of “limited war” with 

its inherent ideas of social constraint and thresholds of military potential has 

the most contemporary significance in the construction and employment of 

military organizations.53

In war, a state actor will generally match available means—defined by a 

portion of gross domestic product matched to technological capability—to 

projected political end-states—contingency requirements planned against 

potential adversaries in a multitude of contexts. As a result, the typical military organization will be optimized for a broad range of potential scenarios 

based on likely political temperament. In a large, resource rich country such 

as the U.S., China, or Russia, this results in a broad force which is prepared 

for offense, defense, and stability type operations across a varying scale. 

In reality, this “optimized” force is not prepared for a specific employment 

context, but rather optimizes to best meet a broad array of scenarios for 

employment—resulting in less optimization for a unique context.

However, not all military organizations develop or are employed in this 

manner. Nations constrained by a lack of resources or technological capability must make decisions as to the breadth and depth of their “optimization.” 

This practice can then lead to a number of variations in military organization 

from broad, flat armies of primarily light infantry designed for specific functions such as population control and internal regime survival, to small or 

medium sized forces with combined arms depth to confront specific external 

threats such as tanks, missiles, and aircraft. Generally, these less resourced 

organizations will conform to a conventional model of a large, full-spectrum 

military on a smaller scale as in the example of the 1973 era Egyptian Army 

based on a Soviet-type organizational model.54

In some cases, organizations will develop optimized military structures 

outside conventional models. These unconventional structures will be optimized to a specific, contextual purpose but utilize resources and capabilities 

that are not contained in a conventional military force. Observers often refer 

to these unconventional organizations as asymmetric or hybrid threats that 

offer certain advantages to automatically alter the battlefield calculus when 
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JSOU Report 13-4

confronting a more conventional force. These observers then often refer to 

the resulting conflict as hybrid war. In other words, a hybrid war can best 

be described as an optimized form of warfare that allows a combatant to 

attempt to utilize all available resources—both conventional and unconventional—in a unique cultural context to produce specific effects against a 

conventional opponent.

In order to begin to understand hybrid warfare, it is necessary to engage 

in a deeper enquiry into the reasons a hybrid force forms, or is formed. Logic 

would seem to indicate that a hybrid force is formed to generate specific 

effects upon a battlefield or directly on an enemy combatant. The formation 

of this force would be constrained by both the available means at its disposal and envisioned in ways that those means could be applied to achieve 

desired ends.55 For the hybrid force, this process of formation is different 

from conventional and irregular warfare in that the constraints and motivations that drive the hybrid force do so with a unique logic—as explained 

in the theories’ principles. 

Historically, the hybrid formation process has resulted in several commonalities in terms of composition and effects, which in turn can be generalized into seven principles to describe hybrid war in its totality. 

The first principle of hybrid war proposed here is that a hybrid force’s 

composition, capabilities, and effects are unique to the force’s own specific 

context. This context relates to the temporal, geographic, socio-cultural, and 

historical setting in which the given conflict takes place. 

The second principle is that there exists a specific ideology within the 

hybrid force that creates an internal narrative to the organization. This ideology is inherently linked to the strategic context and is grounded within the 

socio-cultural, religious identity of the hybrid force. The resulting narrative 

serves to redefine the extant rules within the strategic context.

The third principle is that a hybrid force perceives an existential threat 

by a potential adversary. This perceived threat drives the hybrid force to 

abandon conventional military wisdom to achieve long-term survival.

The fourth principle is that a capability overmatch between the hybrid 

force and a potential adversary exists. The hybrid force contains less conventional military capability in comparison to its adversary and therefore must 

seek a way to offset this apparent advantage in military capability.

The fifth principle is that a hybrid force contains both conventional and 

unconventional elements. These elements often comprise “accepted” military 
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McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

technology and nonmilitary, guerrilla type technology. The elements may 

also include the use of terrorist or other criminal tactics. These combined 

capabilities create an asymmetric advantage for the hybrid force.

The sixth principle proposes that hybrid organizations rely on inherently 

defensive type operations. The hybrid force seeks to defend its existence and 

employs an overall strategy of defensive operations. These operations will 

often include offensive components, but the overarching intent is still one 

of defense.

The seventh principle is that hybrid organizations use attritional tactics 

in the employment of the hybrid force. These tactics manifest in both the 

physical and the cognitive domains in order to continually whittle away the 

adversary’s forces and his will to use them. 

Therefore, hybrid war theory may be best summarized as a form of warfare in which one of the combatants bases its optimized force structure on 

the combination of all available resources—both conventional and unconventional—in a unique cultural context to produce specific, synergistic 

effects against a conventionally-based opponent.

Analysis Methodology

What follows is a historical analysis of selected case studies that is both 

qualitative and deductive. This analysis will provide additional insights that 

will contribute to the development and refinement of the theory of hybrid 

warfare proposed in this work. The case studies explored are Lebanese Hezbollah in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War and the Soviet partisan network 

during World War II on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945. The Lebanese 

Hezbollah case study is the original instance of hybrid warfare and as such 

has served as ground zero for much of the work on hybrid warfare and 

hybrid organizations. The Soviet partisan network case study is a historical 

example of hybrid warfare that has not been analyzed in detail—this review 

will serve to offer an untouched example of hybrid warfare to be explored 

by the proposed theory to determine the universal applicability of its principles. This process offers supporting evidence via concrete example of each 

of the proposed principles that support the theory. As a result, the theory 

of hybrid warfare will be not only validated, but will also be shown to be 

broadly applicable in historical analysis. 

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McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

2. The Israel-Hezbollah War (2006): A 

Well-Trod Example Revisited

Following the review of literature on evolving modern warfare and the 

existence of hybrid warfare as a component of modern conflicts, this 

monograph now conducts a qualitative and deductive analysis of historical 

case studies to explore and validate the proposed theory of hybrid warfare. In doing so, it attempts to parse examples of each principle to show its 

existence within the historical context of the case study. The monograph 

first examines Lebanese Hezbollah as the prototypical hybrid organization 

during its conflict with Israel in the summer of 2006. As the analysis will 

show, Lebanese Hezbollah functions as a hybrid organization and as a result 

manifests multiple synergistic advantages in relation to its opponent. In teasing out the motivations for these functional behaviors, Lebanese Hezbollah 

validates the proposed theory by demonstrating the qualitative presence of 

each of the principles. The summary at the end of this chapter provides a 

holistic synthesis by showing the relevance of the hybrid actor within the 

historical context.

Strategic Context of the Israel-Hezbollah War

To understand the depth of this conflict, we will first review the strategic 

context of the situation so that understanding may be gained when looking 

for the presence of the proposed theory and principles. The Israel-Hezbollah 

War of 2006 was a 34-day military conflict, which pitted the pre-eminent 

conventional military force in the Middle East—Israel—against the combined conventional and unconventional military force of the non-state actor 

Lebanese Hezbollah. The conflict began when Lebanese Hezbollah conducted 

attacks against Israeli border forces and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on 12 

July 2006. Israel responded with a failed rescue attempt and a synchronized 

air and ground bombardment of Southern Lebanon, followed by a ground 

invasion and a naval blockade of Lebanon. Lebanese Hezbollah retaliated 

with massive rocket strikes into Northern Israel and a guerilla campaign 

utilizing prepared, hardened defensive positions. Fighting continued until 

regional and international pressure resulted in a United Nations brokered 

ceasefire on 14 August 2006.56
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JSOU Report 13-4

In total, the fighting resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,200 people. 

The fighting displaced over a million people in Southern Lebanon and in 

Northern Israel. On the Israeli side, 114 Israeli Defense Force soldiers were 

killed and significant amounts of Israeli military equipment were damaged 

or destroyed, including up to 10 percent of Israel’s committed main battle 

tanks, and some rotary wing aircraft and coastal naval vessels were severely 

damaged.57 More than 40 Israeli civilians were killed and nearly 4,000 were 

injured in addition to an estimated $3.5 billion loss in war cost and economic 

output.58 In Lebanon, Lebanese Hezbollah suffered contentious losses of 

between 46 and 600 fighters killed, and its observed military capability was 

estimated to have been reduced by one half.59 In addition, over 1,000 Lebanese civilians were reportedly killed and over 4,000 were injured in addition 

to an estimated $4 billion loss in buildings and infrastructure.60

The conflict played out against a historical backdrop of political, religious, 

and ethnic tensions between the strong state actor, Israel, and the ambiguous 

non-state actor, Lebanese-Hezbollah within the neighboring weak state of 

Lebanon. Israel is a strong, Jewish state in a contested geographic area, which 

has historically fought for survival against the Arab and Muslim populations 

of the Middle East. Israel generally comprises a dominant Jewish demographic and is supported by both a strong internal economy and by external 

remittances and patronage.61 Israel’s military industrial complex is the most 

advanced within the Middle East region, fielding advanced ground, air, and 

sea platforms, making it a powerful conventional military force capable of 

both internal and external defense on multiple fronts. 

Lebanon is a weak, multicultural state, which has been a confluence of 

both Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples and beliefs for centuries. 

This cultural milieu has resulted in a demographic mix that tentatively balances between multiple Muslim and Christian factions within the population.62 As a result, Lebanon has a relatively weak central government and 

with control distributed among many factions according to the 1926 Lebanon 

Constitution. During the civil war of 1975-1990, this balance of power was 

contested. Following the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, additional pressure was placed on the balance of power via the Shi’a demographic. This in 

turn has led to external interference and sometimes domination of Lebanon 

by her stronger neighbors, Syria and Israel—perpetuating the cycle of a lack 

of control and resulting in historically poor infrastructure. The weak governmental structure is mirrored by a relatively weak military that lacks not 
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McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

only the power to conduct external defense, but also to impose or support 

internal order—effectively creating an internal power vacuum. Lebanese 

Hezbollah filled the power vacuum created by this lack of internal political 

and military strength in the early 1980s.63

Lebanese Hezbollah is a strong militia with political aspirations, founded 

in 1982 in response to Israeli actions in Lebanon. The group quickly emerged 

as both a legitimate political entity and as a credible military force.64

Although not possessed of internal means of generating large-scale military 

power, Lebanese Hezbollah has continuously received equipment, training, and funding from its anti-Israeli allies—Iran and Syria. As the group’s 

military prowess matured over time, it gained significant conventional capabilities in terms of rockets, artillery, anti-aircraft, anti-ship, and anti-tank 

weaponry. This conventional capability is augmented by an asymmetric 

capability including criminal/terrorist activities and networks.65 As a result, 

the unique picture of Lebanese Hezbollah is built to show its attributes as a 

hybrid organization.

Hybrid Principles in Detail

When analyzed as a hybrid force, Lebanese Hezbollah displays several strong 

characteristics within the context of the Israel-Hezbollah 2006 War.

The first principle of hybrid war is that a hybrid force’s composition, 

capabilities, and effects are unique to the force’s own specific context. This 

context includes the temporal, geographic, socio-cultural, and historical 

setting in which the given conflict take place. Lebanese Hezbollah exists 

within just such a specific enabling context. The weak central government 

and conflicted lines of power within the country allow Lebanese Hezbollah 

to exist peaceably and to easily maintain and improve its militant status and 

freedom of action. Lebanon itself is not only a cultural and demographic mix 

of Eastern and Western society, but it also rests within the arc of a large Shi’a 

Muslim demographic density that extends from Lebanon through Syria, 

Iraq, Iran, and Bahrain—otherwise known as the “Shi’a Crescent.”66 The 

“Shi’a Crescent” serves to unify Lebanon’s internal Shi’a Muslim population 

allowing Lebanese Hezbollah a solid base of support—and then extends 

this support base through to its external sponsors, Syria and Iran. In addition, the ideology espoused by Lebanese Hezbollah extends to the Lebanese 
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JSOU Report 13-4

diaspora throughout the world and engenders both sympathy and support 

for the organization.67

The second principle of hybrid posits that a specific ideology exists within 

the hybrid force that creates an internal narrative to the organization. This 

ideology inherently links to the strategic context and is grounded within the 

socio-cultural, religious identity of the hybrid force. The resulting narrative 

redefines the extant rules within the strategic context. Lebanese Hezbollah 

maintains an ideology of righteous Islamic Revolution grounded in both its 

assumed role as an anti-Israeli militia and as a Shi’a protector in Lebanon.68

This narrative supports both the external and internal support relationships 

as well as facilitating the growth and control requirements of Lebanese Hezbollah as a dominant non-state actor within Lebanon.

The third principle of hybrid warfare is the hybrid force’s perception of 

an existential threat by a potential adversary. This perceived threat drives 

the hybrid force to abandon conventional military wisdom in order to find 

ways to achieve long-term survival. In the case of Lebanese Hezbollah, Israel 

established a long historical precedent of military action and occupation in 

Lebanon in 1948 during the Arab-Israeli War with the Israeli occupation of 

numerous southern border villages in Lebanon.69 The invasion of southern 

Lebanon followed in 1978 and occupation of territory south of the Litani 

River.70 In 1982, a large Israeli ground force briefly entered the eastern portion of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon.71 The Lebanese people and Lebanese 

Hezbollah can see Israel as an existential threat if it combines selected historical facts with Israeli policy statements. Moreover, Lebanese Hezbollah 

could go so far as to identify an Israeli threat to the Lebanese population 

writ large. In fact, Lebanese Hezbollah’s vibrant public rhetoric regularly 

incorporates this understanding.72 The realization of this existential threat 

thereby prompts Lebanese Hezbollah to seek any method possible to defend 

itself—including both conventional and unconventional methods. Another 

result of this rhetoric and understanding is the tacit approval of the approval 

of the Lebanese people—which creates a support base that enables the actions 

of Lebanese Hezbollah, including the unconventional, terrorist, and criminal 

activities that support the organization.

Principle four posits that in a hybrid war there exists a capability overmatch between the hybrid force and a potential adversary. The hybrid force 

contains less conventional military capability compared to its adversary 

and therefore must seek a way to offset this apparent advantage in military 
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McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

capability. In the case of Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel, this overmatch is 

readily apparent. Israel not only maintains a large internal military industrial 

complex, but also links through close alliances to both the American and 

European military industrial complexes—thereby being capable of maintaining a relatively large conventional army.73 Lebanese Hezbollah on the 

other hand, maintains an ad-hoc militia force that is reliant on external 

arms supplies and unconventional techniques to achieve military effects.74

The fifth principle says that a hybrid force contains both conventional 

and unconventional elements. These elements often comprise “accepted” 

military technology and nonmilitary, guerrilla type technology and tactical 

application. These combined capabilities create an asymmetric advantage 

for the hybrid force. In a ground force comparison of the 2006 War, Israel 

fields an army containing main battle tanks such as the Sabra Mark I and 

Merkava Mark IV, armored personnel carriers like the Namer, infantry fighting vehicles such as the Golan Armored Vehicle, towed and self-propelled 

artillery systems like the LAROM and Sholef, and multiple variations of 

unmanned aerial drones.75 Additionally, Israel maintains multiple air force 

strike fighters such as the Kfir and F-16I, rotary wing platforms, and coastal 

defense ships.76 Conversely, Lebanese Hezbollah utilizes multiple small arms 

variants, anti-tank munitions, anti-aircraft systems, anti-ship weapon systems, and multiple rocket and missile platforms.77 These elements combine 

in a mixed hierarchical/cellular structure comprised of both conventional 

fighters and irregular militia. The more conventional fighters are capable of 

advanced application of their weapon systems, as seen in the example of 3709 

rocket attacks launched into Northern Israel—hitting 901 towns and cities 

during the 34-day conflict.78 The irregular militia units use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and are capable of near simultaneous swarming attacks.79

Hybrid forces seek to use defensive type operations; this is the sixth principle of hybrid warfare proposed in this work. The hybrid force seeks to 

defend its existence and will employ an overall strategy of defensive operations. These operations will often include offensive components, but the 

overarching intent will still be one of defense. In the 2006 Israel-Lebanese 

Hezbollah War, Lebanese Hezbollah fought from prepared fighting positions, including fortified bunkers, which were arranged in depth in Southern 

Lebanon.80 From these defensive positions, Lebanese Hezbollah launched 

multiple rocket attacks and executed swarming attacks against Israeli ground 

forces. As such, these operations primarily focused on the overall survival 
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JSOU Report 13-4

of Lebanese Hezbollah forces or on the protection of their corresponding 

local support networks. It is noteworthy that, although Lebanese Hezbollah 

attempted to defend several village locations, it did not necessarily defend 

them to the death, but rather would often attempt to break contact to avoid 

being killed by Israeli Defense Forces—in order to be able to fight in a future 

engagement.81 Generally, all ground engagements occurred when Israeli 

Defense Forces entered into areas occupied by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters.82 Rocket attacks were offensive in nature, but were launched for the 

stated purpose of retaliatory strikes against Israeli forces in Lebanon in the 

context of contested areas such as Shaba Farms or the Golan Heights and as 

such can be viewed as overall defensive operations. 

Lebanese Hezbollah relied on attritional tactics throughout the IsraelLebanon 2006 War, and this too is consonant with the proposed hybrid 

warfare theory. Principle seven emphasizes the use of attritional tactics in the 

employment of the hybrid force. These tactics manifest in both the physical 

and the cognitive domains to continually whittle away the adversary’s forces 

and his will to use them. In the case of Lebanese Hezbollah, the physical 

manifestation of these attritional tactics occurred using mine and improvised mine warfare, mass use of indirect fire attacks—missiles, rockets, and 

mortar fire, and the use of anti-tank/anti-personnel ground ambushes.83

None of these techniques were planned or executed to be decisive ground 

actions, but rather were engaged in as opportunity attritional targets. As 

such, Lebanese Hezbollah rarely massed outside of occasional swarming 

attacks which were multi-directional—as in the attacks along the southern 

Lebanon border.84 Added to this were the cognitive aspects of attritional tactics in the use of the initial kidnapping of two Israeli Defense Force soldiers, 

the historical threat of the use of suicide bombing, the repeated bombardment of Israeli civilian populations, and the rapid use of media to execute 

strategic information influencing operations.85 In this case, attritional tactics 

also served to exploit gaps in conventional force Israeli logic and thereby 

served to extend the conflict to the benefit of Lebanese Hezbollah.

How Effective Were They? The Effects of Hybrid Principles

Synthesizing the seven principles of hybrid warfare within the context of 

the 2006 Israel Lebanese Hezbollah War, the David and Goliath image of 

a weaker opponent besting a stronger one becomes quite clear. Although 
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Lebanese Hezbollah received more damage than the Israel Defense Forces 

and was tactically defeated on multiple occasions throughout the 34-day 

conflict, Lebanese Hezbollah was able to take advantage of several critical factors in order to gain an operational and strategic victory. Despite 

their clear military and economic advantages, the Israeli Defense Forces 

were unable to meet the operational and strategic objectives of the military defeat of Lebanese Hezbollah. The court of public opinion in Israel, 

Lebanon, and throughout the world saw Israel as losing the conflict.86 As a 

hybrid force, Lebanese Hezbollah was able to use its internal strengths of 

narrative, weapons mix, and tactics to overcome the weaknesses of its much 

stronger opponent. 

Through asking why or how this happened, it becomes clear that Lebanese Hezbollah optimized its military organization to fight against a Western 

style conventional military organization. It did this through a combination 

of available equipment like anti-tank, anti-aircraft, anti-ship, and unconventional weapons—IEDs—and flexible defensive tactics like fortified defense 

in depth and ambush type tactics. This was coupled with an adaptive use 

of media exploitation and messaging in combination with a near continuous rocket bombardment.87 The umbrella of Lebanese Hezbollah’s strategic 

objective contained these actions to prove that it could fight against Israel 

and survive. In doing so, Lebanese Hezbollah was able to bind the strategic 

objective of victory within the internal narrative of a Shi’a protector fighting against the existential threat of Israel. As a result, Lebanese Hezbollah 

acted as an agile, adaptive, and lethal opponent that only had to continue 

to fight in order to achieve its objective and defeat its enemy. In this sense, 

the hybrid force gained a clear advantage through synergistic effects over its 

conventional opponent and achieved “victory” within the war.

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3. World War II Eastern Front (1941-

1945): A First Look at the Soviet Partisan Network as a Hybrid Organization

This monograph now conducts a qualitative and deductive analysis of 

historical case studies to explore and validate the proposed theory of 

hybrid warfare. In doing so, it attempts to parse examples of each principle 

to show its existence within the historical context of the case study. This 

case study examines the Soviet Partisan movement as a hybrid organization during World War II. It was selected because of its potential as a hybrid 

force that has not been previously analyzed. As a result, it offers a pristine 

example to which the proposed theory of hybrid warfare can be applied. 

The consequent analysis both confirms the Soviet Partisan movement as a 

hybrid force and validates the proposed theory and its attendant principles 

as being qualitatively present. A holistic synthesis also shows the relevance of 

the hybrid actor within the historical context—emphasizing the synergistic 

advantages that hybrid actors obtain versus a conventional force.

Strategic Context of the Soviet Partisan Movement

The Soviet Partisan movement during World War II was a component of 

the Soviet war effort against Nazi Germany from 1941-1945.88 In this conflict 

within World War II, the massive conventional forces of Nazi Germany 

fought against the massive conventional forces of the Soviet Union, which 

was augmented by the Soviet Partisan movement.89 The war on the Eastern 

Front in 1941 began with the German invasion of the Soviet-controlled Baltic 

states of Estonia, Latvia, Romania, and Lithuania, as well as former Polish 

territory.90 German armies attacked deep into the Soviet Union, decimating the population and threatening the survival of the Slavic nations and 

peoples. The Soviet Union responded with conventional military operations 

and irregular partisan operations.91 The combined effect of these actions 

enabled the Soviet Red Army to counter-attack and regain control of lost 

territories. The conflict culminated in 1945 with the destruction of the Germany Army and occupation of Germany. In total, the war on the Eastern 

Front was the largest conventional military conflict in history and it resulted 
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in an estimated 30 million deaths and the destruction of billions of dollars 

of infrastructure.92

In context, the German Army of the late 1930s and 1940s was the premier 

conventional military organization in the world.93 As compared to the Red 

Army’s contemporary turmoil, Germany’s army had a centuries-old military tradition extending back to the Kingdom of Prussia and Frederick the 

Great. Innovative technology augmented this extensive martial tradition 

in the form of Panzer, Panther, and Tiger tanks; towed and self-propelled 

artillery; fighter and bomber aircraft; and multiple individual and crewserved weapons systems.94 In terms of concurrent experience, the German 

Army successfully invaded Poland in 1939 and had successfully dominated 

France in May of 1940, arguably controlling all of continental Europe by the 

end of 1940—denoting not only structural proficiency, but also successful 

experience in the near term. This dominant military structure was governed 

by the ideology of the Nazi Party, which espoused world domination by 

the German “master race” of the Third Reich in order to restore German 

prestige following its defeat in World War I.95 Generically, the Nazi ideology 

can be considered a fascist movement which combined nationalism and anticommunism with multiple flavors of professed racism and anti-Semitism. 

The resultant belief structure within the military united conventional action 

and presented a single narrative to its adversary, the Red Army.

The Soviet Red Army of the early 1940s presents a much different picture. 

The near term history of the Red Army was framed by the Russian revolution of 1917, five years of civil war ending in 1923, and then 15 years of mass 

industrialization and sociopolitical suppression.96 During the 15 years of 

Stalin’s sociopolitical engineering of the communist system, nearly 11 million 

people were killed or imprisoned, including vast swathes of the Red Army. 

The dominant ideology was that of the Communist Party as interpreted by 

Joseph Stalin. Generically interpreted, communism—Leninism/Marxism—

can be described as an ideology that advocated a classless, stateless, atheist 

social order with common ownership of all state resources. In practice, this 

ideology in combination with Stalin’s fear of a military or political coup 

resulted in several lethal purges within the Soviet military of anyone who 

voiced any type of disagreement.97 As a result, the Red Army as an institution was devastated by the end of 1940 and was lacking in internal military 

strategic leadership. Additionally, the armored tank based force was primarily made up of the T-26 and BT tanks which were technologically inferior to 
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contemporary German tanks—although the T-34 tank was in limited use at 

the time and was roughly equivalent to later Panzer tank models.98

The Soviet Partisan element emerged in 1941 in areas behind the German 

front as it pushed into Soviet territory. What became known as the Soviet 

Partisan network was composed of several elements including bypassed 

Red Army troops and political commissars, small groups of airborne units 

dropped behind German lines, and frustrated local workers and volunteers 

led by members of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, Stalin’s 

Secret Police enforcers.99 These disparate elements were brought together by 

their political ideology and the common threat of elimination by the occupying German forces. As the Partisan network formed, it initially operated as 

a semi-autonomous element conducting multiple harassing and attritional 

type activities against the occupying German Army.100 As control began to 

be asserted through the local Communist political apparatus, these conventional and guerilla units formed into “annihilation” battalions that aimed to 

both destroy any resources which were available to the German Army and to 

disrupt German Army communications and command and control. To this 

end, the Partisan network used available conventional weaponry that had 

been left behind by retreating Red Army units, within a conventional Red 

Army organizational structure, and paired these with guerilla style tactics 

such as raids and ambushes. Many portions of the network, when unable to 

gain voluntary local support, turned to the use of criminal and terror type 

activities in order to supply themselves and coerce local support for their 

militant activities.101 In doing so, the Soviet Partisan network formed itself 

into a hybrid force by 1943 that achieved significant disruptive effects against 

the German Army. These effects would later be synchronized with Red Army 

combat operations to create a synergistic effect in driving the German Army 

out of Soviet territory.102 As a result, the Soviet Partisan network is validated 

as a successful hybrid organization that demonstrates the qualitative presence of the proposed principles of hybrid warfare. 

The Currency of Soviet Partisan Success: Show Me the Rubles

When analyzed as a hybrid force, the Soviet Partisan network displays several strong characteristics within the context of the Eastern Front during 

World War II.
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The first principle of hybrid war is that a hybrid force’s composition, 

capabilities, and effects are unique to the force’s own specific context. This 

context includes the temporal, geographic, socio-cultural, and historical 

setting in which the given conflict take place. The Soviet Partisan network 

formed in just such a specific enabling context. The historically harsh terrain 

of the eastern Russian steppes formed a unique context in which alternately 

both conventional and unconventional operations could successfully occur 

varying between the broad plains and the broken swathes of river and forest 

tracts.103 In this manner, it was inevitable that large conventional formations 

operating in the open terrain would eventually be paired with complementary irregular forces operating in the pockets of dense broken terrain, which 

existed in the steppes. The Russian experience in World War I, 1914-1917, 

the 1917 civil war within the Russia, and the spread of communism under 

Joseph Stalin had the effect of militarizing the Soviet population and instilling a level of instinctive discipline. This unique circumstance enabled the 

recruitment of much broader portions of the available population to form 

the hybrid Partisan network than would have otherwise been available.104

The second principle posits that a specific ideology exists within the 

hybrid force that creates an internal narrative to the organization. This ideology is inherently linked to the strategic context and is grounded within the 

socio-cultural, religious identity of the hybrid force. The resulting narrative 

serves to redefine the extant rules within the strategic context. In examining 

this principle, we return to the ideology of Communism as applied by Joseph 

Stalin. Communism itself merged the ideas of government and the ownership of resources, enabling a broad range of components such as people and 

physical resources, which could be used to form a hybrid force. Under Stalin, 

this ideology was magnified to an extreme which manifested itself through 

government enforcement via mass brutality at both the individual and collective level.105 As a result, a narrative was crafted in which the overt loyalty 

of any Soviet citizen was absolute pending the threat of dire consequences. 

In a sense, the overt display of loyalty to the communist party as a result 

of nationwide paranoia became a religion in and of itself—even though the 

ideology itself was atheist. In combination, the ideology and the paired narrative made both loyal personnel and physical resources readily available to 

any entity which supported the state’s desires—specifically to both the Red 

Army and the Partisan Network. 
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The third principle is the hybrid force’s perception of an existential threat 

by a potential adversary. This perceived threat drives the hybrid force to 

abandon conventional military wisdom in order to find ways to achieve longterm survival. In this example, the Partisan network was clearly motivated 

by the existential threat posed to them by the German Army and the Nazi 

government.106 Conceptually, the Soviet leadership and the citizenry could 

perceive this threat through the published work of the Nazi leader, Adolf 

Hitler. In Mein Kampf and Zweites Buch, Hitler identified Jewish people 

including Slavic Jews as a target for elimination. In a much more specific 

sense Hitler outlined the concept of Lebensraum which called for the creation 

of a German “living space” in the Soviet Union and the required elimination 

of the “flawed” Slavic regime that controlled the region. Following the breaking of the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact and the invasion of Sovietcontrolled Poland, practical examples of this professed philosophy played 

out.107 Individual Slavic Jews were taken to concentration camps, the existing Communist governments in the conquered territories were destroyed, 

and party members were eliminated. In a further practical example of the 

existential threat posed upon the Soviet populace, the “Hunger Plan” as 

outlined in Operation Barbarossa was put into effect during the invasion 

in 1941—prioritizing all food production and consumption for the German 

Army and the German homeland over local citizens—effectively starving the 

local population.108 These conceptual and practical examples clearly motivated the hybrid Soviet Partisan organizations as they realized that few viable 

choices were available to them in surviving life under German occupation 

in the Eastern Front.

Principle four posits that in a hybrid war that there exists a capability 

overmatch between the hybrid force and a potential adversary. The hybrid 

force contains less conventional military capability in comparison to its 

adversary and therefore must seek a way to offset this apparent advantage 

in military capability. With the defeat and retreat of the Red Army in 1941 

and 1942, the only remaining Soviet military force was the hybrid Soviet 

Partisan network. The Partisan network had access to some battlefield 

remnants, available small arms, limited numbers of horses, and limited 

local supplies.109 In contrast, the German Army was possessed of a massive conventional armory of tanks and airplanes, and benefitted from both 

the conventional military supply system and the locally imposed government systems which exerted control over local resources.110 As a result, a 
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clear overmatch in capability existed at both the offensive and logistical 

level between the semi-isolated Soviet Partisan network and the relatively 

unimpeded German Army. 

The fifth principle states that a hybrid force contains both conventional and unconventional elements. These elements are often composed of 

“accepted” military technology and nonmilitary, guerrilla type technology. 

The elements may also include the use of terrorist or other criminal tactics. 

These combined capabilities create an asymmetric advantage for the hybrid 

force. In the case of the Soviet Partisan network, this principle is fairly clearcut. The hybrid force comprised elements of bypassed Red Army units and 

Airborne units which were organized and equipped as conventional military 

units.111 The Soviet Partisans were also composed of volunteers and political party members who had no military training and were equipped with 

whatever weapons became available, including old World War I weapons 

and recently captured German small arms. Both elements utilized a mixture 

of conventional military tactics such as raids and ambushes, along with 

irregular activities such as sabotage and harassing attacks.112 The network 

also commonly stole food and local resources, as well as conducting terror 

and intimidation type activities against known German sympathizers. 

Hybrid forces seek to use defensive type operations; this is the sixth principle of hybrid warfare proposed in this work. The hybrid force seeks to 

defend its existence and will employ an overall strategy of defensive operations. These operations will often include offensive components, but the overarching intent will still be one of defense. In the case of the Soviet Partisan 

network, this principle can be recognized in the fact that the majority of the 

small scale operations executed by this hybrid organization were conducted 

with the primary intent of ensuring the survival of the organization. The 

secondary purpose was in buying time for the return of the Red Army—in 

essence defending any currently held resources and small territories until a 

larger liberation could be effected through the return of the Red Army.113 As 

a result, the operationally defensive orientation of this hybrid organization 

is revealed in the intent of its sometimes offensive operations.

The Soviet Partisan movement relied on attritional tactics through the 

duration of that conflict on the Eastern Front. This is consistent with the 

seventh principle of hybrid warfare in that hybrid organizations utilize attritional tactics to gain advantages in the employment of the hybrid force. These 

tactics will manifest in both the physical and the cognitive domains in order 
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McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

to continually whittle away the adversary’s forces and his will to use them. 

The overarching Soviet intent for the organization was to degrade German 

command and control and to disrupt the German Army’s rear area. In the 

example of the Soviet Partisan network, the attritional nature of this hybrid 

organization manifests itself in the repeated attacks on German Army supply 

lines and rear echelon formations.114 These attacks were mostly conducted as 

small-scale raids and ambushes against German forces. Ultimately, this attritional strategy helped to enable Red Army victories during Operation Bagration and subsequent offensive operations by both distracting the German 

Army and keeping it occupied in protecting its flanks and rear areas.

The Synergistic Effects of Hybrid Principles in Action

Synthesizing the seven principles of hybrid warfare within the context of the 

Eastern Front of World War II, the true strength and applicability of hybrid 

organizations becomes clear. In this case study, the hybrid Soviet Partisan 

network was able to disrupt the German Army, the pre-eminent conventional 

military force of World War II, and enable the ultimate victory of the Soviet 

Red Army by shaping the German rear area from 1941-1944. Although the 

Soviet Partisan network did not achieve any type of unilateral victory over 

the German Army, it did achieve limited tactical success and enabled both 

the operational and strategic military success of the Red Army.115 In essence, 

the Soviet Partisan network stole German momentum and created operational space for the Red Army to build combat power in 1942 and conduct 

large-scale offensive operations in 1943 and 1944.116

The Soviet Partisan movements’ synergistic effects were crucial in the 

larger operational plans of the Soviet Red Army. Without the ability to disrupt and occupy German forces, it is quite possible that the Red Army would 

not have been able to gain the momentum necessary to turn the tide of the 

German advance and ultimately defeat the German Army during World War 

II. Therefore, the critical placement of the Soviet Partisan movement as a 

hybrid force—with its synergistic effects—provided a necessary advantage 

to the Red Army in achieving overall victory against the Germans.

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4. Validation of a Theory

This monograph has set out to conclude a valid theory of hybrid warfare 

through a synthesis of military theory and historical trends. In doing 

so, a qualitative theory and several supporting principles have been identified 

and evaluated in relation to the two very unique historical case studies: the 

2006 Israel-Lebanon War and the Soviet Partisan movement on the Eastern 

Front during World War II. The classic example of Lebanese Hezbollah—

which generated so much discourse in the U.S. about hybrid warfare because 

of the surprising success of Lebanese Hezbollah against the Israeli Defense 

Forces in 2006—is fundamentally important to any analysis of hybrid warfare as the first recognized event of its kind. As such, Lebanese Hezbollah 

serves as the benchmark for all hybrid warfare examples—and any theory 

that attempts to capture the essence of hybrid warfare must first address 

this benchmark. Analysis of the Soviet Partisan case is particularly useful 

in that it first adds to the existing literature of hybrid warfare. Secondly, the 

Soviet Partisan movement occurred within the largest military conflict in 

the era of modern warfare—and garnered significant, measurable effects. 

The result of this dual analysis has been the affirmation of the proposed 

theory and the recognition of the qualitative presence of each of the proposed 

principals within the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah and 

the Soviet Partisan movement of World War II—leading to the potential for 

future application of the theory to emerging threat scenarios to aid military 

professional understanding. 

The Significant Implications of Hybrid War Theory

Many implications exist because of the validation of this theory. Perhaps 

the most significant result of a relevant theory is the ability to anticipate 

emergent hybrid organizations. Analysis of existing and emerging threat 

organizations can assist in the classification of threats so that regional forces 

can holistically understand behaviors as they emerge. This classification 

and understanding of behaviors then lends itself to predictive assessments 

of likely hybrid actions—in keeping with the proposed theory of hybrid 

warfare.

Specifically in the Middle East, this theory explains with some plausibility the emergence and the behavior of Lebanese Hezbollah as one of the 
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preeminent hybrid threats today. In and of itself, this is beneficial to the 

U.S. and its allies as they seek to first understand and then predict Lebanese 

Hezbollah’s actions in Lebanon, the Middle East, and the Globe. This enables 

military forces to understand not only the capabilities of the hybrid force, 

but also the motivations and likely limitations of such a force. For example, 

understanding Lebanese Hezbollah as a defensively oriented force motivated 

by a perceived existential threat alters the conventional calculus that is often 

used in assessing this organization. Furthermore, this understanding then 

allows the U.S. military forces to allocate resources and prepare contingency 

type responses to these potential actions. In seeking to understand these 

motivations and proclivities, U.S. and allied forces are more likely to encounter success as they interact with this hybrid threat organization.

Within the Pacific region, the theory of hybrid warfare might be used 

to actively assess and monitor emerging threats as Chinese interests and 

capabilities increase and the region balance of power between Asian land 

armies adjust. Historically, an assessment such as this could have helped 

to explain the Viet Cong and its relationship with the North Vietnamese 

Regular Army during the Vietnam War. For SOF in particular, the theory 

can assist in identifying non-state actors who may be likely to seek sponsorship and access to conventional type weapon systems. In identifying these 

groups, actions can be taken to isolate them using all elements of national 

power before they emerge as truly dangerous hybrid threats.

Potential Outcomes

There are many potential outcomes from the realization of a valid theory of 

hybrid warfare. One of these is in terms of U.S. Army force structure. As the 

U.S. Army continues to define the future threat environment, this expanded 

understanding will be fundamental. The basic understanding that a hybrid 

threat will seek to gain advantage from its internally synergistic capabilities 

through the combination of conventional and unconventional technologies 

will allow the U.S. Army to build equipment and weapon systems that are 

competitive against conventional opponents, yet retain a level of resiliency 

against unconventional threats. Ad hoc examples of these types of modifications exist in terms of anti-IED electronic countermeasures that have been 

used in the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Another example is in the 

basic construction of vehicles such as a V-hull of the Stryker vehicle to resist 
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McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

IED attacks while maintaining a premier conventional urban warfare capability in terms of troop carrying and speed. This utility in combining technological benefits in speed and lethality with survivability against irregular 

threats is essential to the U.S. Army’s future success on the hybrid battlefield. 

Another opportunity in adjusting force structure to combat hybrid 

threats is in focusing on the development and incorporation of technology. In this respect, technology could be developed to specifically target 

the fusion of hybrid capabilities. For example, although the combination 

of conventional and unconventional capabilities and tactics enables a synergistic advantage—the same combination also produces organizational 

seams between the different types of components. For example, in the case 

of Lebanese Hezbollah, a seam exists between the highly trained conventional type forces which utilize high-end weapon systems and the less well 

trained militia. This seam can be targeted and exploited by concentrating on 

the nodal linkages of command and communication between the different 

elements of the conventional and irregular force. Another seam potentially 

exists between the criminal elements and the military type elements of Lebanese Hezbollah that could be potentially targeted by military information 

support operations.117 As such, the theory of hybrid warfare provides a solid 

benefit to the U.S. Army in responding to future hybrid threats.

The tactics used by U.S. Army forces can also benefit from a greater 

understanding of hybrid threats in many areas such as intelligence analysis 

and targeting. In terms of intelligence analysis, the theory provides a predictive template that can be used to baseline the analysis of a hybrid threat. 

For example, if a potential threat displays a tendency toward the fusion of 

multiple types of available assets and techniques: conventional, irregular, 

criminal, and terrorist, while operating under a perceived existential threat, 

a military intelligence analyst can apply the hybrid theory of warfare to look 

for the existence of other likely aspects of the hybrid threat. In this hypothetical case, the analyst can look for indicators of the presence of the other 

principles of hybrid warfare. This analysis could likely lead to the identification of a defensive orientation and a specific ideology which could in turn be 

used to develop a predicted enemy situational template. Again, the hybrid 

theory itself provides a basis for U.S. Army success against hybrid threats 

on the future battlefield.

U.S. Army doctrine can also benefit from the theory of hybrid warfare. 

Army Doctrinal Publication 3.0: Unified Land Operations predicts that hybrid 
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threats will be a constant variable upon the future battlefield. The manual 

also proscribes a specific manner in which to conduct operations on this 

future battlefield. The manner described is the combination of combined 

arms maneuver to conventional, high-end military adversaries and the application of wide area security techniques against irregular force structures and 

environments. Through the selective application of these two techniques, 

U.S. Army forces can attempt to balance and eventually offset a hybrid force’s 

advantages. Essentially, if the U.S. Army can determine the how and the 

why of a hybrid force’s actions—through the application of hybrid warfare 

theory—the techniques of combined arms maneuver and wide area security 

can then be used to engage with and divide the conventional and unconventional aspects of the hybrid force. This division will, in essence, strip the 

hybrid force of its synergistic advantage and enable the specific targeting 

of individual elements within the hybrid force. As a result, the hybrid force 

will be much reduced in effectiveness and will be vulnerable to the U.S. 

Army’s own combinations of conventional and irregular forces: SOF. This 

will ultimately allow U.S. forces to retain control of the rules and tempo of 

the battlefield.

Implications for Future Research

Although this monograph has explored and attempted to answer several 

questions, the process of inquiry itself has unearthed additional questions 

that should be explored in order to fully understand hybrid warfare. For 

example, as an understanding of hybrid threat formation develops, additional questions arise with regard to how long hybrid organizations exist 

and whether or not they actually serve as a transitory state. Frank Hoffman’s research indicates that hybrid organizations may indeed only briefly 

emerge and exist as transitory entities. An analysis of historical examples 

in a long view may enable a better understanding of this question. Initial 

trends seem to indicate that hybrid organizations suffer one of two fates: (1) 

they are defeated or absorbed by conventional forces—as in the case of the 

Viet Cong and the Jewish Rebellion of 66 AD; or (2) they transition to more 

purely conventional forces over time—as in the cases of the U.S. Army as it 

evolved over time, and the Soviet Partisan Network as it merged into the Red 

Army. If this trend holds true, it may shed additional light on the problem 

of hybrid threats and offer predictive insight into the further evolution of 
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McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

hybrid organizations such as Lebanese Hezbollah—including the longevity 

of hybrid organizations.

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Endnotes

1. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Doctrinal Publication 3-0: Unified 

Land Operations (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2011), 4.

2. Oath of Office, Title 10, U.S. Code; Act of 5 May 1960.

3. 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, February 2010, 8.

4. Hybrid Warfare, Global Accountability Office, 10 September 2010. This report 

was initiated at Congressional request to clarify the multiple, conflicting Defense 

Service definitions, and descriptions of hybrid war, hybrid warfare, and hybrid 

threats. The 29 page study’s official finding was that the existing descriptions of 

hybrid war were sufficient to the needs of each service and that in the absence of a 

solidly quantifiably need for a definition that each service be allowed to continue 

in this manner.

5. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict.htm on 5 April 2012. 

To further explain the definition of conventional military forces we will include 

the use of conventional weapons platforms such as tanks, jet fighters, and/or 

soldiers. This idea of conventional military forces emerged from the Treaty of 

Westphalia in 1648. This definition describes both form and function. 

6. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict.htm on 5 April 2012. 

This definition will include the concepts of guerilla warfare, asymmetric insurgencies, and unregulated militant forces—all of which will often use low tech 

weapon systems.

7. Within this monograph, hybrid organizations are those that engage in hybrid 

warfare and hybrid threats are hybrid organizations viewed as an adversary. 

Holistically these terms will be used somewhat interchangeably as they focus 

on the core concept of hybridity.

8. As discussed in the literature review, the term “hybrid threat” emerged in U.S. 

Defense circles following the 2006 Israel-Lebanese Hezbollah War. 

9. Fulvio Poli: An Asymmetrical Symmetry: How Convention Has Become Innovative Military Thought (master’s thesis, U.S. Army War College, 2010), 2.

10. Phillipe Gennequin, The Centurions versus The Hydra: French Counterinsurgency in The Peninsular War (1808-1812) (master’s thesis, U.S. Army Command 

and General Staff College, 2011), 10.

11. Matt M. Matthews, We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli 

War (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2008), 20.

12. Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars (Arlington, 

VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007), 4.

13. Matthews 2008, 20.
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14. This typically leads to the dismissal or irrelevance of certain elements in a conflict 

which may actually have an enormous effect—but don’t fit into a definition or 

understanding.

15. George W. Casey, The Army of the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Army Magazine 59 (10), October 2009. 

16. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Field Manual 3-0: Operations 

(Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2011), 14.

17. ADP 3-0, 2011, 4.

18. Hoffman 2007, 1-72.

19. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict.htm on 5 April 2012. 

20. Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War, in the 21st Century (St. 

Paul, MN: MBI Publishing, 2004), 1-321. In no way does Dr. Hammes literature 

state that the generations of modern warfare that he observes are the first and 

only examples of the types of warfare that occur. Rather, he attempts to identify 

the preponderant trends in warfare. For example, guerilla warfare and information warfare existed millennia ago, but were not the preponderant forms or 

combinations of modern warfare until a certain time in his generational model.

21. A good example of first generation warfare is that of the Napoleonic Wars.

22. The historical idea of orderly battle predates the modern timeframe extending 

back into ancient times with the use of loosely organized armed parties clashing together, followed by the evolving use of the phalanx, sea power, animal 

domestication, and war machines such as siege engines. Hammes generational 

narrative best describes modern warfare following the Treaty of Westphalia 

and using all organizational and tactical precursors. In 4th Generation Warfare, 

Hammes highlights the loss of a state actor’s monopoly on the organized use 

of force/violence. This generational construct is heavily influenced by the military theories of Antoine Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz following Napoleon 

Bonaparte’s campaigns at the turn of the 18th century.

23. An example of second generation warfare is World War I.

24. Examples of third generation warfare are World War II and the Korean War.

25. Examples of fourth generation warfare are Vietnam, the Iraq War (2003-2011), 

and the War in Afghanistan (2001).

26. Thomas Huber, “Compound Warfare: A Conceptual Framework,” in Compound 

Warfare: That Fatal Knot, ed. Thomas M. Huber (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. 

Army Command and General Staff College Press, 2002) 1-317.

27. Ibid., 10.

28. Ibid., 311. 

29. Quadrennial Defense Review, 2006.

30. Quadrennial Defense Review, 2006; Nathan Frier, “Hybrid Threats: Describe...

Don’t Define,” Small Wars Journal (2009), 5. Of note, this author’s conversations 

with Hybrid Theorist Frank Hoffman (Washington, DC, February 2012) included 
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a conversation on the emergence of this quad chart concept and the idea that 

the original concept was more oriented toward dashed rather than solid lines 

separating the chart—enabling threats to move or blend from one category to 

another. Hybrid threats in particular are best understood if considered from this 

position of quantified movement.

31. Headquarters, Department of the Navy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century 

Seapower (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 2007).

32. Hoffman 2007, 301.

33. Ibid., 301.

34. Frank Hoffman, “Hybrid vs. Compound War,” Armed Forces Journal (2009); 

Nathan Frier, “Hybrid Threats: Describe...Don’t Define,” Small Wars Journal 

(2009): 5; and Biddle, Stephen, and Jeffrey A. Friedman. The 2006 Lebanon 

Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy, 

Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2008.

35. Often times, military forces are divided between two mindsets—those who see 

only the conventional threat (or at the least its primacy) and those who see only 

the unconventional or irregular threat. This is often a matter of institutional 

placement (e.g. Tank Commanders that train extensively for tank battles versus 

Special Forces that typically operate in insurgent type situations).

36. Ministry of Defense, The United Kingdom Joint Doctrinal Note 2/07 Countering Irregular Activity Within A Comprehensive Approach (Shrivenham Defence 

Academy, Shrivenham, Wiltshire, UK, March 2007).

37. Author’s discussion with retired IDF generals and current Israeli military theorists in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 2012.

38. Hybrid Warfare, Global Accountability Office, 10 September 2010. As discussed 

in previous footnotes, there is no universal consensus on either the existence of 

hybrid warfare or on its definition—this contention is global, not simply focusing 

on U.S. theorists, but extending through the UK, Israel, and beyond.

39. Jeffrey L. Cowan, A Full Spectrum Air Force (master’s thesis, Air War College, 

2009) and Shawn Brimley; Crafting Strategy in an Age of Transition (Carlisle 

Barracks, PA: Parameters, U.S. Army War College Press, 2009), 28.

40. Ibid., 28.

41. Matthews 2008, 1-96.

42. Daniel T. Lasica, Strategic Implications of Hybrid War: A Theory of Victory

(master’s thesis, School of Advanced Military Studies, 2009), 1-62.

43. In the context of the 2006 War, Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) is defeated at the 

tactical level, arguably losing the majority of its tactical engagements with the 

IDF, however in a strategic sense LH is seen to have emerged from the conflict 

as a victor. Although this perception is adroitly put forward by LH information 

type operations, there is a ring of truth in the sentiment—gaining even IDF 

agreement as to LH’s strategic victory. Discussions with U.S. and IDF military 

analysts confirm this finding—although in retrospect, each notes that a type of 
44

JSOU Report 13-4

“mutual” deterrence was effected following the conflict with neither side being 

willing to unnecessarily return to any type of military confrontation.

44. David Sadowski and Jeff Becker, “Beyond the “Hybrid” Threat: Asserting the 

Essential Unity of Warfare,” Small Wars Journal January 7, 2010, 1-13.

45. 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, February 2010 and Michelle Flournoy, Contested Commons: The Future of American Power in a Multipolar World (Washington, DC—Center for a New American Security, 2010). 

46. These social rules exist to constrain both the conceptual and the material understanding of a situation and any resulting action that takes place within a system.

47. 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, February 2010, 8, 15.

48. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army CAPSTONE Concept 525-3-0 

(Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2009), 15, 47.

49. Headquarters, Department of the Army, The Operations Process 5-0 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2008), 3, 4.

50. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Operations 3-0 (Washington, DC: 

Department of the Army, 2011), 1-5. 

51. Ibid. 1-23 For example, criminal elements may steal parts for a profit while at 

the same time compromising the readiness of an adversary’s combat systems. 

Militia forces may defend their town with exceptional vigor as a part of a complex 

defensive network. Additionally, hybrid threats use global networks to influence 

perceptions of the conflict and shape global opinion.

52. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret 

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 24–25, 65–67.

53. Specifically, the idea of limited war refers to the historical observation that war 

as a social construct is self-regulating to a certain degree. It requires the acquiescence of its participants and supporters to escalate from one level to another 

and as such will meet certain thresholds of either military capability or resource 

availability. These thresholds will in effect limit the scope of the war. Most state 

actors or non-state actors will recognize some of these thresholds and attempt 

to optimize their behavior and organizations within these constraints (laws, 

budgets, popular support, international opinions, et cetera).

54. George W. Gawrych, The 1973 Arab-Israeli War: The Albatross of Decisive 

Victory (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 1996). In the 

buildup to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt was able to look at Israel previous 

air and land power success and was able to optimize the Egyptian Army and its 

war plan for the 1973 war. In doing so, the Egyptians maximized their anti-tank 

and anti-air capabilities using Soviet supplied arms and then operationalized that 

capability in limited advances under the protection of these weapon systems. The 

result was shocking to the military world in that the relatively advanced Israeli 

Defense Force was beaten by the sub-par Egyptian Army that the Israelis had 

resoundingly beaten in 1967. 
45

McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

55. The desired ends of a hybrid organization are often political in nature—relating to 

the popular motivations both within the organization itself and in the populace 

that exists around the hybrid organization. 

56. Matthews 2008, 1-96.

57. Ibid., 20.

58. Harel Amos and Avi Issacharoff, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in 

Lebanon. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.), 1-304.

59. Ibid., 1-304; Matthews 2008, 29.

60. Uri Bar-Joseph, “The Hubris of Initial Victory: The IDF and the Second Lebanon 

War,” in Israel and Hizbollah, ed. Clive Jones and Sergio Catignani, (London: 

Routledge, 2010), 156-159.

61. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

geos/is.html on 5 April 2012. The CIA World Factbook list Israel’s population 

demographics as 76 precent Jewish, 20 percent Arab—although almost all policy 

is Jewish.

62. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

geos/le.html on 5 April 2012. In large part due to the nature of its weak central 

government, the preservation of the 1932 census and its resulting balance of 

power is preferred by most of Lebanon’s population. For this reason, any changes 

in population demographics (primarily from Christian to Muslim majorities) are 

masked to maintain the historical partitioning of government positions between 

the population demographics. As a consequence, the central government remains 

weak and highly partisan.

63. Ahmed Nizar Hamzeh, In The Path of Hizbullah. (Syracuse, NY: The Syracuse 

University Press, 2004), 43.

64. Penny L. Mellies,”Hamas and Hezbollah: A Comparison of Tactics.” In Back to 

Basics: A Study of the Second Lebanon War and Operation CAST LEAD, edited 

by Scott C. Farquhar (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 

2009), 1-146.

65. Matthews 2008, 1-96.

66. Ibid., 15-18.

67. Amos and Issacharoff 2008, 76-121.

68. Mellies, 2009.

69. Daniel Isaac Helmer, Flipside of the COIN: Israel’s Lebanese Incursion Between 

1982-2000. (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2007), 1-85.

70. Ibid., 64.

71. Amos and Issacharoff 2008, 76-121.

72. Retrieved from http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35833.htm on 5 April 2012. 

Outlines ISR policy statements—many of which espouse the destruction of Hezbollah and any other threat to Israeli security. These policies are available to the 

public domain and are often published in both Israeli and Lebanese periodicals.
46

JSOU Report 13-4

73. Matthews 2008, 12, 47-56.

74. Amos and Issacharoff 2008, 47.

75. Mellies 2009, 1-146.

76. Ibid., 97.

77. Amos and Issacharoff 2008, 76-121.

78. Matthews 2008, 1-96.

79. Helmer 2007, 1-85.

80. Ibid., 47.

81. Matthews 2008, 33-39.

82. Ibid., 33-39.

83. Mellies 2009, 98-121.

84. Ibid., 87.

85. Helmer 2007, 1-85.

86. Mellies 2009, 83-99.

87. Ibid., 83.

88. Earl F. Zeimke, Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East, (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2002), 3-22.

89. Edgar M. Howell, The Soviet Partisan Movement: 1941-1945, (Bennington, VT: 

Merriam Press, 1999), 6-11.

90. Zeimke 2002, 23.

91. Ibid., 3-22.

92. David Glantz and Jonathan House, When Titans Clashed: How The Red Army 

Stopped Hitler, (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1995), 5-48.

93. Ibid., 5-48.

94. Ibid., 41.

95. Ibid., 47.

96. Howell 1999, 4-22.

97. Glantz and House 1995, 49.

98. Howell 1999, 23-31.

99. Ibid., 23-31.

100. Zeimke 2002, 23.

101. Howell 1999, 4-134.

102. Ibid., 5.

103. Ibid., 8.

104. Ibid., 5.

105. Glantz and House 1995, 1-14.

106. Ibid., 28-48. 
47

McCulloh: Theory of Hybrid Conflict

107. Howell 1999, 43-63.

108. Ibid., 43-63.

109. Zeimke 2002, 103. 

110. Howell 1999, 43-74.

111. Glantz and House 1995, 65.

112. Howell 1999, 88-128.

113. Ibid., 129-134.

114. Ibid., 115.

115. Ibid., 129.

116. Zeimke 2002, 103.

117. This monograph does not seek to explore the tactical, operational, or strategic 

seams between Lebanese Hezbollah and its state sponsors, although these seams 

do likely exist and are thereby targetable.

49

Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

1. Introduction

The Hezbollah fighters struck quickly, overwhelming the small truckmounted border patrol with antitank rounds and small arms fire. But 

significantly, they only sought to kill the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) reservists in the second truck. Their objective that morning went far deeper than a 

simple guerrilla ambush; they sought captives. The four organized sections 

swept through the carnage and pulled Sergeant Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad 

Regev back through the hole in the border fence, under the cover of coordinated mortar fire. It took 45 minutes for an IDF relief force to reach the site 

to find them long gone, giving the fighters ample time to abscond with their 

prisoners through the Lebanese village of Ita a-Sha’ab. Barely another hour 

had passed when Hezbollah’s Al Manar satellite television network lauded 

the successful kidnapping of two IDF soldiers, an effort to restore faith in 

their wider struggle to repatriate their own captured fighters.1

As the Israeli Air Force (IAF) prepared to destroy bridges radiating out 

from the area in an effort to contain the captives, the IDF organized a combined arms force with a Merkava tank to secure a vantage point on Giv’at 

Hadegel, a hill overlooking the village. The detachment never made it to 

Giv’at Hadegel, as a huge improvised explosive device (IED) rocked the Merkava, killing the crew of four. When the dismounted troops dispersed to 

secure the site, they came under heavy indirect fire which killed yet another 

soldier.2 The night of 12 July 2006 came to a close with eight IDF soldiers 

killed, Goldwasser and Regev still missing. Reports circulated to the highest 

levels of the defense staff and government, providing a context for “belligerent declarations and hasty decisions that ultimately led to a war.”3

Operational Approaches to Hybrid 

Warfare

The danger is that this kind of style, developed out of a single case, 

can easily outlive the situation that gave rise to it; for conditions 

change imperceptibly. - Carl von Clausewitz, On War
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JSOU Report 13-4

The next morning, the IAF struck Hezbollah’s Zelzal-1 and Fajr-3 missile 

positions across Lebanon, successfully destroying over half of their arsenal 

in 34 minutes. But therein lay the issue; the IAF could only destroy half of 

this arsenal of medium-range missiles, and very little could be done about 

the thousands of light, mobile Katyusha rockets distributed across southern 

Lebanon. The Hezbollah response was an unprecedented barrage of Katyushas into northern Israel that surprised the IDF in terms of both volume and 

penetration.4 Without a major land offensive, there was no practical way to 

disrupt the rocket attacks on Israeli population centers.

Over the next two weeks, Hezbollah simultaneously fired rockets to 

weaken Israeli political resolve, while defending against the IDF’s continued incursions from well-prepared positions in southern Lebanon.5

 The IDF 

began to fixate on the town of Bint J’beil for its symbolic resonance within 

both societies. After the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah secretary general Hasan Nasrallah held a victory speech there. The IDF 

Chief of Staff, General Dan Halutz, sought to create a “spectacle of victory” 

through a raid in Bint J’beil rather than focus on a holistic disruption of the 

rocket threat to northern Israel’s population.6 At Bint J’beil, the IDF encountered stiff Hezbollah resistance, as both sides clashed in what was more of a 

meeting engagement than an IDF raid or a Hezbollah ambush. IDF veterans 

of the battle at Bint J’Beil hold a lasting impression of Hezbollah’s capability, one that is far different from what they had trained and prepared. One 

paratroop officer remarked that “[t]hese were not the small sections we were 

familiar with ... these didn’t retreat from the field.”7 Another recalled later 

that Hezbollah “had eyes everywhere,”8 and a third veteran of the conflict 

recollected “we were under constant fire, they never stopped hitting us ... [y]

ou can tell Hezbollah has been trained in guerrilla fighting by a real army.”9

Throughout the short war, Hezbollah displayed the nature of a complex 

adaptive threat in which their combination of regular and irregular aspects 

created a synergistic effect, one greater than the sum of those component 

parts.10 They mixed regular forces with a hierarchical, military-style command structure with the distributed nodes of an irregular force; a great 

majority of their fighters wore uniforms.11 Most visibly, they employed a 

lethal combination of regular and irregular means, melding conventional 

weaponry such as anti-ship missiles, Kornet anti-tank missiles, and Katyusha 

rockets with improvised weaponry suited for irregular warfare such as IEDs 

and ambush sites.12 But most importantly, Hezbollah combined regular and 
51

Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

irregular behaviors in their form of warfare. They fought in many sustained 

battles, but also maintained an ability to disengage when it was advantageous. Furthermore, they displayed the ability to counterattack given the 

tactical opportunity.13 Nasrallah’s exhortation at the outset of the conflict 

provides a unique summarization of this change in modalities: “[y]ou wanted 

an open war. Let it be an open war. Your government wanted to change the 

rules of the game. Let the rules of the game change ... [w]e are not a regular 

army, we will not fight like a regular army.”14

Hezbollah engaged Israel in multiple domains, far beyond the jagged 

valleys of southern Lebanon. By using a combination of regular and irregular aspects to counter Israeli power on land, sea, air, and in the battle of 

international narratives, Hezbollah achieved a synergistic effect to exhaust 

Israel. This effort to indirectly exhaust Israel is illustrated in Hezbollah’s 

central theme of muqawama, a notion of resistance which exploits Israel’s 

sensitivities to casualties in attritional warfare.15

The IDF fundamentally did not disrupt Hezbollah’s logic for violence 

in the conflict. Although the IAF was precise, air strikes failed to disrupt 

Hezbollah’s balance in Lebanon and push it into an operational collapse.16

The IDF found its historic advantages in tanks, aircraft, reconnaissance, and 

night raiding actions nearly irrelevant in 2006.17 Additionally, Israeli politicians and strategists held a myopic view of their desired end state and could 

not provide an articulated framework for operations. Consequently, IDF 

commanders were left with an inherent tension in their operational plans. 

They were pulled between an end state which was not achievable without 

sustained land warfare, and a strategic context which would not allow sustained land warfare. Although the IDF was able to raid several Hezbollah 

strong points and destroy most of their medium-range missiles, they failed 

to arrange these successes towards a strategic aim.18 The IDF lacked both 

the theory and practice to prevail in the 2006 conflict; operationally and 

strategically, Hezbollah outlasted Israel.19

Significance

Israel’s operational approach to the hybrid threat in Lebanon sparks an interesting discourse, an introspective dialogue about the applicability of the U.S. 

Army’s doctrine and organization to defeat similar threats. To understand 

this, it is instructive to examine how the U.S. military applied operational art 
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JSOU Report 13-4

to defeat hybrid threats in previous conflicts. That historical inquiry guides 

the following research, lest we fall into the trap Clausewitz alludes to in this 

introduction’s epigraph.

This is a potentially rewarding endeavor, because an adequate analysis of operational art can provide insight for future approaches to hybrid 

threats. There is a healthy debate about hybrid threats and the nature of 

hybrid warfare in American military journals and publications. Much of 

this discussion describes hybrid threats as nascent phenomena, citing the 

IDF’s struggle against Hezbollah as a bellwether for future U.S. military 

operations. Significantly, much of this debate also focuses on an adversary’s 

means and capabilities in hybrid war, rather than the cognitive fusion of 

mixed forms of warfare which hybrid threats employ. A symptom of this 

focus on physical aspects is the projection for U.S. military equipment and 

capabilities, instead of a contemporary debate in terms of the doctrine and 

organization to counter hybrid threats in complimentary abstract domains. 

The U.S. Army genuinely needs advanced capabilities in the confusing environment of land warfare against a hybrid threat. However, these investments 

will not bear fruit if there is not a thorough range of operational approaches, 

broad methods that arrange these tactical gains in pursuit of strategic objectives. Technology and information dominance alone will not fuse tactics 

and strategy, but logical constructs that provide clarity and direction to an 

adaptive organization may provide this capability.

When operational art pursues strategic aims through the arrangement 

of tactical actions within the context of the adversary, it enables a force to 

defeat that adversary via positions of relative advantage. Translating these 

positions of military advantage into positions of political advantage enables 

successful conflict termination from a position of strength, rather than seeking a strategic break-even point. Theories of hybrid warfare, operational art, 

and historical analysis of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq illustrate several key 

concepts regarding sound operational approaches: they cognitively disrupt 

the hybrid threat’s logic governing the forms of warfare it employs, they 

fuse tactical successes to the strategic aims within the context that led to the 

hybridized threat, and they avoid uniform approaches across time, space, 

and purpose. Future operational approaches to counter hybrid threats must 

adapt elements of these explanatory concepts.
53

Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

Methodology

This monograph utilizes qualitative historical analysis to build understanding of American operational approaches to hybrid threats. To develop broad, 

explanatory fundamentals, this research and analysis does not attempt to 

quantify or otherwise model hybrid warfare in a predictive fashion. Sound 

historical analysis develops the widest possible consensus of significant experiences by collating direct observations and previous treatments on the event, 

so this may incorporate contradictions.20 This is a reflection of the relative 

nature of historical analysis, and the lack of an objective, singular truth 

inherent to a specific event or campaign. Even the most rote, ‘hard’ sciences 

have limitations in the reproducibility of results for the same reason. In 

the complex and amorphous environment of historical hybrid warfare, this 

reproduction is achieved only through the virtual replicability of a narrative.21 This monograph utilizes case studies to reproduce a narrative through 

the dual lenses of operational art and hybrid warfare.

The study of operational art and hybrid warfare though a historical lens 

has a set of inherent limitations, some of which are imposed by the nature 

of the research, and some of which are deliberately placed upon the analysis 

to bound the subject matter. The chief limitation on research is the specter 

of presentism, since accounts from Vietnam and Iraq do not share the same 

logical constructs with contemporary expressions of hybrid warfare and 

operational art. To bring reasonable limits on the scope of research, several 

constraints narrow the field of what is considered for analysis. The research 

focuses on the Army’s historical experiences with hybrid warfare, since warfare is an activity among the population; the population lives on land and the 

Army is the eminent land force for sustained military operations.22American 

experiences with hybrid warfare form the subject matter for two reasons. 

First, there are many macro- and micro-cultural peculiarities of American 

institutions and military operations. Using case studies from American 

experiences isolates that variable to improve the application of resulting 

fundamentals for an American Army. Additionally, foreign campaigns such 

as the IDF in Lebanon or the Russians in Chechnya receive a majority of 

the treatments through a lens of hybrid warfare, creating a misconception 

that this may be a form of warfare which is unfamiliar to the U.S. Army’s 

institutional lineage.23 The application of operational art is analyzed rather 

than tactical methods or strategic considerations, since operational art is the 
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closest expression of warfare to the underlying reason for hybrid threats: a 

technique of considering and arranging means to achieve a higher purpose. 

Finally, hybrid warfare is the subject rather than a wider survey of irregular 

warfare or unconventional warfare, owing to the relative vagueness and 

breadth of those concepts. Hybrid warfare is also broad concept, but it retains 

enough specificity and unique characteristics as to avail itself to discrete 

analysis. These deliberate constraints on the scope of the analysis provide 

clarity for the resulting fundamentals, but may limit their applicability in 

future conflicts.

In order to gain understanding and context for these fundamentals, this 

monograph continues with an investigation into the competing models that 

describe the elements of hybrid warfare. This discussion focuses on the form, 

function, and logic of unrestricted warfare, compound warfare, fourth generation warfare, hybrid warfare, and current U.S. Army doctrine. To develop 

a working model for hybrid warfare which frames the subsequent case study 

analyses, this inquiry evaluates the physical and cognitive traits of hybrid 

warfare, historical trends, and the external stimuli that drive a threat to 

hybridize. Likewise, the following chapter examines the theory, application, 

and elements of operational art. This context creates an appreciation for the 

application of operational art in a specific campaign or war, an operational 

approach. This discussion of operational art includes the underlying nature 

of modern warfare, and the inherent insufficiency of methods that linearize 

a complex process.

The case studies of the American experiences in Vietnam and Iraq illustrate the concepts of operational approaches to defeat hybrid threats with 

varying levels of success and adaptation. Each case study describes the threat, 

the nature of tactical actions and strategic objectives in the environment 

of hybrid warfare, and the operational approach which sought to broadly 

arrange them. The consequent analysis focuses on the effectiveness of the 

operational approach, with consideration of the cultural context, historical 

background, and grievances that led to the conflict and its termination. 

The monograph’s conclusion presents explanatory fundamentals to counter 

future hybrid threats based on the analysis of hybrid warfare and operational 

art theory, and the two case studies. Finally, it culminates with a brief assessment of the Unified Land Operations doctrine’s ability to address hybrid 

threats with these fundamentals in mind.
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Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

2. The Nature of Hybrid Warfare: Built 

to Last

The Western discussion of hybrid threats and hybrid warfare spiked 

dramatically as the first analyses of Hezbollah emerged from Lebanon 

in 2006. The first widely publicized use of the term hybrid warfare for a military audience pre-dates that campaign in Lebanon, a speech by Lieutenant 

General James Mattis on 8 September 2005, which he quickly followed with 

an article in Proceedings.

24 There is an inherent tension between developing clean-cut distinctions among complex forms of warfare while retaining an appreciation of the whole phenomenon.25 However, if the U.S. Army 

seeks operational approaches to counter a hybrid threat, then it requires a 

rich understanding of hybrid warfare’s nuances as a point of departure for 

each incident. The following discussion deconstructs the ongoing scholarly 

debate in order to build context and examine hybrid warfare’s physical and 

cognitive elements, its historical trends, and the reasons that an adversary 

develops a hybrid nature.

The Insufficiency of Symmetry and Statehood

The genesis of the current debate in hybrid warfare stems from an insufficient military vocabulary to describe these observed phenomena. After an 

intense focus on large-scale conventional conflicts during the Cold War, with 

episodic foci on irregular conflicts, the insufficiency of describing warfare in 

terms of symmetric and asymmetric enterprises surfaced. There are inherent 

limitations in characterizing any form of warfare as symmetric since a perceptive enemy will choose to strike at vulnerabilities instead of at strengths.26

Although this is a key concept in most traditional Eastern theories of warfare, the Western military discussion of asymmetry advanced significantly 

with works such as Robert Leonhard’s The Art of Maneuver.

27 Leonhard 

illustrates that even conventional attacks are inherently asymmetric when 

they seek to defeat an enemy system by attacking them in advantageous 

mediums with dissimilar means.28 Presenting the evolving appreciation for 

hybrid threats through the lens of symmetry can create awkward connotations, such as the current term “High-End Asymmetric Threat.”29
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Concurrently, the ongoing contraction of many domains is exposing the 

insufficient method of categorizing hybrid threats as state and non-state 

actors.30 This simplistic categorization may lead to a superficial appreciation for their organizations, relationships, and social contexts. This is also a 

problematic binary choice when a hybrid threat develops in an area with no 

Westphalian notion of effective central governance.31 In some instances, it 

may provide most of the security and social services that Western analysts 

normally associate with a state actor.32 The lack of statehood or even statesponsorship does not equate to a lack of effective organization and preparation for warfare. State sponsorship is simply a fact of life, another aspect of 

the strategic context rather than a requisite for a hybrid threat. The hybrid 

threat will seek to optimize their efficacy with or without it.33 Alternatively, 

characterizing hybrid threats as categorically non-state actors in a global 

insurgency without an organizing function has two fundamental shortcomings. With respect to the model itself, an insurgency assumes that the threat 

is acting to overthrow, replace, or obviate the established government in 

a given region or society. It is a tenuous claim to argue that the social and 

economic reach of Western states constitutes an effective central government 

beyond their shores or direct military control, whether it is real or virtual.34

Secondly, there is ample evidence that adversaries can organize across the 

traditional state boundaries in multiple domains, with coordinated planning, 

recruiting, funding, and arming that can result in an “undeniable strategic 

coherence” instead of simply a mutually beneficial convergence of aims.35

Furthermore, symmetry and statehood are only descriptive in nature, 

and an effective operational approach requires the explanatory foundation 

of a threat’s unifying logic. With the conceptual limits of a definition rooted 

in symmetry and statehood in mind, hybrid warfare is then violent conflict 

utilizing a complex and adaptive organization of regular and irregular forces, 

means, and behavior across multiple domains to achieve a synergistic effect 

which seeks to exhaust a superior military force indirectly.

36 This avoids characterizing hybrid warfare as asymmetric since that is not a distinguishing 

characteristic from other forms of warfare, and it does not typify a hybrid 

threat within a particular level of recognized governance since that does not 

inherently alter the form of warfare it can employ. Hybrid warfare is a mix of 

cognitive and physical elements, which adversaries employ to assert relative 

advantages in spite of their comparatively limited means. These dimensions 
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differentiate hybrid warfare from strictly conventional or unconventional 

endeavors.

Competing Models of Mixed Forms of Warfare

Theorists describe these functional aspects of hybrid warfare with a variety 

of models and metaphors. As with any attempt to describe a varied and 

amorphous spectacle, each attempt to codify hybrid warfare takes on a focus 

and implication of its own. Several nuanced themes emerge that go much 

deeper than a simplified view which casts hybrid warfare as an anomaly 

where we see “militaries playing down” and “guerrillas and terrorists playing 

up.”37 These models in the current debate include unrestricted warfare, compound warfare, fourth generation warfare, and hybrid warfare. To understand hybrid warfare and develop a context for operational approaches to 

defeat them, it is instructive to examine each model on its own merits and 

applicability.

Unrestricted Warfare: Combinations in Multiple Domains

In 1999, Chinese Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui authored the essay 

Unrestricted Warfare which presents their concept of war without limits.38

In response to an unbalanced strategic climate with fungible international 

rules, they describe a mode of warfare “which transcends all boundaries 

and limits, in short: unrestricted warfare.”39 Instead of solely seeking largescale conventional war, which suits a powerful state’s core competencies 

and means, they contend that the approach of the future will be an active 

decision to build the weapons or capabilities to fit the war.40

The essence of unrestricted warfare is that it is not limited to the physical, 

detached battlefield so the actions of war normally associated with military 

efforts will expand across other domains such as economics and material 

resources, religion, culture, the environment, and information networks.41

To break through these conventional limits of war, and the conception of 

multiple domains as detached and distinct entities, the authors suggest several methods: supra-national combinations of state and non-state actors, 

supra-domain combinations using platforms to attack across the spectrum 

of conflict, and supra-tier combinations to allow tactical units and smallscale means to achieve direct strategic effects.42 Their principles to guide 

these methods include omni-directionality, synchrony, limited objectives, 
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unlimited measures, asymmetry, minimal consumption, multidimensional 

coordination, adjustment, and control.43

Significantly, the authors did not assert that unrestricted warfare implies 

a chaotic implementation or an uncoupling from national strategic aims. 

Since Unrestricted Warfare examines strategic concepts, the authors do not 

examine the implementation of their theorized form of warfare on a practical level. The concepts of supra-domain methods and principle of omnidirectionality are useful to understand hybrid threat behavior, but the model 

of unrestricted warfare does not specifically address the synergistic effect of 

hybrid warfare. While these methods may create simultaneous effects across 

multiple dimensions, they do not describe a function to link single successes 

to the broader strategic aims. 

Compound Warfare: Unifying Distinct Forms

The simultaneous use of a regular or main force and an irregular guerrilla 

force against an enemy is described in the model of compound warfare.44 The 

benefit of this combination is that it presumably pressures an enemy to both 

mass and disperse simultaneously, using both forces in a complimentary 

fashion in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.45 The main 

forces in compound war will often seek to fortify themselves from definitive destruction with a safe haven or a major power ally.46 The strength of 

the compound warfare model is that it accurately explains several familiar 

conflicts such as the American Revolution and the Peninsular War.47

Compound warfare’s contribution to the evolution of hybrid warfare 

theory is that it describes a unified command of distinct forms of warfare, 

and the benefit of employing those forces. However, the compound warfare 

model describes two distinct forces on separate battlefields, only unified 

physically by support to one another and the scope of the conflict. Additionally, these subcomponents are either regular conventional or irregular 

guerrilla forces, without an inherent ability to adapt into different forms of 

warfare.48 Compound warfare has great utility in describing most conflicts, 

with hybrid warfare theory describing a subset of compound warfare in 

which the regular and irregular forces achieve a synergistic effect.49 Consequently, there is a limited ability to analyze some conflicts through the lens 

of compound warfare. One example is Vietnam, where the hybrid threat 
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could promote subversive agrarian reforms one day and then mass for a 

conventional attack the next. 

Fourth Generation Warfare: Protracting the Conflict for 

Benefit

The notion of hybrid warfare illustrating a fourth generation of warfare is 

deceptive. This model does not directly describe a combination of multiple 

forms of warfare, rather the emergence of a wholly new style of warfare.50

Thomas X. Hammes’ The Sling and the Stone provides the deepest analysis of 

this model, in which he asserts that this new generation of warfare uses all 

available networks to convince an enemy’s strategic and political decisionmakers that protracting a conflict is too costly.51 In this model, tectonic shifts 

in the landscape of society resound in the ways in which states fundamentally conduct war. However, by describing these shifts as distinct changes 

instead of a continuum, it does not address this fourth generation of warfare 

in earlier eras, such as insurgency in French and British colonies or T.E. 

Lawrence’s campaigns. As such, some analysts take issue with this concept.52

In his conclusion, Hammes allows that fourth generation warfare represents 

an evolved form of insurgent tactics writ large.53 Nevertheless, the critical 

insight from Fourth Generation Warfare is that deliberately protracting a 

conflict can aid a politically and militarily weaker opponent. This is important to the overall appreciation for irregular warfare, as is the opportunity 

for hybrid threats to exploit this opportunity.

Existing Hybrid Warfare Theory: The Deliberate Synergistic 

Effect

After the 2006 conflict in Lebanon, a cavalcade of literature on hybrid warfare and threats emerged. Some of these offered definitions of hybrid warfare 

that now seem almost singularly custom-fit to Hezbollah’s operations in 

Lebanon: “[h]ighly disciplined, well trained, distributed cells can contest 

modern conventional forces with an admixture of guerrilla tactics and technology in densely packed urban centers.”54 The most complete treatments on 

the subject include Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars by 

concept developer Frank Hoffman in 2007, The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and 

the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy by Stephen 

Biddle and Jeffrey Freidman in 2008, and the compendium Hybrid Warfare 
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and Transnational Threats: Perspectives for an Era of Persistent Conflict published by the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs in 2011. While 

these studies focus much of their analysis on the implications for defense 

apportionment and possible adaptations for the military, they provide a firm 

foundation for understanding hybrid warfare.

A critical insight from Biddle and Freidman is that there are several elements common to both conventional and guerrilla warfare. These include 

the use of delaying actions, harassing fires, concealment, dispersion, and 

strategic intents pursued via armed coercion.55 Within this strategic intent 

lies a common underlying theme:

... the actors’ strategic logic does not cleanly distinguish “guerrilla” 

from “conventional,” and “asymmetry” is properly regarded as a 

feature of almost all strategy rather than as a meaningful distinction between irregular and “regular” warfare.56

In this sense, conventional warfare and guerrilla warfare combine their 

inherently asymmetric approaches along a continuum, instead of in discrete 

alternatives for action.57 Hoffman’s succinct contention is similar; that hybrid 

warfare represents a deliberate synergy of approaches to target a conventionally capable force’s vulnerabilities.58

Writings on hybrid warfare tend to describe the phenomenon in both 

physical and cognitive terms. In general, analysts describe both the threat 

itself and its means in physical terms immediately following the conflict 

in Lebanon, with descriptions of the cognitive qualities of hybrid warfare 

emerging later. Owing to the spectacular and unforeseen success of Hezbollah against the IDF, there was a natural tendency to focus on the effectiveness 

of high-tech equipment in the hands of an irregular force such as man-portable surface-to-air missiles, encrypted communications sets, purpose-built 

explosive devices, and anti-ship weapons.59 Further analysis broadened the 

scope of hybrid warfare methods, and with it came the qualitative cognitive 

characteristics of organizational adaptation, command and control methods, 

and the synergistic effect of variation.60

Hoffman’s earlier pieces on hybrid threats claimed that today’s threats 

are more lethal so historical case studies may not be applicable.61 However, 

his later published works, such as Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of 

Hybrid Wars, delve heavily into historical precedents as both a critique of 

other models and as evidence for his conclusions. Although the ever-evolving 
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nature of warfare in general means that historical precedents will not fit 

neatly into our conceptions of present observations, it may be most accurate 

to describe hybrid warfare as simply part of the broader emerging trend of 

converging forms of warfare and behaviors.62

Hybrid warfare theory also sheds light on the reasons for which an adversary employs this form and behavior. Mattis’ 2005 article asserts that the 

conventional overmatch of a superior military force creates a compelling 

logic for adversaries “to move out of the traditional mode of war and seek 

some niche capability or some unexpected combination of technology and 

tactics to gain an advantage.”63 Overwhelming military might dissuades them 

from fighting with strictly conventional means, and this relative advantage 

which Mattis highlights is critical since large militaries generally take longer 

to adapt and innovate due to their hierarchical organization.64 Additionally, 

adversaries may choose to wage hybrid warfare since it lends itself to conduct 

amongst the population. This aids them in protracting conflict, which favors 

them in the absence of the overwhelming military end strength and capital 

that an opposing state may not be able to leverage in the conflict.65

U.S. Army Doctrine: A Threat-based Focus 

With an institutional lack of joint force doctrine regarding hybrid warfare, 

the Army’s current and emerging doctrinal publications illustrate a developing appreciation for the nature of hybrid warfare.66 The army’s logical 

construct for operations, Army Doctrinal Publication 3-0: Unified Land Operations, characterizes a hybrid threat as the most likely opponent. It defines it 

as “the diverse and dynamic combination of regular forces, irregular forces, 

and/or criminal elements all unified to achieve mutually benefitting effects.” 

It further describes the hybrid threat as incorporating high-end capabilities 

traditionally associated with nation-states to exploit vulnerabilities and erode 

political commitment. In an acknowledgement of the ability to protract war 

in these circumstances, the threat will seek to wage war in more battle space 

and population than U.S. forces can directly control.67

Training Circular 7-100: Hybrid Threat provides the baseline model of 

enemy forces for combat training within the army. It defines and describes 

hybrid warfare in much the same manner as Unified Land Operations, with a 

deeper description of the force structure and behavior of hybrid threats. This 

manual describes an enemy’s ability to achieve simultaneous effects instead 
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of synergistic effects, which is more than an insignificant choice of terms.68

In the discussion of hybrid threat concepts, it astutely states that opponents 

have difficulty isolating specific challenges within the environment, that 

protracted conflict favors the hybrid threat, and that the most challenging aspect may be the threat’s ability to rapidly adapt and transition.69 The 

discussion of hybrid threat components focuses on the nature of groups 

that combine, associate, or affiliate in an attempt to degrade and exhaust 

U.S. forces rather than cause a direct military defeat.70 However, with much 

of the army currently training or conducting security force assistance and 

counterinsurgency operations, it remains to be seen how much of this model 

will take root in the force beyond the Army’s combined training centers.

Summary: Understanding the Large Gray Spaces

This study’s definition of hybrid warfare as violent conflict utilizing a complex and adaptive organization of regular and irregular forces, means, and 

behavior across multiple domains to achieve a synergistic effect which seeks 

to exhaust a superior military force indirectly grows from an assemblage 

of several different conceptualizations of hybrid warfare. First, from unrestricted warfare’s tenets it incorporates omni-directional attacks across 

domains and the combination of means. Unrestricted warfare also describes 

the ability to develop capabilities to suit the environment and balance of 

power, which is a key component of a hybrid threat’s adaptive nature and 

organization. From compound wars, it includes the cognitive tension created 

in simultaneously dispersing and massing forces to counter a hybrid threat, 

and the notion of nonlinear effects in combining different components. From 

fourth generation warfare, it integrates the evolving loss of states’ monopolies 

on violence and the effects of protracted conflict. This is particularly useful 

in understanding a hybrid threat’s aim of cognitively exhausting an enemy’s 

political will to continue the conflict while physically exhausting an enemy’s 

military combat capability.71 Finally, from the existing concepts of hybrid 

warfare, it retains the central themes of a deliberate synergistic effect, the 

concept of forms of warfare in a continuum, and the rapid organizational 

adaptation of hybrid threats.

Without a strict set of classifications or bounds, this study’s definition of 

hybrid warfare deliberately lends itself to a continuum rather than categorizations. If theory is to be useful, it must be abstract enough to account for a 
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variety of situations yet specific enough to describe a definitive phenomenon 

with accuracy.72 There are many different competing theories and models 

which explain hybrid warfare, but as Hoffman states:

[i]f at the end of the day we drop the ‘hybrid’ term and simply 

gain a better understanding of the large gray space between 

our idealized bins and pristine Western categorizations, we 

will have made progress. If we educate ourselves about how to 

better prepare for that messy gray phenomenon and avoid the 

Groznys, Mogadishus and Bint Jbeils of our future, we will have 

taken great strides forward.73

This contention drives the following analysis of operational art. Existing hybrid warfare theory aptly demonstrates both the nascent nature of 

this form of conflict, as well as its utility against militarily superior forces. 

Specifically, this is done with the synergistic combination of irregular and 

regular qualities in protracted warfare to exhaust the superior force. Hybrid 

threats will emerge, and will be conceptually built to last. It may be impossible to completely avoid the Groznys, Mogadishus, and Bint J’beils of the 

future via preparation or strategic adroitness, so there must be an adequate 

model to guide unified action against a hybrid threat.

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3. The Nature of Operational Art: Built 

to Outlast

Operational art is “the pursuit of strategic objectives, in whole or in 

part, through the arrangement of tactical actions in time, space, and 

purpose.”74 It creates a pathway to conflict termination in the absence of a 

singular decisive battle; this pathway is commonly known as a campaign.75

Since operational art is a pursuit of strategic objectives instead of the fulfillment of strategic objectives, it implies that campaigns continue via positions 

of relative advantage instead of culminating and re-starting in an iterative 

process.

Operational art exhibits the inherent cognitive tension between tactics 

and strategy since the mechanical context of tactical activity blends with 

the abstract context of strategic thinking. Therefore, it requires a new mode 

of discourse beyond tactical and strategic thinking.76 Challenges with the 

implementation of operational art illustrate this tension. When operations 

quickly arrange tactical actions in terms of purpose but are slow to implement them in terms of temporal and spatial arrangements, they may gain 

no relative advantage.77 In terms of cognitive and physical aspects, the challenges and apparent differences in the strategic, operational, and tactical 

activities in war may lead to their stratification in many doctrinal models 

for warfare. Proper doctrine should link all three through the conduit of 

operational art.78 The hierarchical separation of a continuum of three levels 

of war is a helpful but artificial system, which doctrinaires construct to 

nest concepts in war.79 While arranging tactical actions, operational art 

must provide a conduit to incorporate the impact on strategic context, lest 

decision-makers become disconnected sponsors of war.80

The Characteristics of Operational Art: Blending Grammars

Operational art must consider the conflict’s environmental context in order 

to provide this conduit between tactical actions and strategic aims. In this, 

several elements of Western and Eastern thought manifest themselves. A 

Western approach sets up an ideal form (an eidos) which translates directly 

to a goal (a telos), and then seeks action to make this a reality. This goal 

constitutes a theory for action, which is put into practice. As such, theory 
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and practice are for all intents coupled into theory-practice. However, this 

theory-practice by itself is insufficient since warfare is an activity that lives 

and reacts.81 An Eastern approach relies on the inherent potential of a situation, instead of projecting a plan borne strictly of theory-practice. It is an 

attempt to use the situational context to gain a relative advantage through 

its inherent propensity.82 Operational art illustrates this notion in its elements of “setting conditions” and “shaping operations.”83 This has particular 

importance concerning hybrid threats, since these threats tend to destabilize 

familiar forms and contexts for a military force.84

An operational approach is the cognitive method of arranging tactical 

actions in time, space, and purpose in pursuit of strategic aims; it is the application of the elements of operational art within a specific context. Culture 

exerts a great influence on the cognitive methods initially available to fuse 

tactics and strategy. A military’s organizational doctrine, shared experiences, 

capabilities, and constraints combine to provide a starting point for operational art. Efforts to understand the environment and provide a rich frame 

for problem solving can assist operational planners in developing approaches 

that are refined for a specific context. Antulio J. Echevarria describes this 

with the metaphor of grammar when he examines the U.S. Army’s struggle 

to adapt familiar conventional operational approaches to counterinsurgency 

efforts after decades of a focus on conventional warfare. He describes the two 

forms of warfare as having the same logic but distinct grammars, with the 

contemporary nature of warfare requiring the mastery of both grammars.85

It follows that hybrid warfare requires the blending of both grammars.

The Theoretical Lineage of Operational Art

To understand when operational art began as a method to fuse tactical action 

and strategic aims, it requires an examination of when operational maneuver 

began. The Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century showed the first hints 

of operational maneuver, and the art and science requisite to employ it, but 

movement was still the means to arrive on a set battlefield in a position of 

advantage.86 This was a result of the dominant theories of warfare at a time, 

which focused on the concept of a concentrated force defeating a larger 

dispersed force to achieve a decisive victory. However, these wars showed 

the utility of commanding distributed forces and arranging the continuous actions of a campaign in space and time.87 The increased accuracy and 
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lethality of direct fire weapons during the 19th century atomized the battlefield, and the expansion of railroads and telegraph links enabled both largescale transport and communication over long distances. The effects of these 

technological advances were evident in the American Civil War, which was 

arguably the first comprehensive use of operational art. Dispersed elements 

could now fight in synchrony over great distances, requiring commanders 

to arrange their actions in time, space, and purpose.88

On the heels of the Napoleonic era, Prussian officer and educator Carl 

von Clausewitz labored to complete a comprehensive theory of war in relation to policy, and its resulting implementation in warfare.89 In a departure 

from the Enlightenment era military theories of the time that contained 

fixed values and prescriptive principles for winning wars, he focuses on the 

inherent uncertainty in war. Because he sees decisive victory as a function 

of strategy, tactical battles alone could not achieve victory for an army in 

the field.90 Within On War, Clausewitz’s description of the nonlinear aspect 

of warfare and his Center of Gravity construct shape much of the modern 

conceptions of operational art.

Although On War predates most of the mathematical concepts of nonlinearity by more than a century, Clausewitz’s description of the friction of 

war shows an intuitive sense of this phenomenon. The friction of war illustrates the small details in warfare that have macroscopic effects, leading to 

a cumulative unpredictability due to their interconnected relationships.91

Clausewitz rejects the clockwork nature of his contemporary military doctrines because they failed to address the cumulative effects of the dynamic 

processes, feedbacks, and friction that the Enlightenment’s linear systems 

professed. Therefore, distributed command models such as Aufstragtaktik

and mission command are logical responses, since they distribute uncertainty and allow smaller forces to make adjustments within their local context.92 Clausewitz’s other chief contribution to operational art is the Center of 

Gravity construct. He describes the Center of Gravity as “the hub of all power 

and movement, on which everything depends,” and striking it theoretically 

leads to decisive victory.93 Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity refers less to the 

physical concentration of strength, and more to the forces that concentrate 

it. Furthermore, his Center of Gravity model is a complex phenomenon that 

relies on the relationship between both belligerents. Much like the spatial 

movement of the center of gravity of two grapplers as they struggle for a 

dominant position, a Clausewitzian Center of Gravity displays cognitive 
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movement as both sides maneuver in battle. As a result, it is paramount to 

identify the unifying force in an adversary’s system within the context that 

leads to its construction, and understand one’s own impact on this system 

and the environment.94 These aspects of the Center of Gravity are critical 

in operational approaches to defeat hybrid threats since they avail the possibility to define and strike ideological, political, and economic sources.95

Another intellectual ancestor of current operational art is the theory of 

Deep Battle, developed through the works of Soviet theorists such as A.A. 

Svechin, M.N. Tukhachevsky, and G.S. Isserson after World War I.96 In an 

effort to restore mobility and operational maneuver to the battlefield, Deep 

Battle sought to break the physically linear aspect of an enemy front with 

simultaneity and depth in a focused area.97 Isserson’s theories also build on 

Clausewitz’s concept of culmination, and the attempt to attain objectives 

before exhausting combat power.98 This takes advantage of the continued 

spatial growth of the physical battlefield, as well as the increased mobility for 

motorized and mechanized forces. Deep Battle and the experience of World 

War II illustrates the need to integrate operational art in separate domains.99

As a result, mass and maneuver became unifying concepts to arrange tactical 

actions in operational art. The U.S. Army’s AirLand Battle doctrine furthered 

this trend of abstraction and integration, describing a unifying concept of 

securing or retaining the initiative in order to apply combat power.100

Maintaining the initiative through relative advantages provides the central theme for current U.S. Army doctrine, organized in the model of Unified 

Land Operations. This model organizes the enduring concepts that describe 

a land force which seizes, retains, and exploits the initiative in order to set 

the conditions favorable for conflict resolution and termination.101 These 

efforts are executed through decisive action, by the means of combined arms 

maneuver (CAM) and wide area security (WAS), and guided by mission 

command. Decisive action illustrates that forces employ simultaneous combinations of offensive, defensive, and support operations. CAM and WAS 

provide the twin means to apply combat power to these combinations. The 

two are complementary; CAM provides the means to seize and exploit the 

initiative whereas WAS provides the means to retain the initiative. Both are 

cognitive approaches that are not meant to be employed in isolation.102 To 

adapt Echevarria’s metaphor of logic and grammar, maneuver is the logic 

that connects the distinct but complimentary grammars of CAM and WAS. 

In Unified Land Operations, operational art provides the cognitive links in 
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this structure, serving as the conduit between tactical actions and strategic 

aims. It stresses the importance of context for operational art, stating that 

it requires commanders who “continually seek to expand and refine their 

understanding and are not bound by preconceived notions of solutions.”103

Operational Art and the Nature of Warfare

The evolution of operational art highlights the development of the battlefield 

from one with linear arrangements of time, space, and purpose, to a more 

fluid and dynamic environment. Although an observer would have little 

difficulty noting the different environments of a Napoleonic battlefield and 

southern Lebanon in 2006, practitioners of operational art must take special 

care with the subtle difference between complicated warfare and complex 

warfare. Complicated systems may have a dizzying multitude of one-to-one 

relationships, but they display linear phenomena such as additivity, which 

allows modeling and prediction. Complex systems with interconnected relationships do not obey the principle of additivity, so two nearly identical 

initial conditions can result in vastly different outcomes.104 Several aspects 

of operational art must be examined though the lens of complexity due to 

the friction of war and its inherent instability.105

First, technical superiority is not a substitute for a sound operational 

approach. A metaphoric silver bullet may lend a measurable and absolute 

advantage in a linear system, such as the use of the longbow at Crecy. However, this only lends a relative advantage in a complex system, which may 

be negligible.106 The complexity of modern warfare also tends to marginalize the capabilities of over-centralized command and control networks. 

Too many interconnections may be a hindrance if units lose their ability 

to act independently.107 By providing focus through a clear and common 

aim, operational art can arrange the purpose of tactical actions without 

this tether to a central node. Secondly, the approach of attrition warfare has 

its limitations in a complex environment. Much like the effect of technical 

superiority, the assumption that a specific amount of additional combat 

power will result in a commensurate amount of enemy casualties assumes 

a constant, linear ratio.108 An operational approach cannot simply increase 

friendly combat power or protect against an enemy’s capability, nor can it 

solely fixate on linear measures of effectiveness such as body counts or the 

spatial range of essential services.
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Summary: The Operational Approach

The characteristics and history of operational art illustrate that stability and 

adaptability are not antithetical in doctrine. In order to ensure a shared orientation of forces, the doctrine of operational art provides a stable framework 

and a common lexicon. An operational approach is the adapted implementation of this doctrine, when it is set contextually to fuse tactical actions 

and strategic aims. Due to the complex nature of warfare, an operational 

approach must evolve with the uncertain and changing nature of warfare.109

Unless an army fights the same war in succession or the nature of warfare is 

unchanging, linear prescriptive theories generally do not win wars on their 

own merits. Conversely, the pragmatic application of broad fundamentals 

may enable success.

However, this application of broad fundamentals must pursue a continual strategic advantage instead of collection of sporadic victories.110

Hybrid threats will undoubtedly form with the intent of being built to last, 

as described in the preceding chapter. As the following case studies illustrate, an operational approach with a myopic view of the end state may not 

adequately defeat or obviate a hybrid threat. This aspect of operational planning, providing for continuation rather than culmination, should engender 

an operational approach to hybrid warfare which is built to outlast.

The operational approach describes “the gap” between the observed state 

and the desired end state in a conflict of hybrid warfare.111 In its barest theoretical form, applying operational art should be the same action every time: 

the pursuit of an objective through the arrangement of tactical actions. But 

historical analyses of Vietnam and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) shed light 

on the peculiarities of this action, since the form and function of the strategic objective, tactical actions, the opposing forces, and the environment all 

change dramatically with each application. That is why this study focuses on 

an operational approach—the broad and episodic adaptation of operational 

art doctrine in a specific context. On the path to explanatory fundamentals, 

these case studies provide context to the preceding abstractions on hybrid 

warfare and operational art.
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4. The American Experience in Vietnam: 

The Bull and the Toreador

The U.S. fought the war as a bull fights the toreador’s cape, not the 

toreador himself.

- Norman B. Hannah, The Key to Failure: Laos and the Vietnam War

Against the backdrop of the Cold War, some regional conflicts gave rise 

to hybrid threats as subversions turned into increasingly violent propositions. In Indochina, Communist forces protracted the conflict and enticed 

the combined American and Vietnamese effort to adopt a security-oriented 

approach. Much like the bull in a bullfight, the American effort did not fall 

prey to the object of its focus. It fell to the unknown force behind the cape 

after succumbing to exhaustion. 

The Context of Conflict in Vietnam

The Vietnam War is difficult to place in a historical context owing to the 

nature of the conflict itself.112 American leaders, and to some extent the government of South Vietnam itself, fundamentally misread the conflict in 

terms of military security while the Communist forces cast it as a complete 

social revolution.113 Beyond a competition in governments, the conflict displayed several schisms which led to grievances along urban-agrarian social 

fault lines, colonial and nationalist tensions, and even traces of religious 

conflict as the French-empowered Catholic minority gravitated toward the 

regime in Saigon.

Terrain and demographics also conspired to make this a demanding 

environment for conflict. Roughly the size of Florida with 1,500 miles of 

coastline, South Vietnam (SVN) rapidly transitions from an open coast 

to a rugged central highlands with peaks up to 8,000 feet.114 The distances 

between the coast and borders with Laos and Cambodia are only 30 to 100 

miles, providing effective and varied infiltration routes towards the prized 

coastal cities. While these central highlands are sparsely populated, Saigon 

dominates the fertile Mekong Delta region to the south.115 Census data from 

1960 reveals the ethnic and religious divisions in the country. Of an estimated population of 15 million, tribal minorities in the central highlands 
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such as the Montagnards accounted for roughly 1 million citizens, with a 

remaining 15 percent minority of Khmer (Cambodian) and Chinese.116 Religiously, 12 million self-identified as Buddhists compared to 2 million Catholics and small minority communities of Cao Dai and Hoa Hao adherents 

from the remote regions of the Mekong Delta.117

Historically, Vietnam had French colonial administration and nominal rule from the 19th century until the Japanese swiftly destroyed French 

presence in 1944.118 The Viet Minh began as a resistance force to Japanese 

occupation, supported by both Chinese nationalist advisors and American 

Office of Strategic Studies teams.119 This endowed them with considerable 

Figure 1. South Viet-Nam, 1965
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experience and organizational structure, which prepared them for the political chaos ensuing Japan’s surrender in 1945. Chinese, British and American 

advisors, liberated French prisoners of war, and the Viet Minh all struggled 

to establish effective governance in Vietnam.120 The Vietnamese held an 

ingrained distinction between northern and southern societies, but the 

emerging paradigm in the re-established French colonial administration 

resembled an urban-rural division for the first time.121 After nearly a decade 

of counterinsurgency, French airborne units established a lodgment in order 

to extend their operational reach into Laos and interdict key Viet Minh

routes. In what would come to be known as the siege of Dien Bien Phu, Viet 

Minh forces defeated the French garrison and prompted the eventual transition to Vietnamese rule.122

By 1954, the United States had already begun to send military assistance directly to the provisional governments in Indochina rather than the 

remaining French apparatus. This support was formalized in the Military 

Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), which utilized a Korean War model 

to equip and train conventional units in an assembly-line fashion.123 And by 

1960, it was apparent that this model was insufficient to meet the threat of 

hyper-organized communist subversion and terrorism. Assassinations and 

targeted killings rose to over 4,000, and massed troops infiltrated to Kontum 

and other ill-equipped army garrisons.124 In 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

superseded MAAG with an expanded mission to coordinate all American 

security activities within SVN, the Military Assistance Command - Vietnam 

(MACV).

Early American efforts to address security and pacification include the 

failed Strategic Hamlet program,125 expanded advisory efforts,126 and prompting the Diem regime in Saigon to invest in paramilitary Territorial Forces.127

Intelligence estimates and local leaders’ intuition in 1964 indicated that some 

areas were transitioning to a phase of mobile warfare, prompting a presidential decision to enlarge MACV’s force by 44 battalions in 1965.128 It was 

in this new phase of operations that MACV would need to arrange tactical 

actions and unifying themes in SVN to pursue the strategic aim of creating 

a secure, western-aligned state.
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The Hybrid Threat in Vietnam: Dau Tranh

The hybrid threat in SVN was an admixture of regular and irregular modes. 

Although certain facets of the threat appeared uniform in nature, the overall 

organization was both complex and adaptive. Furthermore, it displayed an 

amalgam of regular and irregular forces, means, and behaviors.129

Communist forces were a complex organization, since the sum of their 

component elements achieved far greater effects than a simple linear aggregate of combat power. This is a reflection of their concept of victory: a decisive superiority in the balance of forces for a given area. This balance of forces 

referred to a ratio of resultant political power, not military capability.130 In 

one sense, this purposeful organization mattered as much as tactics and 

ideology, since the aim was neither the defeat of the Army of the Republic of 

Vietnam (ARVN) nor the occupation of territory. The aim was an organization in depth of the population, a victory by both organizational method and 

means.131 The National Liberation Front (NLF) had southern Communist 

forces of the Viet Cong (VC) that functioned as self-sufficient elements for 

subversion and limited security actions, whereas North Vietnamese Army 

(NVA) elements in SVN exhibited a more traditional hierarchical structure 

and method.132 Originally, the NLF incorporated many nationalist nonCommunist groups, but these groups’ influence waned as the Democratic 

Republic of Vietnam (DRV) gained influence and overt guidance. The Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN) embodied this degree of control 

linked to Hanoi.133

The threat organization was also adaptive, illustrated in Giap’s application of the dau tranh theory of warfare. This theory, based on the three 

stages in a Maoist model of warfare, allowed forces to gradually develop 

and adapt in a protracted struggle based on local conditions.134 Communist 

forces were inherently local and decentralized, whereas the Government of 

South Vietnam (GVN) forces were district-minded and rigidly centralized. 

This allowed Communist forces to raise recruits and money through both 

attractive and coercive policies at the local level, since they viewed the village leaders as the critical link between the people and the party.135 Although 

there was always a degree of political and social tension between COSVN 

and the NLF, Vietnamese military history now confirms that many times VC 

forces came under direct COSVN operational control and leadership when 
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it was prudent, allowing these forces to adapt during transitions between 

the phases of warfare.136

This ability to mix regular and irregular forces was in line with our 

description of a hybrid threat, instead of a model of compound warfare with 

spatially distinct forces. COSVN had a specific charter to act as a holistic 

command for the effort in SVN, even if the NLF forces deliberately did not 

place themselves under a strict command-supported relationship. One useful 

way to view the operational relationship of the DRV’s influence and regular 

forces to the NLF’s influence and irregular forces is through metaphor: a 

father and son relationship where the father seeks long-term growth for 

his son, but maintains an ability to intervene with an assumed authority.137

This was not a simple proposition of the VC’s guerrilla forces supporting 

the NVA’s main forces, as one would expect in a strictly compound warfare 

model. In some cases these roles reversed, with the NVA devolving into 

local forces.138 Meanwhile, the VC could combine main force units, guerrillas, or local scouts as required, simultaneously acting as a reserve and 

support function for main force actions.139 The effect of this mix was that 

Communist forces could support both forces simultaneously.140 For example, 

captured enemy documents describe the melding of these forces in “threefront” attacks that closely coordinated local and main force units for the 1969 

counter-offensive to reverse the losses of the previous year.141

Communist forces also employed a mixture of regular and irregular 

means in the fight, illustrated by Giap’s claim that “[s]ophisticated [surfaceto-air] missiles were used alongside primitive weapons.”142 This was especially prevalent in their adaptation of indirect firepower. In a period of six 

months, the NVA refined techniques to attack air bases and other fixed 

sites with improvised rocket attacks.143 Even early in the American involvement, ARVN advisors noted the VC’s judicious and accurate use of mortar 

systems designed to support infantry advances.144 To manage the incorporation of modern weaponry in irregular units, COSVN integrated key 

technical experts into the NLF and VC, most of them returning back south 

after regroupment in 1954.145 The mixing of regular and irregular means 

was not limited to offensive weaponry; it also pervaded service and support. COSVN’s integration of training and sustainment operations enabled 

larger conventional operations from safe havens in Cambodia and base areas 

within SVN itself. For the upcoming Binh Gia campaign in 1964, COSVN 

designated a specific headquarters section to develop a campaign plan. This 
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plan utilized the irregular forces to prepare logistics and medical nodes for a 

massing regular force, and supported it with two regiments and an artillery 

group of main forces.146

Far beyond a mix of forces and means, the Communist forces active in 

SVN exhibited a mix of regular and irregular behavior. Dau Tranh theory 

provided the basis for this mixture. Giap described this effort to reach a 

decisive position through political and mobile warfare as “a form of fighting 

in which principles of regular warfare gradually appear and increasingly 

develop but still bear a guerrilla character.”147

Figure 2. Dau Tranh Model148

Dau Tranh connotes an intense emotional struggle instead of a physical 

struggle, and consists of dau tranh vu trang (armed struggle) and dau tranh 

chinh tri (political struggle). This means that all actions taken in war are 
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within the scope and framework of dau tranh; it is the complete blending of 

forms of warfare.149 This achieved a requisite balance between civic action 

and military security. In practice, there was not an inherent distinction 

between the two struggles. Because the NLF formed to address 2,561 targeted 

villages instead of striving for a conventional capability like the Viet Minh, 

the VC village-level forces served as much of a psychological effect as they 

did a direct military value.150

Hybrid Warfare in Vietnam

Communist forces translated this dual effectiveness into positions of relative 

advantage across multiple domains. Although Leninist theory contended 

that armed propaganda and military strength should be inseparable and 

equal, information and influence activities took primacy in SVN.151 Tellingly, even the regular forces of the NVA traced their military lineage to 

Giap’s first Viet Minh armed propaganda team, which Ho Chi Minh saw as 

the “embryo of the National Liberation Army” in the struggle against the 

French.152 The VC envisaged this communication of ideas and narratives as a 

seamless web, with dedicated cadres enabled by local security. In turn, these 

narratives symbiotically supported local security.153 On a larger scale, Hanoi’s 

narrative of an independent NLF helped to contest the war in the diplomatic 

domain, with the seemingly independent nature of the NLF proving to be 

“an enduring thorn in the side of Western anti-Communists.”154 Concurrently, the Dich Van program specifically targeted an American audience to 

convince them that victory was impossible, in order to constrain the use of 

American military capabilities such as air power.155

Communist forces melded these efforts in the military, political, and 

diplomatic domains in search of a synergistic effect.156 But the synergistic 

effect of a hybrid threat was more evident in the employment of regular and 

irregular forces, means, and behaviors. Insurgents avoided large battles, 

and therefore took American units further away from the population in an 

attempt to locate them. Exploited documents proved that both VC and NVA 

forces were trying to keep Army units fixated on non-decisive search-anddestroy operations away from the prized population centers on the coastal 

plains.157 Meanwhile, Communist-liberated areas controlled by the NLF’s 

People’s Revolutionary Government acted as a base area for both regular and 

irregular forces. This dan van program of the larger dau tranh model added a 
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noncontiguous base area for recruitment, sustainment, and protection, which 

was only nominally detectable by military means. GVN leaders attributed 

the most successful pacification efforts as 1969-1971, after the VC’s failed Tet 

Offensive erased these base areas and decreased the resulting threat from 

Communist main force units.158

This synergistic effect supported the Communists’ overall approach in 

SVN, that of exhausting the American and ARVN forces. Based on prior 

struggles against the Japanese and French, Giap viewed war as a long-term 

endeavor which sought to exhaust the enemy’s manpower at its concentrated 

points while preserving the limited Communist manpower in SVN.159 Even 

within the Maoist model of a three-phased war, localized conditions and 

enemy disposition meant that certain regions could be in different phases 

simultaneously to defeat the enemy where it was weakest.160 The dau tranh

model is deliberately protracted, with the assumption that eventually the 

incumbent force (in this case, both the GVN and its American support) is 

seen as accountable for contributing to this protraction.161 This is evident in 

the VC slogan to promote ambush tactics, “fight a small action to achieve a 

great victory.”162 The effect of exhausting a larger force indirectly gained great 

traction, and by 1970 COSVN used the strain on American soldier morale 

as one of their three campaign objectives.163

The Operational Approach in Vietnam: A Strategy of Tactics

MACV’s pursuit of a strategic aim in Indochina reflects the restrictive effect 

that social and political constraints manifest on an operational environment. 

America’s grand policy tradition of containment easily translated into the 

narrower containment of Communist expansion in the contested areas of 

the Cold War.164 As it appeared that communism was the next great expansionist threat after fascism, it naturally appealed to check its advance rather 

than seek its appeasement. This policy approach also had very pragmatic 

tones, since Truman contended that containment would cost roughly $400 

million compared to the estimated $341 billion price tag for World War II.165

Containment of Communist expansion translated into the Domino 

Theory strategy of halting this expansion in Vietnam. This was not a stretch, 

since the Japanese expansion of World War II followed roughly the same axis 

of advance through China, Indochina, then to southeast Asia and beyond 

into the Pacific. As a theater strategy in Indochina, the basic objective 
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remained the same through all presidential administrations: preventing a 

Communist takeover of SVN. Although the commitment of forces continued 

to increase in the 1960s, it remained a limited war. Since the bombing of 

military targets in the DRV itself was not a MACV activity, they considered 

efforts to destabilize and disrupt this strategic base area and infiltration route 

as a fundamentally separate action from attrition and pacification efforts 

within SVN.166 Exacerbating this difficult strategic context was the unstable 

GVN, which impelled the political leadership to cultivate personal loyalties 

in ARVN, and thus an unstable military.167

The tactical actions in Vietnam took on a similarly disjointed characteristic, although it would be incorrect to assert that military security actions 

were completely divorced from the realities of pacification efforts. Unlike the 

dau tranh model though, they remained separate actions without a unifying 

logic. This reflected the Army’s operational art doctrine at the time MACV 

was established:

[t]he nature of the political situation at any time may require employment of armed forces in wars of limited objective. In such cases, 

the objective ordinarily will be the destruction of the aggressor 

forces and the restoration of the political territorial integrity of the 

friendly nation.168

The dissonance in this approach lies between the nature of “aggressor 

forces” since MACV visualized an idealized form of conventional warfare 

to maximize the Army’s capabilities, and the nature of “restoration of the 

political territorial integrity” since the Diem regime was only marginally 

capable of effective governance. A focus on the destruction of an elusive 

enemy, coupled with a presumed dominance in conventional warfare, led 

Westmoreland to employ an approach of attrition. This is illustrated in the 

oft-cited discussion between an American and a NVA colonel during negotiations in 1975, in which the American colonel asserted that the NVA never 

defeated them on the battlefield. The NVA colonel pondered this, and presciently responded that this was true but irrelevant.169

Westmoreland contended that these large-scale search and destroy operations were erroneously portrayed in the media as a strategy instead of a tactic, 

which is a fair assessment.170 However, he held the notion that rural areas did 

not hold intrinsic value except when the enemy was physically there, instead 

of understanding that their value lies in the ability to gird the population 
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and resources thereby denying them to the VC.171 Hence, the approaches of 

attrition and pacification were practically separate affairs for much of the 

war. MACV still saw pacification only as a corollary to military operations 

through 1967, and still discounted it in 1968 as a reason for VC village-level 

losses in rural areas. Intelligence analysts incorrectly attributed VC losses to 

the effectiveness of search-and-destroy operations, the internal displacement 

of over 2 million Vietnamese within SVN, and the VC’s transition to main 

force operations.172 Pacification was always a dominant element in policy but 

not in practice, evidenced by the low amount of American resources directly 

allocated in comparison to offensive military action.173 Just prior to the NLF’s 

Tet Offensive in January 1968, MACV established the Civil Operations and 

Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) program to weight pacification efforts. Westmoreland and former presidential advisor Robert Komer 

melded the existing Office of Civil Operations and the MACV Revolutionary 

Support Directorate into one organization.174 In the aftermath of extreme 

VC losses in the Tet Offensive, President Thieu initiated the Accelerated 

Pacification Campaign (APC) in order to exploit the opportunity afforded 

counterinsurgent forces. This was not a new concept, but an acceleration 

of resources guided by CORDS’s contentious Hamlet Evaluation System.175

The effect of the APC is that Communist forces began to rely on specific 

resources from the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the first time in the war, and the 

NLF ordered some VC forces to return to Phase I operations.176

One possible conduit to link the security line of operation and the pacification line of effort was through local security, the Territorial Forces.177

Local security formed three rings: American and ARVN forces fighting 

Communists outside of populated centers, regular forces elements fighting smaller units to keep them from infiltrating towns and villages, and 

the police units countering Communist infiltration within the villages.178

The handbook for American advisors stressed the advantages of a locally 

raised security force because they understood local political context, social 

conflicts, and terrain.179 However, local security failed to unify the logic of 

attrition and pacification due to their lack of support, and the presence of 

an American unit remained the best correlation to security, as evidenced in 

the Tet Offensive.180

Ironically, Vietnamization was the only approach which effectively unified 

attrition and pacification.181 On the heels of the APC and successful counter-offensive of 1969, President Lyndon B. Johnson deliberately countered 
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Westmoreland’s advice to launch a large-scale conventional counteroffensive, 

with Westmoreland claiming that Johnson “ignored the maxim that when 

the enemy is hurting, you don’t diminish the pressure, you increase it.”182

The nuance that Westmoreland missed was that Vietnamization sought to 

increase pressure indirectly through an improved ARVN and pacification. 

General Creighton Abrams succeeded him as the MACV commander and 

described Vietnamization as three phases: the transition of ground combat to 

ARVN, increasing their capabilities for self-defense, and reducing American 

presence to assume a strictly advisory role.183 For the first time, the effort 

in SVN oriented on protecting the population from Communist subversion rather than the destruction of the enemy force itself.184 Vietnamization sought to serve as a unifying logic for all lines of effort in SVN, but it 

ultimately failed owing to poor execution and political constraints.185 Some 

ARVN leaders recalled that the process actually looked more like the Americanization of ARVN since it integrated U.S. military equipment without an 

equal focus on doctrine, organization, or training to utilize it. When the 

American congress cut funding for ARVN advisory in response to the untenable political climate on the homefront, the psychological effect on the GVN 

and military leaders was even more deleterious than the material deficit.186

Analysis

Ultimately, these operational approaches failed to disrupt the Communists’ 

logic of violence. In the strictest of interpretations, they were not operational 

approaches at all but rather attempts to achieve strategic success through 

a cumulative effect of tactical success. Certainly political constraints influenced this, but the chief failure was the inability of MACV to defeat armed 

dau tranh and political dau tranh simultaneously. Sir Robert Thompson 

wrote in 1969 that the focus in SVN should be on creating an intelligence 

structure to defeat the VC support network. This was an attempt to break 

the unifying logic of protracted dau tranh warfare, reflected in his assertion that “[i]n a People’s Revolutionary War, if you are not winning you are 

losing, because the enemy can always sit out a stalemate without making 

concessions.”187 National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger added that “[t]

he guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does 

not win.”188 MACV fundamentally failed to disrupt this logic and actually 

bolstered it by pursuing a strategy of attrition. By engaging in disjointed 
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search and destroy missions throughout the earlier phases of the war, the 

VC were never isolated from their base of support and simply had to survive 

to win.189 MACV nominally disrupted the logic when the VC organization 

came unglued in the aftermath of the failed Tet Offensive, and the GVN 

consolidated these gains with the APC and RF improvements. Once these 

were in place, the NVA resorted to limited subversion to enable conventional 

campaigns in 1972 and 1975. This is perhaps the most ironic feature of the 

American experience in Vietnam; in that once the logic for violence was 

temporarily disrupted the enemy adapted a new logic which transitioned the 

conflict almost exclusively into regular warfare. The Communists no longer 

sought protraction, because they no longer needed American exhaustion.

The American effort also adopted an ill-suited uniform approach to 

hybrid warfare in SVN. The repetitive nature of search and destroy operations, harassment and interdiction fires, and aerial sorties seemed ideally 

suited to central statistical management.190 This appetite for analysis led to 

a fruitless effort to create an independent variable for success in a complex 

environment. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara employed over 100 

social scientists in an attempt to quantitatively model SVN on a computer 

and simulate national-level behavior, once dismissing a qualitative assessment by saying “[w]here is your data? Give me something I can put into the 

computer. Don’t give me your poetry.”191 This trend towards linearization and 

uniform solutions extended to MACV and ARVN leaders’ understanding of 

the hybrid threat. They viewed the Communist threat as already in a Maoist 

Phase III when regular U.S. troops arrived in 1965, instead of considering the 

regional aspects of the threat as parts of a whole. Westmoreland’s description 

of COSVN as a single unified command which directed the NLF also made 

it convenient to mirror image it as a conventional military headquarters.192

The overly linearized approach to separate attrition and pacification 

efforts is perhaps best understood through the metric of success, the body 

count. Aggregate Communist losses were carefully tabulated in an attempt 

to reach a conceptual crossover point at which attrition in SVN would exceed 

what the Communists could replace via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. However, 

this was an ill-framed concept since it assumed that increased forces and 

firepower would proportionately increase the body count, and that the VC 

and NVA were reliant on the DRV for resources. By 1966, VC requirements 

from outside of SVN were only 12 tons per day.193 MACV refused to acknowledge these reports from national-level assets, along with journalist Bernard 
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Fall’s 1964 observation that the VC operation inside SVN was largely selfsufficient.194 But after the Tet Offensive, MACV realized that warfare still 

had not reached a crossover point because the NVA (and the remaining VC) 

could control the tempo of fighting. Search and destroy operations were an 

inefficient way to gain and maintain contact.195 In this instance, the adaptive 

nature of the hybrid threat emerges; both COSVN and the NLF ironically 

realized that they could reach their strategic aim of exhausting the American military and public with steady attrition as they embarked on increased 

pacification operations.196 While American units considered operational efficiency to be a mixture of gross eliminations and linear ratios of “exchange” 

and “contact success,”197 a COSVN planning committee displayed a much 

better understanding of this aspect in hybrid warfare: 

While considering the situation, we should be flexible and avoid 

two erroneous inclinations. We should not adopt all principles too 

rigidly and neglect the evolution of the situation and the main, 

basic purposes of the Party; nor should we mix strategic policy 

with basic policy.198

Finally, the American effort failed to fuse tactical actions to strategic 

aims within the context that gave rise to a hybrid threat. This effort to amass 

quantitative data lacked any complimentary qualitative assessment to give it 

context, hence the actions this data prompted were in a fundamentally different frame of reference. By design, these systems were self-referential and 

therefore the context of social and political assemblages in SVN’s villagelevel struggle was completely alien to MACV.199 In appreciation of this, one 

American officer recalled that “[i]n sum, we were not able to break into 

another culture and into the communist organization.”200 Another break in 

context was rooted in the entire nature of warfare in Indochina. Communist 

leaders saw the revolutionary movement as a social progress with communal 

themes, while the GVN only saw it as a military process with nationalistic themes.201 British advisor Sir Robert Thompson recognized in 1969 that 

adding resources to the GVN’s military process instead of bolstering the 

governance and development progress was akin to “doubling the effort to 

square the error.”202 Arranging tactical actions only creates success when 

they can affect the adversary or their environment; independent search-anddestroy operations that are divorced from the context of a social and political 

struggle are the equivalent of re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
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Conclusion

The preceding analysis should not paint a picture of doom and gloom over 

the canvas of hybrid warfare in SVN. By 1970, the combined forces of MACV 

and ARVN stood at a position of relative advantage, enabled by both the 

near-complete destruction of the VC as a viable force and a strengthened 

GVN. However, this was also when COSVN realized that the protracted conflict could still prevent the Americans from achieving termination criteria 

at a position of political advantage via a military advantage in SVN.203 The 

NVA developed more regular warfare capacity for a conventional invasion, 

and increasingly used their irregular forces, means, and behaviors to enable 

this capability.204

The American military spent the post-Vietnam years institutionally wary 

of irregular warfare and counterinsurgency. If a theorist postulated the concept of hybrid warfare in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the Army may 

have institutionally avoided it as well. Then Iraq happened. As in SVN, they 

would spend years adapting and spending untold blood and treasure to fight 

a hybrid threat. This threat was like no other, and it required an operational 

approach like no other. However, in Iraq the Army would harness a more 

organizationally mature understanding of operational art, enabling this 

pathway to termination criteria at a position of advantage. In short, the Army 

would learn to charge the toreador instead of the bull.
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5. Operation Iraqi Freedom: The School 

of Piranhas

We’re not playing together. But then again, we’re not playing against 

each other either. It’s like the Nature Channel. You don’t see piranhas 

eating each other, do you? - Rounders, 1998

Much in the way history views World War II as conventional warfare, 

it views OIF as irregular warfare. Since this monograph considers 

hybrid warfare on a continuum instead of a distinct form of warfare in a 

series of discrete menu choices, the study of OIF through the lens of hybrid 

warfare may assist Hoffman’s metaphoric attempt to break the pristine bins of 

Western categorization. Fundamentally, Iraq is one of those large gray spaces 

in between existing models. The model of an insurgency-counterinsurgency 

dynamic looks to be the correct framework for analysis at first blush, but 

this largely owes to the influence of the counterinsurgency doctrine which 

informed the ultimate operational approach. As such, it is bound to shape the 

way we view it in early attempts of qualitative historical analysis. However, 

it is fundamentally insufficient to separate the ground war of 2003 and the 

following stages of insurgency, terrorism, and communal conflict in Iraq. 

Likewise, it is insufficient to completely dismiss the episodic examples of 

regular warfare, no matter how infrequent they were. They are all profoundly 

interconnected. In contrast to a model of hybrid threat organization such as 

COSVN, the elements of the hybrid threat in Iraq were only harmonized by 

a common aim. In this way, the American Army in OIF faced a threat akin 

to the school of piranhas. 

The Context of Conflict in Iraq

Modern Iraq sits astride the fault lines between religiously distinct Shi’a and 

Sunni Muslims, as well as ethnically distinct Arab, Persian, and Kurdish 

populations.205 At roughly 437,000 square kilometers, it is slightly larger than 

the state of California. The landscape is generally a vast desert, interrupted 

by fertile river valleys and rocky escarpments.206 Demographically, the prewar population of 24.6 million was roughly 60 percent Shi’a and 35 percent 

Sunni, with traces of Christian and other religious communities. Ethnically, 
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the Arab population stood at an 80 percent majority, with a Kurdish minority of 15 percent and socially isolated communities of Turkomen, Assyrians, 

and other groups.207 Consequently, most initial operational approaches were 

couched in terms of Shi’a and Sunni or Arab and Kurd models.208

American intervention in Iraq began in 1990 with Operation Desert 

Shield, followed by the ground invasion of Iraq in 1991.209 After a decade of 

patrolling no-fly zones to protect Kurdish and Shi’a populations, U.S. Deputy 

Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz made a case for a pre-emptive regime 

change in Iraq almost immediately after the al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks 

against the United States in 2001.210 The U.S. secured a nominal international backing from the United Nations and formed a coalition of limited 

Figure 3. Iraq, 2003
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partners, eventually leading a multi-divisional ground offensive in March 

2003.211 Coalition forces took measures to avoid a perception of occupation, 

but they were the only form of security allowed in most areas immediately 

after the ground campaign culminated in the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s 

Ba’athist regime.212

The Hybrid Threat in Iraq: Passive Interconnection

The complex organization of the hybrid threat in Iraq belied the Army’s 

attempt to organize against a single yet amorphous enemy. As attacks rose 

dramatically during the summer of 2003, many analysts saw the threat in 

terms of a more cohesive quilt, but several commanders began to understand 

the patchwork nature: “we are fighting former regime-backed paramilitary 

groups, Iranian-based opposition, organized criminals and street thugs.”213

These formerly “mutually antagonistic” elements did not work together 

directly, except for in isolated instances. At least nine disparate organized 

groups concurrently emerged, and additional elements of tribal protection 

and criminality created a passively interconnected threat array.214 RAND 

Corporation analysts John Mackinlay and Alison Al-Baddawy characterized this as a Federated Insurgency Complex, “the focal point of several 

different strands of violent energy ... the product of different local, national, 

and international communities and subversive organizations.”215 The hybrid 

threat in Iraq was also adaptive, using its initial advantage in local perception and resources to develop lethal capabilities against militarily superior 

forces. This was particularly evident in Baghdad, where Shi’a-based groups 

adopted explosively formed projectiles and sniper attacks against American 

forces.216 Throughout the war, groups adapted punctuated lethal attacks that 

led to an American focus on individual force protection, making soldiers 

appear as “storm troopers” and vehicles appear as “urban submarines” while 

on patrol.217 This effectively isolated the soldiers from the local population, 

once again giving the threat an advantage in their ability to penetrate the 

population.

Mixing regular and irregular means was also prevalent in Iraq, a further indicator of the adaptive nature of the threat. After the rapid advance 

of the initial land campaign by coalition forces, weapons were plentiful at 

many abandoned Iraqi Army bases. As some units approached, they discovered instances such as the one in Tikrit wherein a unit discovered 30 Iraqis 
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openly looting weapons.218 In a 2009 interview, one sheikh from Ramadi 

casually mentioned gaining 80 rocket propelled grenades and additional light 

machine guns from an unsecured base after meeting the coalition forces and 

telling them about it the day before.219 The availability of small arms, indirect 

fires weapons and high explosives was another key ingredient in this Petri 

dish for a hybrid threat: the enemy was bound only by its imagination to 

innovate complicated devices for coordinated attacks.

The hybrid threat in Iraq displayed a modicum of regular forces, but it 

was episodic at best. This may be the primary reason for a hesitation to view 

the “school of piranhas” as a hybrid threat, in that it nearly fails one of the 

most visible tests. However, this viewpoint predicates upon the Western 

martial tradition’s concept of regular and irregular forces, not upon an Eastern concept.220 As such, the difference between regular and irregular forces’ 

interactions in Iraq as compared to Vietnam or Lebanon is really a difference in degree, not a difference in kind. Although they never organized in 

hierarchical elements like VC main forces, disaffected professional military 

personnel acted in small but lethal ambushes, especially in Sunni strongholds 

close to former army bases such as Ramadi and Tikrit.221 With smaller elements conducting similar tactics, it is harder to distinguish between regular 

and irregular forces unless one focuses on artificial externalities such as 

uniforms. Even so, regular and irregular forces worked synergistically as an 

aspect of warfare in Iraq during the initial campaign,222 and in response to 

isolated clearing operations such as the ones in Fallujah.223 But the question 

remains: why was there a tangible mix of hybrid means and behaviors, but 

only fleeting instances of hybrid forces? Most likely, it was because the initial 

campaign and overt clearance operations were the few times the threat had 

significant base areas and an opportunity to formalize the regular components’ relationships. Since the mix of regular and irregular forces is the 

most visible indicator of a hybrid threat, this is the primary reason most 

analyses overlook it and view the conflict through the lens of an insurgencycounterinsurgency dynamic. 

Hybrid Warfare in Iraq: Applying Kilcullen’s Venn Diagram

This insurgency-counterinsurgency dynamic only addresses a portion of 

warfare in Iraq, albeit the vast majority.224 However, it is fundamentally insufficient to explain the whole of the system with only a descriptive snapshot of 
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a given space or time in the conflict. It is also an artificial distinction to separate aspects of warfare, and it is prone to errors if the cognitive boundaries 

are drawn incorrectly. Much in the same way an enemy can exploit physical 

unit boundaries when they are incorrectly overlaid on a high-speed avenue 

of approach, the adroit enemy can also exploit the seams between forms of 

conflict if a force task-organizes to fight them separately.225 Additionally, it 

only addresses a certain set of population grievances which led to hybrid 

warfare, not the underlying reasons for protracted conflict.

David Kilcullen’s explanatory model for warfare in Iraq provides this 

critical insight, highlighting its nature as warfare across multiple domains 

of conflict. Insurgency, terrorism, and communal conflict formed the major 

domains of conflict created by the underlying dysfunction of collapsed 

national systems in need of rebuilding.226

Figure 4. A Model of Hybrid Warfare in Iraq227
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Kilcullen proposes in The Accidental Guerrilla: 

Iraq, then, is not a pure insurgency problem but a hybrid war involving what we might call “counterinsurgency plus.” ... Effective counterinsurgency is a sine qua non for success, but it is still only one 

component within a truly hybrid conflict.228

Although population-centric counterinsurgency approaches proved successful, they were not enough to deal with the broader issues. As a complex 

and constantly changing set of problems, interconnected forms of warfare 

amplified conflict in Iraq. An action to address a problem in one domain 

exacerbated conflict in another, often times unpredictably. As such, any 

analysis of OIF must bear in mind that there was not a definitive enemy in 

the traditional sense, since various groups alternately considered each other 

as enemies or partners based on the ecology of the conflict. Relative to coalition forces, it is somewhat more accurate to view the disparate insurgent 

or sectarian groups as rivals, each with their own brand of security and 

governance as the goal.

The clearest example of this is counterinsurgency actions intensifying 

communal conflict. Even in applying nuanced local solutions, they were 

framed in the aforementioned Sunni-Shi’a or Arab-Kurd model and subsequently fanned the flames of sectarian violence that was relatively unheard 

of in Iraq’s recent past. As one senior political advisor to Multi-National 

Force - Iraq (MNF-I) described it, “[y]ou don’t have a history of large intercommunal violence. If you go into any society and collapse its institutions, 

what is the outcome?”229 Terrorism exploited opportunities in this setting, 

with al-Qaeda and Quds force activities seeking to further their transnational extremist goals. Supra-domain combinations arose as well, enabled by 

the trend of increasing global Muslim awareness from Niger to The Philippines arising from new access to the internet and dedicated satellite media 

such as Al-Arrabiya and Al-Jazeera.

230

This was the synergistic effect which faced coalition forces as warfare 

increased in intensity from 2003 to 2007. Distinct from the deliberate aims 

of dau tranh in Vietnam, this was an inadvertent consequence of the school 

of piranhas. The sum effect of warfare in Iraq was considerably more than 

the constituent parts. This initially led to many commanders’ frustrations 

as to why an army, which swiftly defeated a large conventional force, could 

not contend with a handful of insurgents. This was evidenced in the fact that 
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early attempts to introduce a purely military or purely political solution in 

one problem set masked or negated gains in another problem set, reinforcing the notion that “[w]hile ‘war amongst the people is political,’ it is still a 

kind of war.”231 The experience of one unit’s attempt to mentor paramilitary 

forces and put an Iraqi face on operations in 2004 provides an illustration 

of the non-summative results in a profoundly interconnected environment: 

The national police commandos that they brought up were very 

aggressive – we didn’t know it at the time, but the guys that were 

being brought in were getting after the Sunni population in Samarra 

and we thought it was great – but it really was the beginning of the 

sectarian violence. We didn’t recognize it at the time, but it was just 

an opportunity to whack Sunnis and they didn’t care if they were 

insurgents, terrorist or otherwise.232

Although the synergy of hybrid warfare was not a purposeful effort since 

it relied on the harmonization of disparate elements, the effort to protract 

warfare in order to exhaust American forces was a deliberate aim by all. 

With respect to coalition military forces in Iraq, rivals sought to make warfare so untenable and uneconomical that the psychological strain would 

be too much to bear in an American cost-benefit calculation.233 Insurgents 

posited that they could outlast the coalition via slow attrition from continued attacks, since they perceived this was just another chapter to a long 

struggle in which coalition forces lacked resolve.234 In the realm of communal violence, Shi’a groups in Baghdad tried to weaken the vulnerable Sunni 

population by mixing lethal extra-judicial killings and legitimate government actions. One Brigade Combat Team commander recalled that by these 

means, “[t]hey were trying to get the Sunnis to quit through a campaign of 

exhaustion.”235 Sunni Arab groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq employed the 

same logic, economically starving Shi’a and Turkomen communities in the 

north to complement targeted killings, in a broad attempt to exhaust and 

realign the population.236 With respect to the American homefront, rivals 

sought to increase casualties in Iraq “to the point of making the authority 

in charge of the occupation guilty before its own citizens.”237 Ironically, the 

growing gap between the American public and the all-volunteer military 

made this much less likely than in Vietnam.238
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The Operational Approach in OIF: Resolve and Opportunity

Another benefit of this all-volunteer force is that many of the same commanders and planners would return to Iraq repeatedly during OIF. This 

directly enabled the adaptation of improved understanding and context, 

a collective intuition that in turn created refined tactics and approaches to 

the complex environment. While this study strives to avoid a narrative of 

early villains yielding to later heroes in OIF, the marked improvements over 

time are undeniable.

As with the Vietnam War, strategic context framed operations and the 

characteristics of hybrid warfare. In the incipient phases of the Global War 

on Terror, President George W. Bush augmented the grand policy traditions 

of containment through deterrence with the option of pre-emption.239 In this 

manner, the initial charter for OIF was running out politically, prompting 

the Baker-Hamilton Commission’s report to Congress in the summer of 

2006.

Until then, General George Casey’s Transition Bridging Strategy personified the operational approach.240 This approach used the logic of transitioning 

Iraqi security responsibility and provincial control as capabilities matured. 

As such, coalition forces would retreat to larger forward operating bases 

(FOBs). Many commanders expressed this with the phrase “as we stand 

down, they stand up.”241 Consequently, Casey directed the establishment of 

transition as a separate line of effort rather than as a unifying logic, against 

the advice of some of his staff.242 With tactical units stressed to leave urban 

areas for remote FOBs, there was not an adequate provision for those units 

who did not have a competent Iraqi counterpart yet.243 One officer remarked 

that this was a flawed operational construct, in that “[w]e were always six 

months from leaving Iraq.”244 Communal violence and terrorist actions rose 

considerably in 2006, with killings peaking at about 125 per night in the 

amanat of Baghdad alone.245 Even in the face of such contradictions, Casey’s 

command and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) continued to focus on 

operational disengagement via transition. One strategic plans officer recalls: 

In 2006, after I went and spent time with [3rd Armored Calvary 

Regiment], I was on General Abizaid’s staff. The CENTCOM planning assumption was that we were in a lockstep march from 20 

to 10 Brigades by 2006. I don’t know if you remember but [2nd 
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Brigade, 1st Armored Division] wound up being off-ramped and 

went to Kuwait, and [2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division] came in 

behind them. When things were at their worst in Iraq in 2006, the 

CENTCOM commander was off-ramping brigades.246

Within risk lies opportunity, even if it is thickly veiled. Unlike the Vietnam War, the strategic context in 2006 would avail just such an opportunity, 

but it required American forces to fundamentally reframe the operational 

approach. The Baker-Hamilton report advocated a conditions-based withdrawal relying on milestones for Iraqi national reconciliation, security and 

governance.247 In response, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) developed a competing option for continued operations in Iraq, 

opening with the premise that “[v]ictory is still an option in Iraq.”248 Dr. 

Frederick Kagan led the AEI effort to develop an alternative to the findings in the Baker-Hamilton Commission’s report, which benefitted from 

both the official and unofficial involvement of military officers with experience in Tal Afar. Additionally, Kagan leveraged a personal relationship with 

retired General Jack Keane, who also mentored then-General David Petraeus 

and then-Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno.249 In striking detail, the 

group visualized Baghdad as the decisive effort in Iraq with an operational 

approach which required: balancing improved Iraqi Security Forces with 

protecting the population, clearing Sunni and mixed-sect neighborhoods, 

maintaining security to reconstitute governance and services, supporting 

the Iraqi central government’s ability to exercise power, and a surge of seven 

army brigades to support this expanded approach.250

Simultaneously, Odierno arrived in Iraq to take command of MultiNational Corps - Iraq (MNC-I). Within the first 60 days, he halted the effort 

to retreat to the large remote FOBs, in clear opposition to Casey’s Transition 

Bridging Strategy. Significantly, Odierno operationalized AEI’s approach 

by adding a focus on securing Shi’a neighborhoods against Sunni al-Qaeda 

in Iraq-affiliated networks, and placing an equal emphasis on the Baghdad 

belts.251 In this, Odierno provided the first elucidation of an operational 

approach to the complex warfare in Iraq, colloquially known as The Surge: 

[Odierno] and Colonel Jim Hickey figured out that it was all about 

locating the enemy’s safe havens and sanctuaries and disrupting 

those ... that’s what the battle of the belts was all about. I don’t think 

anyone had that concept. Although I think Colonel McMaster had 
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an appropriate solution, it was not applied on a broad scale and 

outside of a few isolated examples; no one really had a good solution 

or way ahead. I thought the contribution that MNC-I made was 

instrumental. Even with [Petraeus]’s new guidance, I don’t think 

we would have been successful if we would not have had [Odierno]’s 

operational concept.252

Similarly, Petraeus worked to ensure there was a sound linkage between 

the operational approach and the strategic end state from his command at 

MNF-I. He was able to place OIF in a larger regional context, to not only 

disrupt the transnational accelerants of instability, but to also fundamentally 

link Iraq back to its Arab neighbors. This is in stark contrast to the previous approach, which treated the campaign in isolation.253 Concurrently, the 

tactical acumen of coalition and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) commanders 

continued their steady adaptation. Intuition gained through multiple experiences in Iraq, unifying guidance, and updated doctrine all contributed 

to the increased capability to employ nuanced, coherent local measures for 

security and governance.254

However, it would be incorrect to solely attribute success in OIF to the 

actions of the security force itself. American forces and their ISF counterparts did not just ply the approach of The Surge against a complex background of varied conflict and confusing social structures; they were one 

and the same. Owing to the complex nature of hybrid warfare, all actors 

are interconnected through feedback and dynamic responses. As such, the 

population played at least as large a role in pulling Iraqi society back from 

the precipice of collapse. Two themes illustrate this best: the exhaustion of 

communal conflict and the reconciliation of extremist support bases.

By the time the additional resources and a unifying vision for The Surge

kicked in, it was clear that the Shi’a had prevailed in the communal conflict 

in Baghdad, effectively leaving the Sunnis to question their role in the new 

Iraq.255 From this position of disadvantage, Baghdad’s Sunnis relied increasingly on AQI or other takfiri elements for security.256 Almost concurrently, 

Sunnis in Al Anbar province to the west actively rejected AQI’s attempts 

to consolidate power and over-extend their influence into the population’s 

daily lives.257 In what would come to be colloquially known as The Awakening, then-Colonel Sean MacFarland and his Iraqi counterparts visualized 

operations that isolated insurgents to deny them sanctuary by: building the 
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ISF through reconciled fighters, clearing and building combined combat outposts among the population, and engaging local leaders to determine which 

ones had the most local respect.258 This successful integration of tribal forces 

into a security framework in Ramadi proved that Iraqis could remain armed 

to target the coalition’s rivals and not descend into chaos.259 An officer noted 

that it was like a wave of Sunni moderation emanating from Al Anbar, one 

which local commanders could exploit in Baghdad and the belts. 260

Taken as a whole, the system engendered by The Surge begins to look like 

a list of ingredients: Petraeus and MNF-I’s ability to unify effort in strategic 

context, Odierno and MNC-I’s operational approach and focus on a spatially 

decisive action, the promulgation of refined security and development tactics, 

reconciliation techniques from The Awakening and operations in Ramadi, 

shape-clear-hold-build techniques from operations in Tal Afar, and finally 

the combat power to achieve it all.

Analysis

The operational approach in Iraq evolved with successive attempts to properly frame the complex environment, and eventually disrupted the hybrid 

threat’s logic and form of violence. To bring in the familiar metaphor form 

our previous Vietnam case study, early attempts to address violence targeted the cape, not the toreador. Only through the purposeful application 

of improved intuition did the coalition learn to leverage the interconnected 

nature of conflict in Iraq, as a bull might become aware of the entire arena. 

Coalition forces benefitted from a maturing view of Iraqi conflict, a change 

in the internal logic for action in Baghdad and the belts, and the propensity 

within the system itself.

Initially, these efforts borrowed much from high value assets targeting 

by Special Operations Forces (SOF) which was crudely mimicked by conventional forces.261 Some American units began to detain all military aged 

males in anti-coalition pockets because of a lack of actionable intelligence 

instead of killing or capturing specific leaders and facilitators.262 Over time, 

these efforts began to focus more on the indirect aspects of security rather 

than raids to kill or capture the few individuals actively fighting in the conflict. Additionally, commanders began to understand Iraq more in terms 

of Kilcullen’s Venn diagram of interconnected hybrid warfare rather than 

discrete mission sets in which they prosecuted security actions in a closed 
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system. As one squadron commander reflected on the approach in Tal Afar, 

“[w]e tried to switch the argument from Sunni versus Shi’a, which was what 

the terrorists were trying to make the argument, to Iraqi versus takfirin.”263

As with operations in Ramadi, reconciliation caused extremist groups to 

fundamentally alter their concepts of support, recruitment, logistics, and 

freedom of maneuver.264

The change in American forces’ underlying approach in Baghdad and the 

belts further disrupted the hybrid threat’s logic of violence. The Surge focused 

combat power to secure the population, which was not a key ingredient in 

past operations to deliberately clear or isolate areas. It is interesting to note 

that the Jaysh al Mehdi (JAM) did not adopt the same mix of regular and 

irregular forces seen in the attempts to clear Fallujah or Basra, or the early 

attempt to isolate Tal Afar. One possible explanation lies in the fact that the 

Shi’a initially viewed JAM as the only viable defenders of the population.265

In combining American, ISF, and local security efforts, the population now 

had a sustainable alternative for security. Additionally, neighborhoods in the 

Baghdad area became increasingly homogenous as the communal violence 

peaked, owing to mass emigrations on both sides. When combined with 

American efforts to compartmentalize the city with physical barriers and 

checkpoints, the threat had to reconsider their ability to conduct attacks on 

anything but the security apparatus.266

Ironically, the propensity of the system itself may have provided the largest opportunity for disrupting the hybrid threat’s logic of violence when 

one views events in Iraq through a wider aperture. AQI’s drive to facilitate 

a sectarian conflict created a new dynamic within the system that coalition 

forces could exploit, but only briefly. Within an environment redefined with 

the additional aspect of communal violence, which was mostly absent prior 

to the 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, the Coalition had 

a brief opportunity in the crisis to emplace population security, stabilize 

the environment, and come out in a position of advantage. Significantly, 

the shape-clear-hold-build framework signaled a resolve which made rivals 

reconsider their notion of exhausting the tactical force, just as The Surge

made them question their ability to exhaust domestic America.

Over time, coalition forces learned to arrange tactical actions within the 

context that gave rise to the hybrid threat. Early operational art in Iraq was 

colored by the tenets of effects-based operations (EBO) and net-centric warfare (NCW), and in some ways the two theories were used as an insufficient 
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substitute to arrange tactical actions instead of a means to foster holistic 

views of complex systems. EBO constitutes an approach to targeting critical vulnerabilities in an adversary’s system with lethal and nonlethal means 

in an attempt to achieve decisive effects through the defeat of presumably 

second-order capabilities. However, EBO was beset by the perception that it 

frames the environment from a detached perspective and overlays prescriptive categorization on the environment to assess action.267 Similarly, NCW 

theory contended that networked information sharing leads to improved 

situational awareness, leading to collaboration and an improved ability to 

attack an adversary’s network. Theoretically, NCW is an effective approach 

to a similarly networked enemy that is vulnerable to nodal disruptions, but 

this is based on a cybernetic nodal network instead of a biological network, 

one which may be more appropriate for complex social environments such as 

hybrid warfare in Iraq.268 Both theories assume that an enemy is “mappable,” 

a relatively inert system which neither anticipates nor preempts action.269

Kagan asserts that while the military failed in pursuing transformation 

through EBO and NCW theories, at least the attempt to treat systems holistically indicates an advancing appreciation for complex warfare.270

Additionally, early efforts in Iraq lacked an adequate understanding of the 

environment. Initially, commanders did not understand the scope of action 

required in this form of warfare: “[y]our responsibilities are everything. And 

there was this false expectation that it would just fix itself.”271 Because of the 

aforementioned focus on security operations relying heavily on advantages 

in lethal firepower and force protection, American troops interacted with the 

populace from a defensive posture which effectively drove a psychological 

wedge between the people and their protectors.272

By distributing tactical operations and deploying combined forces among 

the populace, American forces gained the requisite context to align tactical 

actions in the same frame of reference which gave rise to the hybrid threat. 

The effect of combined American, ISF, and local security allowed commanders to address the drivers of instability and conflict within the same context 

as their rivals, within their “way of war:”

Indigenous forces have a lot of latitude that we don’t have, they were 

not inhibited by ROE the way we were. It’s rough justice ... it’s the 

messy and dark side of working with indigenous guys. You have to 

understand it and be willing to accept that. If you can live with that, 
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and I can, then you’re fine. If you’re trying to change their culture 

and their way of war to be our way of war, then you’ll be there a 

hell of a long time.273

In aligning areas of responsibility and spheres of influence with both 

ISF and local dynamics, American units could simultaneously address the 

immediate security issue and the underlying shortcoming with civil capacity.274 Actions began to focus with a shared understanding between American 

forces and the local communities, enabling an eventual stimulation of local 

economies and a return to normalcy.275 This focus on local solutions was a 

relative strength of coalition operations in OIF, as uniform country-wide 

solutions were widely avoided after the maligned De-Ba’athification effort 

in 2003.276 In this, the utility of addressing rivals in a common environmental frame and developing tailored solutions becomes clear. As one officer 

described his unit’s approach in Tal Afar:

You can come in, cordon off a city, and level it, à la Falluja. Or you 

can come in, get to know the city, the culture, establish relationships 

with the people, and then you can go in and eliminate individuals 

instead of whole city blocks.277

Conclusion

Kilcullen’s introduction to Iraq in The Accidental Guerilla aptly summarizes 

the complexity of developing an operational approach to hybrid warfare:

If we were to draw historical analogies, we might say that operations 

in Iraq are like trying to defeat the Viet Cong (insurgency), while 

simultaneously rebuilding Germany (nation-building following 

war and dictatorship), keeping peace in the Balkans (communal 

and sectarian conflict), and defeating the IRA (domestic terrorism). 

These all have to be done at the same time, in the same place, and 

changes in one part of the problem significantly affect others.278

Army units prevailed in much of these aspects through steady adaptation, 

resolve, and exploiting operational opportunities as part of an eventually 

unified coalition effort. In the context of this chapter’s metaphor, coalition 

forces were able to disrupt the inherent logic in a school of piranhas, such 

that some of the piranhas turned on each other. This was a mix of both 
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purposeful action and the inherent propensity within the social construct 

of Iraq. Although this operational approach resulted in end state conditions 

that achieved sufficient termination criteria, there will always be a degree of 

dissonance with the original concept of victory in Iraq as idealized in 2003. 

American forces undoubtedly left Iraq in a position of relative advantage and 

significant strategic gains in 2011, but the cost and efficacy of that advantage 

will surely be debated in the years to come.

As this monograph concludes, we must therefore analyze the utility of 

current doctrine to determine if it imparts sufficient flexibility to defeat 

hybrid threats and achieve that position of relative advantage. Specifically, 

what is an effective archetype for an operational approach in hybrid warfare, 

and does the Unified Land Operations model provide a sufficient lexicon and 

ideals to articulate such a construct? Because as costly and as strenuous as 

OIF was for the Army, the next hybrid threat could incorporate a similarly 

reflective effort to build its own effectiveness. As the Winograd Commission’s final report succinctly captured this, “[w]hen speaking on learning, 

one should take into account enemies, too, are learning their lessons.”279

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6. Synthesis: Operational Approaches to 

Hybrid Warfare

It is so damn complex. If you ever think you have the solution to 

this, you’re wrong, and you’re dangerous. You have to keep listening 

and thinking and being critical and self-critical.

– Colonel H.R. McMaster, 2006

Don’t ever forget what you’re built to do. We are built to solve military problems with violence.

– Former Brigade Commander in OIF

This monograph began with an assertion that we gain a better context to 

develop operational approaches to hybrid threats by analyzing the U.S. 

Army’s historical experience with hybrid warfare. Since the next adversary 

may guide its tactical efforts more coherently than the school of piranhas in 

Iraq, we therefore conclude with a review of the broad imperatives in hybrid 

warfare, an operational approach archetype, and a consequent evaluation 

of Unified Land Operations’ ability to provide sufficient structure to these 

themes. The scope of this short study tempers any formal conclusion, since 

much more analysis is required to build confidence in the model described 

thus far. Hybrid warfare in Vietnam illustrates a deficiency in the three 

imperatives for operational approaches, while the Army’s experience in OIF 

illustrates the adaptation to proficiency in all three imperatives. The resulting 

synthesis must avoid the temptation to highlight the contrasts between the 

two approaches, and cite only the principles in OIF as prescriptive keys to 

success in hybrid warfare. Using these imperatives to form the epitome of an 

operational approach reveals another inherent tension; one between the cognitive domain of understanding complex adaptive systems in hybrid warfare, 

and the physical domain of tactical efforts that leverage power relationships 

and violent action. The epigraphs above are perhaps the best illustration of 

this, from two commanders in OIF who were able to resolve this inherent 

tension in operational art.280
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Three Imperatives for Operational Art in Hybrid Warfare

These explanatory fundamentals are not unique to hybrid warfare; they 

apply to all forms of warfare. However, the unique aspects of hybrid warfare 

merely illuminate three specific qualities in operational approaches, the 

broad methods that provide a basis to pursue strategic aims through the 

arrangement of tactical actions in time, space, and purpose. Operational 

approaches to hybrid warfare must cognitively disrupt the hybrid threat’s 

logic in the forms of warfare it employs, arrange actions within the same 

context that gave rise to the hybrid threat, and avoid uniform or prescriptive 

means across time and space.281

The first of these imperatives could be considered the first among equals, 

since it generates and describes the need to act within the system of hybrid 

warfare. A well-grounded operational approach must cognitively disrupt the 

hybrid threat’s logic in the forms of warfare it employs, rather than focusing 

on physical methods to counter the hybrid threat’s means and capabilities. 

Operational art must produce articulated tactical actions and a unifying 

logic. Those actions must achieve this disruptive effect, creating an opportunity for further action. Effectively, this provides for the continuation of 

operations rather than a culmination. In Vietnam, MACV was unable to 

break the logic of dau tranh, which only became untenable to the Communist forces after their own operational over-reach in the Tet Offensive. In 

OIF, commanders leveraged their intuition of the environment to disrupt 

the rivals’ logic for violence, creating opportunities via the ISF and local 

security forces.

Second, the approach must fuse tactical success to an overall strategic 

aim within the same context which gave rise to the hybrid threat. Fusion 

refers to the act of arranging tactical actions, and implies a conduit of success 

towards the strategic aim. But this transformative effort to address ‘the gap’ 

between the observed system and the desired system cannot take place in a 

frame which is artificially separate from the observed environment.282 The 

American Army’s approaches in Vietnam provide several cautionary lessons 

in this regard. Primarily, the military plans were self-referential, without sufficient regard for the social and political context of the war. The hybrid threat 

of Communist forces fundamentally viewed the war as a movement in social 

progress, not military confrontation; MACV lacked an appreciation for this 

rival narrative. In OIF, a growing appreciation for the environmental context 
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of conflict enabled commanders to address the underlying accelerants of 

instability. The 2007 surge in troop strength was significant and enabled this 

effort, but it would not have been sufficient without an adaptive approach.

Lastly, an operational approach to hybrid warfare must avoid prescriptive or uniform measures across time and space. This is another acknowledgement that the environmental context in hybrid warfare is one of the 

chief characteristics of a relationally complex system. Since operational 

art must result in clear and concise guidance to arrange tactical actions, 

the operational approach cannot simply give commanders an appreciation 

for the complexity of the problem while dogmatically refusing to bound it. 

All guidance or unified effort will entail some degree of linearization or 

compartmentalization in order to clarify the environment, even through a 

simple narrative or order to subordinate echelons. This may be an immutable 

fact because sufficient clarity is required when aligning finite resources or 

combat power towards a specific purpose.283 In Vietnam, MACV’s pursuit 

of the crossover point provides an illustration of this. Within the effort to 

describe one unifying theme, the headquarters’ intense focus on metrics such 

as the body count effectively precluded or stifled initiatives which were better 

adapted to local environments. OIF provides a positive example, as local 

solutions and distributed command models became the dominant model 

for both lethal and nonlethal efforts. These efforts were still harmonized 

by a common commander’s guidance and doctrinal evolution, yet tactical 

commanders were able to develop internal measures of success.

An Archetype for Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

The three preceding imperatives explain characteristics of an operational 

approach to hybrid warfare, but not a holistic approach. The question 

remains, how can an effective commander and his planning effort use 

these aspects to arrange tactical actions in hybrid warfare? The operational 

approach should be uniquely adapted to address ‘the gap’ that emerges in 

a comparison of the observed state and the desired end state. This monograph pre-supposes a hybrid threat in a spectrum of adversaries rather than 

as a categorical menu option, but this type of threat is specific enough to 

allow a focus on common aspects. Therefore, the question is not “what is 

the best operational approach to a hybrid threat?”; it should be, “given the 
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characteristics of hybrid warfare, what does an effective operational approach 

to a hybrid threat ‘look’ like?”

From the imperative to cognitively disrupt the hybrid threat’s logic in the 

forms of warfare it employs, there is a need to gain and maintain the initiative through continuous operations on a pathway to termination criteria. 

The requirement to utilize operational art within the same context which 

gave rise to the hybrid threat necessitates a focus on the overall environment, 

not simply an enemy. This also requires a commander and planner to see 

their force as an interconnected part of the overall environment, not as a 

detached spectator. Likewise, the imperative to avoid uniform or prescriptive 

solutions requires the approach to address the environment holistically, yet 

with appreciation to local variances.

These imperatives engender an archetype, not a stereotype. In this archetype, the combined action of shock and dislocation is the means to gain and 

maintain the initiative. Additionally, the operational approach must take 

special care to avoid a myopic view of the termination criteria and end state 

conditions for conflict.

Shock and Dislocation284

Operational shock reflects the notion that while it is impractical to destroy 

a hybrid threat’s combat power in its entirety through attrition, a force can 

attack the coherent unity of the hybrid threat as a system.

285 If maneuver is 

conceived in purely linear terms, then spatial relationships become the dominant concern and a force may focus on issues like the amount of territory 

controlled, or the percentage of the population secured. However, if maneuver is conceived in the terms of Clausewitzian friction, nonlinear phenomena, and a holistic view of the environment, then an entire array of a rival’s 

vulnerabilities avail themselves to attack.286 In an ecology of logic, form, and 

function, striking the logic inherent in a hybrid threat’s system is a realistic 

goal, whereas striking the entirety of a hybrid threat’s already fragmented 

form is not. This partially illustrates the requirement for a harmonized effort 

in hybrid warfare, one that disrupts or defeats the interconnections in a 

rival’s system rather than sequential search-and-destroy operations.287 In 

other words, the very hybridity of this type of adversary introduces internal 

tensions in their mode of operation, and these tensions are an opportunity 

for action.288 A hybrid threat’s logic is an abstract cognitive quality, but it 
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can be struck through both cognitive and physical means.289 For example, 

coalition forces in OIF shocked the metaphoric school of piranhas by developing local security forces. This not only enabled lethal direct attacks on 

the rivals’ combat power, resources, and networks, it also fundamentally 

changed the nature of the problem they faced. This also demonstrates how 

operational shock creates opportunities in the redefined environment, as 

one brigade commander reflected that these operations supported his overall 

theme of exploiting success to keep the initiative.290 However, if the objective 

of operational shock is to neutralize the enemy’s will to continue the conflict 

in pursuit of an aim, shock is not sufficient alone since the hybrid threat is 

less likely to serve extrinsic state-defined goals. As such, there must be a 

complementary effort to render the rival’s current form of warfare irrelevant, 

a mechanism to defeat it.

One way to pursue a relative defeat of the enemy’s remainder is through 

dislocation, “the art of rendering the enemy’s strength irrelevant.”291 In 

other words, a force cannot defeat all of a hybrid threat’s military, political, 

and social strength but it can change the environment so that the enemy’s 

remaining strength is of negligible value to him.292 Hart, Boyd, and Osinga 

develop the assertion that dislocation springs from the enemy’s fundamental 

sense of surprise as a result of purposeful action.293 In this lies the bridge 

between shock and dislocation, as their efforts should exhibit a reflexive 

quality: shock creates this sense of surprise, and dislocation presents itself 

in an opportunity.294 Furthermore, when dislocation seems sudden, it results 

in a sense of being “trapped.”295 To continue the OIF example, the shock of a 

redefined environment dislocated the existing elements of combat power as 

rivals understood them, rendering their remaining power mostly irrelevant 

and trapped in an area which could be marginalized.296 Conversely, it is 

doubtful that Hezbollah felt psychologically trapped in southern Lebanon 

in 2006, or if Communist forces ever felt trapped in SVN.297

Avoiding End State Myopia

Shock and dislocation describe the effect of concrete tactical actions, while 

an effort to avoid end state myopia reflects the abstract strategic context.298 As 

this monograph highlights, the inherent tension between these two domains 

is one of the principle difficulties in applying operational art. However, commanders and planners must maintain a long view because operations and 
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strategy exhibit a reflexive relationship.299 Initial actions change the environment, so the pathway to conflict termination and the conception of the 

end state change as well.

If operational art provides for continuity instead of culmination, then a 

force must reconcile with the notion that it will not defeat a hybrid threat in 

one single maelstrom of genius and concerted violence. Hence, shock and 

dislocation apply in a complementary fashion. This also illustrates the utility 

in phasing operations, to extend operational reach over time toward several 

objectives and decisive points. One hedge against a myopic view of the end 

state is a continuous effort to analyze operational objectives, to determine if 

they constitute conflict termination or solely a decisive point which gains a 

marked advantage over the adversary. Hybrid warfare exhibits supradomain 

combinations of political and social aspects, operationalized in irregular 

warfare. Therefore, the operational approach must incorporate these decisive 

points along the metaphoric pathway towards conflict termination, with 

respect to the political and social grievances instead of focusing on a purely 

military-security end state and relying on the rest of the environment to 

self-correct. As one former officer who served in the Gulf War recalled, 

“everybody thought that the thing was over. I find that as one expression of 

this tendency to think that good operations fix the problem and that therefore there’s no need to think beyond when the shooting stops.”300

The Sufficiency of Operational Art in Unified Land 

Operations

As AirLand Battle doctrine had a specific threat and strategic context to 

address, Unified Land Operations characterizes the hybrid threat as the 

chief form of adversary the U.S. Army is most likely to face in the nearterm. Significantly, it describes this threat in terms of synergy and protracted warfare.301 Maneuver on land is not solely intended to occupy the 

adversary’s territory.302 To this end, doctrine must provide an orientation 

to the force, especially given the high conversion cost between primarily 

regular warfare and primarily irregular warfare. To achieve this, Unified 

Land Operations discusses warfare through the lens of initiative and a full 

spectrum of operations.

French Enlightenment and reductionist thought informed Jominian military theory, German Rationalism informed Clausewitzian military theory, 
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and contemporary thought improves efforts in conceptual planning. In many 

ways, Unified Land Operations aligns itself with the emerging understanding 

of the world through nonlinear sciences, epistemological and ontological 

foundations.303 In this, Unified Land Operations has great utility. The model 

of gaining and retaining the initiative through a spectrum of operations by 

the complementary means of CAM and WAS is one that commanders at all 

echelons can understand and leverage against complex systems in hybrid 

warfare. Significantly, the doctrine calls for articulated solutions to arrange 

tactical actions.304 Tactical commanders require this clarity to give their 

actions purpose and ensure they understand their role within the higher 

commander’s greater unifying logic to defeat a hybrid threat. Operational 

planners owe them a clear framework with at least this much.

Closing: Leveraging Legitimate Violence

Through a deeply critical process, the commander and his planners may 

come to a greater understanding of the unique ecology of the complex hybrid 

threat they face: its form, its function, and its logic for violence. Arranging a 

specific tactical action should affect one aspect of this ecological trinity, lest 

the operational approach become too complex. A complicated, yet manageable solution is preferable.305 Therein lies the rub for operational planners, 

and a caution against purely cognitive or abstract solutions. There is a significant difference between useful tools for conceptual planning, and useful 

tools for coordinating and synchronizing complicated tactical actions.306 In 

2006, a general on Halutz’s staff spoke of disrupting the logic of Hezbollah 

and creating a “spectacle of victory” in Bint J’beil, leaving many tactical 

commanders to wonder exactly what he meant.307 The successful operational approach blends a holistic understanding of hybrid warfare with an 

appreciation for what the organization is structured to do, and its ability to 

adapt. It must be able to guide legitimate violence, or the threat of legitimate 

violence. This is supremely difficult, but then again “nobody pays to see a 

guy juggle one ball.”308

This effort must pervade the operational approach to hybrid warfare, 

ensuring that it incorporates the three imperatives discussed above with a 

holistic understanding of the threat and environment. Hybrid threats will 

undoubtedly continue to seek the synergistic effect of regular and irregular 

qualities in order to protract the conflict. They will wage warfare in a resilient 
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manner which is built to last. The U.S. Army can effectively counter this if 

its operational approaches to hybrid warfare utilize shock and dislocation 

along a pathway to conflict termination; it must address the gap between 

the current state and the desired end state in a manner which is built to 

outlast.
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Endnotes

1. Amos Harel and Avi Issacharof, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in Lebanon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 2-5, 11-12, 14; Matt M. Matthews, We 

Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War (Fort Leavenworth, 

KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2008), 34-35. This account of the events on 

12 July 2006 is drawn primarily from 34 Days, due to Harel and Issacharoff’s 

access to interviews with the IDF soldiers in the morning ambush at Report 

Point 105. Brigadier General Gal Hirsh, the division commander in the northern 

border area, had already identified this scenario as a major risk and previously 

requested that the reservists along the border be replaced; they were not.

2. Harel and Issacharof, 12-13.

3. Ibid., 15.

4. Harel and Issacharof, 91-93; Uri Bar-Joseph, “The Hubris of Initial Victory: The 

IDF and the Second Lebanon War,” in Israel and Hizbollah, ed. Clive Jones and 

Sergio Catignani (London: Routledge, 2010), 156, 158-159. Although accurate in 

locating Hezbollah’s Iranian medium-range rockets, Israeli intelligence failed to 

recognize that their light rocket arsenal was significantly upgraded with Syrian 

assistance prior to the conflict. Hezbollah’s improved 122mm Katyusha rockets 

had an effective range of 42km instead of 20km, and they also had received new 

220mm rockets with an effective range of 50km to 70km. 

5. Author’s discussion with Retired IDF General Officer and Member of the Winograd Commission, 8 March 2012, Tel Aviv, Israel; Penny L. Mellies, “Hamas and 

Hezbollah: A Comparison of Tactics,” in Back to Basics: A Study of the Second 

Lebanon War and Operation CAST LEAD, ed. Scott C Farquhar (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2009), 61; Cathy Sultan, Tragedy in 

South Lebanon (Minneapolis, MN: Scarletta Press, 2008), 40. As a result of this 

pattern of conflict which the IDF seemed powerless to stop, there were 43 civilians killed in Israel with 300,000 people displaced. In Lebanon, estimates are that 

600,000 people fled as the IDF continued air strikes throughout the campaign. 

As for the military forces, the IDF suffered 119 killed in action while Hezbollah 

lost an estimated 184 based on the number of funeral processions recorded. 

Other sources estimate between 300 and 500 dead Hezbollah fighters.

6. Joseph, 154, 156; Sultan, 54, 56; Harel and Issacharof, 119-120, 126-128, 136-139; 

Matthews, We Were Caught Unprepared, 45.

7. Amos and Harel, 135.

8. Sultan, 56. Sultan’s work includes accounts from both a Hezbollah fighter and 

an IDF soldier who fought at Bint J’Beil. Her collection appears slightly biased 

against the IDF in its presentation, focusing on a magnitude of collateral damage 

in southern Lebanon which is disputed in other sources listed herein.
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9. Greg Myre, “Israel’s Wounded Describe Surprisingly Fierce, Well-Organized and 

Elusive Enemy,” New York Times (10 August 2006). Accessed at www.nytimes.

com/2006/08/12/world/middleeast/ 12soldiers.html on 10 September 2011.

10. Ralph Peters, “Lessons From Lebanon: The New Model Terrorist Army,” Armed 

Forces Journal 114, no. 3 (October 2006): 39; Mellies, 52; Sultan, 53. To enable 

this adaptive nature, Hezbollah teams had much more autonomy than their IDF 

counterparts. This is a reflection of both the Iranian doctrinal influence and the 

entrepreneurial nature of Lebanese society. The Hezbollah fighter interviewed 

in Tragedy in South Lebanon explained “I have specific tasks, as do others in my 

small unit, but we work independently of others. I think this is our strength.”

11. Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey A. Friedman, The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the 

Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy (Carlisle Barracks, 

PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2008), 45, 59; Hybrid Warfare Panel Discussion, 

9 February 2012, Fort McNair, DC. The IDF was also captivated by the fact that 

Hezbollah established a regular system for administration, to include pay stubs.

12. Peters, 38; Anthony Cordesman, “The Lessons of the Israeli-Lebanon War.” 

Center for Strategic & International Studies, 43. Accessed at www.csis.org on 2 

September 2011.

13. Biddle and Friedman, 36, 39.

14. Cordesman, 8; Robin Wright, Dreams and Shadows (New York: The Penguin 

Press, 2008), 198-199.

15. Mellies, 53; Peters, 40, 42; Biddle and Friedman, 77. Biddle and Friedman illustrate the power of this synergistic effect; even though Hezbollah could not match 

the conventional capacity of other Arab militaries, they were more successful in 

holding terrain than the French in 1940 or the Italians in 1941. 

16. Gal Hirsch, “On Dinosaurs and Hornets - A Critical View on Moulds in Asymmetric Conflict,” The Royal United Services Institute Journal148, no. 4 (August 

2003): 4; Matthews, We Were Caught Unprepared, 61. Ironically, Hirsch illustrates a conceptual understanding of this very requirement in his 2003 article: 

“I recommend creating the strike through the operational logic described here: 

a simultaneous operational employment of forces, like a swarm of hornets.” 

Accounts like 34 Days imply that Hirsch was significantly constrained by higher 

headquarters’ guidance during his command of the tactical and operational land 

maneuver in southern Lebanon. 

17. Shimon Naveh, “The Cult of Offensive Preemption,” in Between War and Peace: 

Dilemmas of Israeli Security, ed. Efraim Karsh (London: Frank Cass, 1996), 172. 

Naveh illustrates the historical context of the IDF’s presumed superiority over 

Arab forces in night raiding actions and complex mobile maneuvers.

18. Author’s discussion with Retired IDF General Officer and Land Warfare Analyst, 

8 March 2012, Latrun, Israel; Author’s discussion with Israeli Military Analyst, 8 

March 2012, Tel Aviv, Israel; Author’s discussion with Israeli Military Analyst, 9 

March 2012, Tel Aviv, Israel; Matt M. Matthews, Interview With BG (Ret.) Shimon 

Naveh (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press), 4; Matthews, We 
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Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

Were Caught Unprepared, 62-64. Discussions with IDF theorists and practitioners reveal a disjointed relationship between theory, doctrine, and practice with 

respect to operational art in 2006. The IDF’s new operational doctrine artificially 

conflated the theories of Effects-Based Operations (EBO) and Systemic Operational Design (SOD), resulting in what one officer deemed “a maze of words.” 

Halutz’s headquarters adopted this doctrine less than one month prior to the 

conflict, before it was studied and embraced by tactical echelons and the reserve 

forces. Shimon Naveh’s interview corroborates this, contending that the IDF’s 

operational doctrine was neither fully synthesized nor embraced as an adaptive 

organizational process. American assessments of the IDF generally combine the 

two issues; Matthews’ own critique in We Were Caught Unprepared reflects this 

conflation, at one point referring to it as “the new EBO/SOD doctrine” and “this 

effects-based, SOD-inspired doctrine.” Therefore, it is fundamentally incorrect 

to use the 2006 war as a sole basis for debating the utility of design methodology 

in conceptual planning.

19. Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh, In The Path of Hizbullah (Syracuse, NY: The Syracuse 

University Press, 2004), 44, 46; Daniel Isaac Helmer, Flipside of the COIN: Israel’s 

Lebanese Incursion Between 1982 - 2000 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies 

Institute Press, 2007),70-72; Sergio Catignani, Israeli Counter-Insurgency and 

the Intifadas: Dilemmas of a Conventional Army (London: Routledge, 2008) 

190; Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: The 

Princeton University Press, 2007), 136-137; Michael D. Snyder, “Information 

Strategies Against a Hybrid Threat” in Back to Basics: A Study of the Second 

Lebanon War and Operation CAST LEAD, ed. Scott C Farquhar (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2009), 114-115; Matthews, We Were 

Caught Unprepared, 11, 19, 29, 34. As context for the preceding vignette, it is 

important to note several circumstances surrounding the July 2006 war. Fundamentally, Hezbollah is a jihadist organization which increasingly engages in 

Lebanese politics, not a political party with an armed wing for jihad. Israel used 

a combination of armed incursions, limited operations, and overt occupation in 

the same areas in southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, in an effort to create an 

operational security buffer. Hezbollah used the intervening six years to establish 

an extensive, modern bunker system; with security protocols in place, no fighter 

had knowledge of the entire structure. The IDF’s focus during this time was 

chiefly on the Gaza Strip and West Bank, where they became proficient in short 

counter-terror operations at the expense of combined arms maneuver coordination, mobility, and logistics. Nasrallah did not expect the kidnappings to result 

in an open war against Hezbollah, so neither side was adequately prepared for 

the conflict when it began. Upon examining the bodies of Goldwasser and Regev 

once they were returned to Israel after the war, the IDF determined that they 

most likely died from wounds sustained in the initial ambush on 12 July.

20. To aid in the development of this wide consensus, the case study analyses rely 

heavily on the direct observations of primary sources, and incorporate foreign 

sources to minimize American military bias.
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21. John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History (New York: Oxford University 

Press, 2004), 9-10, 39-40, 42-43.

22. Owing to the limited resources of this study, there are only two case studies 

presented. A full treatment on the subject would apply the same analytical logic 

to the American Revolution, the Mexican War, the Civil War, and Operation 

Enduring Freedom.

23. Brian P. Fleming, The Hybrid Threat Concept: Contemporary War, Military Planning and the Advent of Unrestricted Operational Art (master’s thesis, School of 

Advanced Military Studies, 2011), 7, 61; Daniel T. Lasica, Strategic Implications 

of Hybrid War: A Theory of Victory (master’s thesis, School of Advanced Military 

Studies, 2009), iii; Sean J. McWilliams, Hybrid War Beyond Lebanon: Lessons 

From the South African Campaign 1976-1989 (master’s thesis, School of Advanced 

Military Studies, 2009), 3; Steven C. Williamson, From Fourth Generation Warfare to Hybrid War (master’s thesis, U.S. Army War College, 2009), 29. 

24. Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars (Arlington, 

VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007), 14; Frank Hoffman and James 

N. Mattis, “Future Wars: The Rise of Hybrid Wars.” Proceedings 132 (November 

2005); William J. Nemeth, Future War and Chechnya: A Case for Hybrid Warfare (master’s thesis, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, 2002); Erin M. Simpson, 

Thinking About Modern Conflict: Hybrid Wars, Strategy, and War Aims (paper 

presented to the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 

2005). Unpublished papers pre-dating Hoffman’s effort include a 2002 Master’s 

thesis by William J. Nemeth which represents the earliest scholarly work on the 

subject, in which the emergence of devolved hybrid societies gives rise to hybrid 

warfare as observed in Chechnya. Simpson’s early work in the subject explores 

hybridity in forms of conflict, in the context of groups’ strategic aims.

25. Colin S. Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (London: Phoenix, 2005), 

248.

26. Hew Strachan, “Making Strategy: Civil-Military Relations After Iraq.” Survival 

48 (Autumn, 2006): 71; Biddle and Friedman, 22.

27. Robert T. Ames, Sun Tzu: The Art of War (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 

78-80; Mao Tse-Tung, On Guerrilla Warfare, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (Chicago: 

University of Illinois Press, 1961), 25, 42.The works of Sun Tzu and Mao Tse-Tung 

both illustrate aspects of this concept. In a work attributed to Sun Tzu, the theorist contends that “[b]attle is one disposition trying to prevail over another” and 

all positions of advantage leading to this are relative in both time and space. Mao 

contends that within weakness there is inherent strength, and within strength 

there is inherent weakness; he seeks to “turn these advantages to the purpose of 

resisting and defeating the enemy.” 

28. Robert Leonhard, The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver-Warfare Theory and AirLand 

Battle (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1991), 108-111; Joseph S. Nye, The Future of 

Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), 34.
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Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

29. Nathan Frier, “Hybrid Threats: Describe...Don’t Define.” Small Wars Journal (2009): 5. The term “High-End Asymmetric Threat” reflects an attempt to 

describe particularly well-equipped hybrid threats that spring from “functioning 

but unfavorable order” as opposed to discrete models of insurgency and terrorism 

that spring from the “absence or failure of order altogether.”

30. Fathali Moghaddam, The New Global Insecurity (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 

2010), 19-20; Author’s discussion with Retired IDF General Officer and Land 

Warfare Analyst, 8 March 2012, Latrun, Israel. Psychologist Fathali Moghaddam 

asserts that this increased interconnectedness and interdependence is a result of 

fragmented globalization, which blurs the lines of a state / non-state dynamic and 

results in both collective and personal insecurity. Discussions with IDF officers 

regarding the 2006 war illuminate the risk in this compression of domains, in 

that media spreads information rapidly with minimal context.

31. Huba Wass de Czege, “Thinking and Acting Like an Early Explorer,” Small Wars 

Journal (2011): 4; Simpson, 3, 12.

32. Erik A. Claessen, “S.W.E.T. and Blood: Essential Services in the Battle Between 

Insurgents and Counterinsurgents.” Military Review (November-December 

2007): 92-93.

33. Author’s discussion with Israeli Military Analyst, 8 March 2012, Tel Aviv, Israel.

34. Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 11-14, 

66-67, 271-273. Although the perception of this central power certainly leads to 

conflict within that given region or society. The body of Al Qaeda literature cited 

here is but one example, especially the opening “well-established facts” in their 

1998 declaration of war against the United States.

35. David Kilcullen, “Countering Global Insurgency.” Journal of Strategic Studies 

28 (2005): 605.

36. Hybrid Warfare Panel Discussion, 9 February 2012, Fort McNair, DC; Author’s 

discussion with Retired IDF Military Intelligence Officer and Terrorism Analyst, 6 March 2012, Herzeliah, Israel. This monograph’s description of hybrid 

warfare deliberately avoids the aspect of criminality for two reasons. Primarily, 

criminality depends on a corresponding characterization of legitimacy, and a 

hybrid threat may be engaging in what some consider criminal activity only as a 

means to de-legitimize governance efforts of a rival. Furthermore, it may simply 

be a nonstandard means of financing operations, which is entirely absent in 

other hybrid threat organizations. For example, Hezbollah finances a significant 

portion of its security operations and construction through indirectly aligned 

charities.

37. Frier, 1, 8.

38. See Liang Qiao and Xiangsui Wang, Unrestricted Warfare (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing, 1999).

39. Ibid., 12. Liang and Xiangsui are not the only ones to explore unrestricted warfare 

throughout history, but their creative and explanatory paper influences many 

contemporary strategic analysts, particularly hybrid warfare theorists.
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40. Ibid., 19.

41. Ibid., 118.

42. Ibid., 181-199.

43. Ibid., 206-216.

44. Thomas Huber, “Compound Warfare: A Conceptual Framework,” in Compound 

Warfare: That Fatal Knot, ed. Thomas M. Huber (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. 

Army Command and General Staff College Press, 2002).

45. Ibid., 2.

46. Ibid., 3-4.

47. For an illustrative case study, compare Huber’s chapter “Compound Warfare in 

Spain and Naples” in Compound Warfare: That Fatal Knot and Phillipe Gennequin, The Centurions versus The Hydra: French Counterinsurgency in The Peninsular War (1808-1812) (master’s thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff 

College, 2011).

48. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, 21.

49. Hybrid Warfare Panel Discussion, 9 February 2012, Fort McNair, DC.

50. William S. Lind, Keith Nightengale, Johns F. Schmitt, Joseph W. Sutton, and 

Gary I. Wilson, “The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation,” Marine 

Corps Gazette 73, no. 10 (October 1989): 23; Clayton L. Niles, Al Qaeda and 

Fourth Generation Warfare as its Strategy (master’s thesis, United States Marine 

Corps Command and Staff College, 2008), 3-4. Within this concept, the first 

three generations are: Napoleonic warfare, a second evolutionary generation of 

warfare incorporating political, economic, social, and technical changes, and 

maneuver warfare. Much of this concept is attributed to the works of Thomas 

X. Hammes and William S. Lind.

51. Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (St. 

Paul, MN: MBI Publishing, 2004).

52. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, 19.

53. Hammes, 2, 208.

54. Frank Hoffman, “Lessons From Lebanon: Hezbollah and Hybrid Wars.” Foreign 

Policy Research Institute, 1. Accessed at www.fpri.org on 2 September, 2011.

55. Biddle and Friedman, 11-17.

56. Ibid., 22-23. 

57. Ibid., 23.

58. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, 14.

59. Frank Hoffman, “Preparing for Hybrid Wars.” Marine Corps Gazette 91 (March 

2007): 58; David E. Johnson, Military Capabilities for Hybrid Warfare (Santa 

Monica, CA: RAND, 2010), 3; Peters, 38; Cordesman, 18, 36, 43-48; Hoffman, 

“Lessons From Lebanon: Hezbollah and Hybrid Wars.”
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Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

60. Frank Hoffman, “Complex Irregular Warfare: The Next Revolution in Military 

Affairs.” Foreign Policy Research Institute (Summer 2006), 398; Hoffman, Conflict 

in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, 14; John J. McCuen, “Hybrid Wars.” 

Military Review (March-April 2008): 108; Biddle and Friedman, 59.

61. “There is much to learn about history but it rarely repeats itself.” Frank Hoffman, 

“Lessons From Lebanon: Hezbollah and Hybrid Wars.”

62. Biddle and Friedman, 77; Frank Hoffman, “The Hybrid Character of Modern 

Conflict” in Hybrid Warfare and Transnational Threats: Perspectives for an Era 

of Persistent Conflict (Washington, DC: CENSA, 2011), 42-45.

63. Hoffman and Mattis, 1.

64. Frank Hoffman, “Small Wars Revisited: The United States and Nontraditional 

Wars.” Journal of Strategic Studies 28 (2005): 914; Robert M. Cassidy, “Why Great 

Powers Fight Small Wars Badly.” Military Review (September-October 2002): 41.

65. McCuen, 109.

66. Department of Defense Joint Staff, Irregular Warfare: Countering Irregular 

Threats Joint Operating Concept 2.0 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 

2010) 9, 16. The Joint Operating Concept for Irregular Warfare only refers to 

hybrid warfare in a footnote, which may account for the five ways it professes to 

counter irregular warfare: counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, foreign 

internal defense, counterinsurgency, and stability operations. 

67. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Doctrinal Publication 3-0: Unified 

Land Operations (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2011), 4.

68. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Training Circular 7-100: Hybrid Threat 

(Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2010), 1-2.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid., 2-1.

71. Author’s discussion with Retired IDF General Officer and Member of the Winograd Commission, 8 March 2012, Tel Aviv, Israel. In this aspect, hybrid threats 

reveal their generic strategic disposition. The 2006 war illustrated that in the 

most simplistic terms, a large expeditionary force considers a stalemate a strategic loss while a hybrid threat considers a stalemate a strategic victory.

72. Author’s discussion with Retired IDF General Officer and Land Warfare Analyst, 

8 March 2012, Latrun, Israel. The danger in labeling any form of warfare is that 

it can over-simplify the problem for the commander; there are an abundance 

of prescriptive theories for counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, etc. For this 

reason, explanatory conclusions must accompany a theory describing a certain 

phenomenon in warfare. 

73. Frank Hoffman, “Hybrid vs. Compound War.” Armed Forces Journal Online 

(2009), accessed at www.armedforcesjournal.com on 2 September 2011.

74. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Doctrinal Publication 3-0: Unified 

Land Operations, 9. Michael J. Brennan and Justin Kelly, Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 
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JSOU Report 13-4

2009). This monograph focuses on operational art instead of the amorphous 

‘operational level of war’ which has a potential to subsume strategic concerns in 

military operations. All of the ‘levels of war’(tactical, operational, and strategic) 

are logical constructs which aid in organizing military actions and concepts, but 

this monograph will analyze the more specific sets of tactical actions, strategic 

aims, and the operational art which links them. For a deeper discussion on this 

subject and the viability of an ‘operational level of war,’ refer to Brennan and 

Kelly. 

75. Michael J. Brennan and Justin Kelly, “The Leavenworth Heresy and the Perversion of Operational Art.” Joint Forces Quarterly 56 (1st Quarter 2010): 112.

76. Shimon Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence (London: Frank Cass Publishing, 1997), 6-7; Huba Wass de Czege, “Operational Art: Continually Making Two 

Kinds of Choice in Harmony While Learning and Adapting.” Army 61 (September 2011): 54-55. Although, the strategic aims of war should include an appreciation for the limits of mechanical tactical means in war, as the tactical actions in 

war should include an understanding of the abstract strategic environment. 

77. Frans P.B. Osinga, Science, Strategy, and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd 

(London: Routledge, 2007), 236. Osinga’s commentary on John Boyd’s theories 

describes this in terms of “tempo.”

78. Brennan and Kelly, “The Leavenworth Heresy and the Perversion of Operational 

Art,” 114. Major Leighton Anglin suggested the metaphor of a “conduit” in a 

discussion with the author, 22 July 2011. This is a further reflection of the fusing 

of tactical actions, operational art, and strategic aims rather than separate, stratified levels of warfare. 

79. Brennan and Kelly, “The Leavenworth Heresy and the Perversion of Operational 

Art,” 114; Wass de Czege, “Thinking and Acting Like an Early Explorer,” 1-2, 4.

80. Alan Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War.” 

International Security 17 (1992):, 89; Brennan and Kelly, “The Leavenworth 

Heresy and the Perversion of Operational Art,” 115.

81. Francois Jullien, A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking, 

trans. Janet Lloyd (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004), 1, 3, 14. 

Jullien traces the Western lineage of thought to Greek philosophers, hence the 

usage of eidos and telos to illustrate the concepts of Western thought.

82. Ibid., 16, 21. Jullien states that “[p]otential consists of determining the circumstances with a view to profiting from them.” 

83. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Doctrinal Publication 3-0: Unified 

Land Operations, 12-13.Unified Land Operations doctrine describes Decisive, 

Shaping, and Sustaining operations as part of the operational framework. 

84. Hirsch, 2.

85. Antulio J. Echevarria II, “American Operational Art, 1917-2008,” in The Evolution 

of Operational Art, eds. Martin Van Creveld and John Andreas Olsen (Oxford, 

UK: The Oxford University Press, 2011), 137, 161.
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Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

86. Michael R. Matheny, Carrying the War to the Enemy: American Operational Art 

to 1945 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), 4-9.

87. James J. Schneider, Vulcan’s Anvil: The American Civil War and the Foundations 

of Operational Art (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General 

Staff College, 2004), 2, 26, 30.

88. Ibid., 17, 33-35.

89. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret 

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 24-25, 65-67; Matheny, 9. 

Significantly, Clausewitz died in 1832 before On War was complete to his satisfaction and must be studied with this fact in mind. As a result, some of the 

grander concepts that lead his work were not completely reconciled with discussions on operations and tactics later in On War. An additional hindrance 

for modern readers is Clausewitz’s use of the term strategy to describe grand 

strategy, theater-level military strategic, and operational art; his use of the term 

must be considered in the context for each usage in On War. 

90. Antulio J. Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War (Oxford, UK: Oxford 

University Press, 2007), 141-142, 145; Clausewitz, 227-229, 236-237, 263-270.

91. Clausewitz, 119-121, 139-140; Beyerchen, 73, 77.

92. Antoine Bousquet, The Scientific Way of War: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields 

of Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 87, 89-90.

93. Clausewitz, 595-596; Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War, 179.

94. Clausewitz, 485-487, 597; Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War, 180.

95. Werner Hahlweg, “Clausewitz and Guerrilla Warfare” in Clausewitz and Modern 

Strategy, ed. Michael Handel (London: Frank Cass, 1986), 128-131; Peter Paret, 

The Cognitive Challenge of War (Princeton, NJ: The Princeton University Press, 

2009), 97-99; Christopher Daase, “Clausewitz and Small Wars” in Clausewitz 

in the Twenty-First Century, eds. Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe

(Oxford, UK: The Oxford University Press, 2007), 183; Clausewitz, 479-483. 

Although On War has little focus on irregular warfare as we would recognize it 

today, his earlier lectures on small wars (Kleinkrieg) and guerilla warfare (Volkskreig) are integrated into his short passage “The People in Arms.” 

96. Jacob W. Kipp, “The Tsarist and Soviet Operational Art” in The Evolution of 

Operational Art, eds. Martin Van Creveld and John Andreas Olsen (Oxford, 

UK: The Oxford University Press, 2011); G.S. Isserson, The Evolution of Operational Art, trans. Bruce W. Menning (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army School 

of Advances Military Studies, 2005); Aleksandr A. Svechin, Strategy, ed. Kent 

D. Lee (Minneapolis, MN: East View Publications, 1992), 217-256.

97. Richard W. Harrison, Architect of Soviet Victory: The Life and Theories of G.S. 

Isserson (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2010), 76-78. USSR Commissariat of Defense, Field Service Regulations Soviet Army 1936, trans. Charles 

Borman (Washington, DC: The Army War College, 1937), 1-2, 59-61; Isserson, 

49.
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98. USSR Commissariat of Defense, 1-2, 7; Harrison, 69, 149.

99. Isserson, 150; Harrison, 98. 

100. Richard M. Swain, “Filling the Void: The Operational Art and the U.S. Army.” in 

Operational Art: Developments in the Theory of War, eds. B.J.C. McKercher and 

Michael Hennessy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), 159; Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual100-5:Operations (Washington, DC: Department 

of the Army, 1986), 14-16.

101. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Doctrinal Publication 3-0: Unified 

Land Operations, 1.

102. Ibid., 5-6.

103. Ibid., 10.

104. Linda P. Beckerman, The Non-Linear Dynamics of War (Science Applications 

International Corporation), section 6.2. Author’s discussion with Israeli Military 

Analyst, 9 March 2012, Tel Aviv, Israel. One example of this concept for interconnected warfare is revealed in the off-handed Israeli description of the 2006 war 

as “our northern system.”

105. Beyerchen, 62, 80.

106. Beckerman, section 1.5.

107. Ibid., section 5.6.

108. Ibid., section 6.2.

109. Ibid., Conclusions.

110. Everett Carl Dolman, Pure Strategy: Power and Principle in the Space and Information Age (New York: Frank Cass, 2005), 3-4. Dolman highlights this inherent 

tension in operational art, that strategy requires continual positions of relative advantage while tactics that use decisive efforts require a culmination and 

reconsolidation. 

111. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual 5-0: The Operations Process (Incl. Change 1) (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2011), p. 3-1. 

Army doctrine further describes the operational approach as “a broad conceptualization of the general actions that will produce the conditions that define the 

desired end state....[it] provides the logic that underpins the unique combinations of tasks required to achieve the desired end state.” 

112. Richard B. Johnson, The Biggest Stick: The Employment of Artillery Units in 

Counterinsurgency (master’s thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2011), 88-163. This section on Context draws heavily on the author’s original 

work while researching the employment of artillery units in counterinsurgency 

operations. It is intended as a brief overview of the cultural, historical and strategic context, not an exhaustive treatment on the roots of conflict in Vietnam.

113. Jeffery Race, War Comes to Long An (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 

1972), 151.
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Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

114. Ngo Quang Truong, Indochina Monographs: Territorial Forces (Washington, 

DC: U.S. Army Center for Military History, 1981), 9.

115. Ngo, 10-11.

116. Bernard Fall, The Two Vietnams (New York: Praeger, 1967), 6.

117. William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976), 

52.

118. Fall, The Two Vietnams, 54. During the early years of World War II, the Japanese 

allowed the sustained administration of French Indochina by an overseas government loyal to the Vichy French, and this uneasy setup lasted until the liberation 

of metropolitan France by Allied forces. 

119. Ibid., 67.

120. Fall, The Two Vietnams, 68-71; Bernard Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place (Philadelphia: Lippincot Press, 1966), 23.

121. Fall, The Two Vietnams, 13, 78.This is partially a reflection of the Vietnamese 

expansion from their ethnic northern base in a southward colonial fashion, 

concurrent with the start of European competition in Asia.

122. Vo Nguyen Giap, Inside the Vietminh: Vo Nguyen Giap on Guerrilla War (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Association, 1962), chapter 4; Fall, Hell in a Very Small 

Place, 482. Giap’s account of Dien Bien Phu is an excellent self-examination of 

the strengths and liabilities inherent to his style of guerrilla warfare. Although it 

has some tones of Marxist exhortation, it maintains a seemingly objective view 

towards the military aspects of the campaign. French officers and historians 

rightly view this as a defeat, not a surrender.

123. Fall, The Two Vietnams, 318-320.

124. Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy (New York: Shocken Books, 1961), 345.

125. Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (London: Chatto and 

Windus, 1966), 121-140; Robert Thompson, No Exit From Vietnam. (New York: 

Davis McKay Company, 1969), 169-170; Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken (New 

York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 156-159; Robert Komer, Bureaucracy 

at War: U.S. Performance in the Vietnam Conflict (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 

1986), 138; Fall, Street Without Joy, 363. The Strategic Hamlet program was an 

effort to extend governance to the countryside and provide a local counterorganization to the VC, with theoretical roots in the Malayan Emergency. The 

execution and scope of the Strategic Hamlet program was uneven; it did not 

enjoy initial support from MACV, did not incorporate enough local security, 

and it began hastily in regions with nepotistic connections to the Diem regime. 

The VC viewed this as an opportunity to insert an intelligence network into the 

villages themselves. In any case, the sudden collapse of the Diem regime effectively terminated the program. The Strategic Hamlet program failed to achieve 

any cohesive effect, and at its conclusion in 1963 there were an estimated 23 VC 

battalions operating in the Mekong Delta, the very region where the program 

was initiated. 
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126. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 56, 67-68. The effort in SVN counted 16,000 

advisors by January 1964. Through prior command relationships and mentorship between Westmoreland and Ambassador Maxwell Taylor, Westmoreland 

effectively served as a deputy ambassador for military affairs. 

127. Ngo, 26, 96. Formalized in 1961, the GVN eventually organized these territorial forces into Regional Forces (RFs) and Popular Forces (PFs) in 1964. This 

gave the GVN a force to fight an insurgency that had grown from a “brush fire 

subversion,” since they had to focus the conventional forces of ARVN along 

the border. RFs constituted a military force at the disposal of a district-level or 

provincial-level leader, while the PFs served a military function for local security 

in individual villages. 

128. Edward Lansdale, “Contradictions in Military Culture” in The Lessons of Vietnam, ed. W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson Frizzell (New York: Crane, Russak 

and Company, 1977), 45; Moyar, 412-416. As 1965 approached, General William 

C. Westmoreland (Commander, MACV) and his staff realized that the disjointed 

strategy of defending large bases to bomb military targets in North Vietnam was 

having minimal effect within SVN itself. The initial plan for 68 battalions was 

intended to “halt the losing trend,” with pacification remaining the responsibility 

of ARVN forces. 

129. Truong Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir (San Diego, CA: Harcourt-Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 130-140, 169. A note on terminology: different scholarly works 

assign different labels to elements of the hybrid threat in Vietnam. The People’s 

Army of Vietnam (PAVN) of the DRV appears as the North Vietnamese Army 

(NVA) in most texts referred to in this monograph. As such, this is the label 

assigned to the conventional forces operating under guidance from the Central 

Office for South Vietnam (COSVN). Similarly, for southern or regrouped Communist forces under the guidance of the National Liberation Front (NLF), the 

label Vietcong (VC) appears more frequently than the official People’s Liberation 

Armed Forces (PLAF). Although the term VC was a pejorative for any Vietnamese Communist (viet nam cong san), it is the most recognizable in applicable 

literature. 

130. Race, 142-149.

131. Douglas Pike, PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam (Novato, CA: Da Capo Press, 

1986), 220; Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the 

National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 

1966), 111.

132. Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1966), 236-237. 

Of note, many of these VC soldiers and supporters regrouped to the north in 

the aftermath of the 1954 partition, which meant they had to be re-introduced 

to SVN.

133. Truong Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir (San Diego, CA: Harcourt-Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 130-133.
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Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

134. Mao Tse-Tung, On Guerrilla Warfare (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1961) 

translated by William B. Griffith, 54-55; Mao Tse-Tung, The Selected Writings of 

Mao Tse-Tung (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1972), 210-214; Douglas Pike, 

PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam (Novato, CA: Da Capo Press, 1986), 223. Mao’s 

model of protracted warfare describes three phases of warfare. The first phase is 

the development of political movement and limited guerilla operations controlled 

by the party. The second phase is a transition to full-scale guerilla warfare, and 

is viewed as a strategic stalemate which can last the longest time. In this phase, 

the force establishes base areas and uses dispersion to entice the enemy force into 

fruitless search-and-destroy operations. In the third phase, guerrillas supplement conventional units in open warfare (both mobile and positional battles), 

although Mao does not intend for a huge leap between the approaches in the 

second and third phases.

135. Race, 159-161.

136. The Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954-1975 (Lawrence, KS: University of 

Kansas Press, 2002) trans Merle K. Pribbenow, 66-70; Douglas Pike, PAVN: 

People’s Army of Vietnam (Novato, CA: Da Capo Press, 1986), 45; Richard K. 

Dembrowski, Eating Dinner with a Fork, Spoon, and Knife: How a corps executed 

MACV’s One War Strategy (master’s thesis, School of Advanced Military Studies, 

2009), 10.

137. Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History 

of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954-1975 (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas 

Press, 2002) trans Merle K. Pribbenow,76; Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and 

Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, 325-327.

138. Military History Institute of Vietnam, 192, 248.

139. Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

(New York: Random House, 1988), 206-211; Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization 

and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, 235.

140. Dale Andrade, “Westmoreland was Right: Learning the Wrong Lessons From 

the Vietnam War,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 19, no. 2 (June 2008): 146.

141. Standing Committee of A26, “Matters to be Grasped when Performing the Ideological Task in the Party Body” in Viet-Nam Documents and Research Notes, 

‘Decisive Victory: Step by Step, Bit by Bit’ (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University 

Vietnam Archive, 1969), 11.

142. Vo Nguyen Giap, How We Won the War (Philadelphia, PA: RECON Publications, 

1976), 13.

143. Headquarters, United States Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, PAVN 

Artillery (Rocket Units)-1967 (Saigon: United States Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, 1967), 1, 34.

144. James B. Lincoln, “Letter to Clark Lincoln dated 14 August 1965 Comparing NLF 

and Saigon Forces.” in A Vietnam War Reader, ed. Michael H. Hunt (Chapel Hill, 

NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 66. Most veterans of America’s 
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contemporary counterinsurgencies also recognize the value of light, mobile 

indirect fires systems to an insurgent.

145. Randall N. Briggs, “Compound Warfare in Vietnam” in Compound Warfare: 

That Fatal Knot, ed. Thomas M. Huber (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CGSC Press, 

2002), 230.

146. Military History Institute of Vietnam, 138-139.

147. Vo Nguyen Giap, “The Resistance War Against French Imperialism” in Guerrilla Warfare and Marxism, ed. William J. Pomeroy (New York: International 

Publishers Company, 1968), 219.

148. Pike, PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam, 212. This graphic is adapted from Pike’s 

original work, to apply his graphical representation with the terminology and 

context herein.

149. Ibid., 215-217.

150. Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation 

Front of South Vietnam, 109-111, 234-235.

151. Hoang Ngoc Lung, Indochina Monographs: Strategy and Tactics (Washington, 

DC: U.S. Army Center for Military History, 1978), 122, 124.

152. Ho Chi Minh, “Instruction to Establish the Vietnam Propaganda Unit for 

National Liberation” in Guerrilla Warfare and Marxism, ed. William J. Pomeroy 

(New York: International Publishers Company, 1968), 204; Pike, PAVN: People’s 

Army of Vietnam, 28-29.

153. Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation 

Front of South Vietnam, 124-132, 233, 237. For an illustration of this theory 

in practice, refer to: Propaganda and Training Section X69, Study on the 1969 

Spring - Summer Campaign SR6 COSVN (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University 

Vietnam Archive, 1969).

154. Van Canh Nguyen, Vietnam Under Communism, 1975-1982 (Stanford, CA: 

Hoover Institute Press, 1983), 9; Briggs, 226 (quotation).

155. Political Department, People’s Liberation Army, Outline of the Reorientation of 

Forthcoming Missions in 1970 For Elementary and Intermediate Cadre (Lubbock, 

TX: Texas Tech University Vietnam Archive, 1970), 4, 10-11; Pike, PAVN: People’s 

Army of Vietnam, 239-241.

156. Standing Committee of A26, 5-6; Hoang, 125. General Hoang adds the economic, 

social, and cultural domains to his analysis of the threat. 

157. Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins 

University Press, 1986), 167, 192.

158. Pike, PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam, 245; Tran Dinh Tho, Indochina Monographs: Pacification (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center for Military History, 

1978), 184.

159. Giap, Inside the Vietminh: Vo Nguyen Giap on Guerilla War, I-3 to I-5, I-9 to I-10.
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Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

160. Vo Nguyen Giap, The Military Art of People’s War (New York Monthly Review 

Press, 1970) ed Russell Stetler, 179 - 181; Giap, Inside the Vietminh: Vo Nguyen 

Giap on Guerilla War, II-4, I-12. Although this localized focus may lead to some 

areas tending towards regular warfare before others, Giap still visualized an 

overall gradual buildup to mobile warfare with guerrilla characteristics. 

161. Pike, PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam, 219.

162. Hoang, 126.

163. Political Department, People’s Liberation Army, 2.

164. Walter McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 167, 190-193. McDougall’s model of continuous policy traditions in 

American foreign relations does not cast “containment” as a radical departure 

from other traditions of orderly liberty, unilateralism, progressive imperialism, and expansionism. McDougall tenuously links another tradition of “global 

meliorism” to the strategic context of Vietnam, contending that the attempt to 

establish democracy in SVN took on the character of America’s own domestic 

agenda. However, this monograph omits McDougall’s global meliorism as a 

policy motivation, owing to the factual inaccuracies regarding the Strategic 

Hamlet program and a disjointed treatment of CORDS in Promised Land, Crusader State. 

165. McDougall, 163.

166. Graham A. Cosmas, U.S. Army in Vietnam: MACV, The Joint Command in the 

Years of Escalation 1962 to 1967 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center for Military 

History, 2006), 483.

167. Hoang, 134; Harry G. Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam 

War (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982), 87-89. In On Strategy, Harry Summers 

makes a compelling argument that the strategy itself was wrong, and that instead 

of countering insurgent forces in SVN the U.S. should have primarily oriented 

on military action against the DRV. However, this is a thin view of the historical strategic context at the outset of American commitment in 1954, since the 

recent experience in Korea created an overriding avoidance of Chinese or Soviet 

introduction to the conflict. It also discounts the fact that the NLF did not see 

itself as beholden to Hanoi, nor did it rely on the DRV for most of its resources.

168. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual 100-5 (Washington, DC: 

Department of the Army, 1954), 6.

169. Summers, 1.

170. William C. Westmoreland, “A Military War of Attrition” in The Lessons of Vietnam, ed. W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson Frizzell (New York: Crane, Russak 

and Company, 1977), 64.

171. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 150-151.

172. Komer, 142; Headquarters, U.S. Military Assistance Command - Vietnam, Viet 

Cong Loss of Population Control Evidence from Captured Documents (Lubbock, 

TX: Texas Tech University Vietnam Archive,1968).
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173. Komer, 147.

174. Richard Hunt, Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam’s Hearts and 

Minds (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), 82, 87-92. Komer and General 

Creighton Abrams took positions as deputies for pacification and ARVN forces, 

respectively. Specifically, Westmoreland delegated command authority for pacification efforts to Komer, but as a civilian he was deliberately not a Deputy 

Commander. CORDS did not run through military unit chain-of-commands 

below Corps level, but instead via GVN administrative divisions down to the 

district level. This was an effort to prevent meddling by tactical military leaders 

as seen in Operation CEDAR FALLS. CORDS had civilian and military supervisor-subordinate roles and vice versa, to include ratings. It maintained the 

same six departments as the OCO (Refugees, Psychological Operations, New 

Life Development, Revolutionary Directorate Cadre, the Cheu Hoi program for 

Communist defectors, and Public Safety), plus four additional administrative 

departments (Management Support, Research and Analysis, Plans, and Reports 

and Evaluations).

175. Eric Bergerud, The Dynamics of Defeat: the Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province 

(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 223; Vincent Davis, writing to John Paul 

Vann as cited in Sheehan, 697; Vietnam II Panel Discussion, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Art of War Scholars Seminar, 18 January 2011, 

Fort Leavenworth, KS. The Hamlet Evaluation System attempted to quantitatively rate the qualitative indicators of pacification’s progress at the lowest level. 

Military veterans of CORDS politely describe it as “tedious,” or derisively as the 

“body count for pacification.”

176. Bergerud, 223, 224, 226, 234, 237, 246; Tran, 183; Ngo, 94; Summers, 96-97. The 

GVN and ARVN leadership saw the APC as the only effective way to meet the 

communist organizations head-on in accordance with American policies and 

goals. These measures were essentially coercive; only designed to provide a military presence in contested hamlets. CORDS viewed APC as the most successful 

GVN program to date, and VC-controlled hamlets dropped from 16.4% in January 1968 to 2.8% by December 1969. It also forced American and Vietnamese 

counterparts to align their effort, but American soldiers still exhibited distrust 

for ARVN. The APC also unwittingly masked the fact that the GVN was not 

stronger; the VC was just significantly weaker after the Tet Offensive. Thus, APC 

ensured that the real losers of the Tet Offensive was the VC, since it ensured the 

eventual victory would be dominated by cadres from the DRV. 

177. Vietnam Veteran, Interview BA030 by Aaron Kaufman and Dustin Mitchell, Fort 

Leavenworth, KS, 24 February 2011; Vietnam II Panel Discussion, U.S. Army 

Command and General Staff College Art of War Scholars Seminar, 18 January 

2011, Fort Leavenworth, KS; Krepinevich, 173-175. Earlier attempts to establish 

effective local security forces included Combined Action Platoons (CAPs) and 

the Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG). CAPs began as a test program 

in the I Corps area, utilizing Marine elements to live at the village level in an 

attempt to destroy VC support networks, protect the population, organize local 
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intelligence nets, and train the Popular Force. Unfortunately, Marine leaders 

failed to arrange CAPs in critical areas akin to the ‘oil spot’ principle, and Army 

leaders successfully cast this as a do-nothing approach. CIDG elements, advised 

(and sometimes led by) American Special Forces advisors, operated in remote 

areas of operation in the central highlands to secure the population against VC 

infiltration. As such, they did not always have organic support capabilities and 

consequently served a limited, but successful role.

178. Jesse Faugstad, “No Simple Solution,” Military Review (July-August 2010): 34-35.

179. Headquarters United States Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, RF-PF 

Handbook for Advisors (Saigon: United States Military Assistance CommandVietnam, 1969), 6.

180. Faugstad, 39, 41.

181. Graham A. Cosmas, U.S. Army in Vietnam: MACV, The Joint Command in 

the Years of Withdrawal 1968 to 1973 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center for 

Military History, 2006), 128-139. Although this was an attempt to arrange tactical actions, contemporary literature alternatively described it as the One War 

Strategy.

182. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 334.

183. James Willbanks, Abandoning Vietnam (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas 

Press, 2004), 21.

184. Bergerud, 223, 241.

185. Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations - U.S. Department of Defense, A 

Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam, vol 

I (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1966), 1-2; Komer, 142. Vietnamization was not the first initiative to unify these lines of effort. The March 1966 

report “A Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South 

Vietnam” (awkwardly abbreviated as PROVN) asserted that “Victory can only 

be achieved through bringing the individual Vietnamese, typically a rural peasant, to support willingly the Government of South Vietnam. The critical actions 

are those that occur at the village, district and provincial levels. This is where 

the war must be fought; this is where that war and the object which lies beyond 

it must be won.” It offered six recommendations: Concentrate operations at the 

provincial level, give rural construction primacy among joint US-ARVN efforts, 

authorize direct involvement of U.S. officials in local GVN affairs, designate the 

U.S. ambassador as the sole manager of all U.S. activities, direct the sole manager 

to develop a single unified plan, and re-affirm to the world the strategic objective 

of a free and independent non-communist SVN. Ultimately, MACV suppressed 

the report but several of the themes were satisfied with CORDS.

186. Hoang, 136; Willbanks, 285-286. Willbanks offers four conclusions on Vietnamization: it should have started earlier, earlier efforts should have focused on developing ARVN to counter the Communist subversion threat, later efforts towards 

a conventional ARVN should have focused on collective fire and maneuver 
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skills instead of American technology and firepower, and the GVN should have 

addressed internal issues like corruption and poor leadership.

187. Westmoreland, “A Military War of Attrition,” 70; Briggs, 250.

188. Henry Kissinger, “The Vietnam Negotiations.” Foreign Affairs 47, no. 2 (January 

1969): 214.

189. Krepinevich, 170-171.

190. Bousquet, 154.

191. Ibid., 121.

192. Westmoreland, “A Military War of Attrition,” 62; A Soldier Reports, 55-57; 

Hoang, 4.

193. Krepinevich, 168; Race, 198. All else was produced locally and infiltration from 

the north was negligible compared to locally-raised forces.

194. Fall, Street Without Joy, 347; Van, 9-10; PAVN Officer, “Interview on the Intensified Military Effort, 1963 - 1964” in A Vietnam War Reader, ed. Michael H. Hunt 

(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 64-65. Other sources 

indicate a higher ratio of troops from the north, but still see a preponderance of 

recruitment from SVN. The debrief of a NVA officer in 1964 shows a clear pattern of replacing losses in liberated areas: ‘[e]ven if Hanoi stopped sending arms, 

supplies, and men to the Front, the Front would still be able to win because the 

Front responds to the aspirations of the people.”

195. Carter Malkasian, A History of Modern Wars of Attrition (Westport, CT: Praeger, 

2002), 192.

196. Current Affairs Committee C69, PLAF Assessment - Strategy (Lubbock, TX: Texas 

Tech University Vietnam Archive, 1969), 36-38; Ninth COSVN Conference, 

“Resolution on a Shifting Strategy” in A Vietnam War Reader, ed. Michael H. 

Hunt (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 105; Briggs, 

244. This metric also failed to account for the fact that the American people 

would not accept a ratio which equated the lives of their sons with the lives of 

the enemy.

197. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Sharpening the Combat Edge: The Use 

of Analysis to Reinforce Military Judgment (Washington, DC: Department of the 

Army, 1974), 157-159. 

198. Standing Committee of A26, 3.

199. Bousquet, 159.

200. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Sharpening the Combat Edge: The Use 

of Analysis to Reinforce Military Judgment, 162.

201. Race, 141, 179-180.

202. Thompson, No Exit From Vietnam, 165. Apparently, Thompson recognized that 

complexity and non-summative properties work both ways.

203. Political Department, People’s Liberation Army, 16.
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Johnson: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare

204. Lewis Sorley, Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes 1968-1972 (Lubbock, TX: 

Texas Tech University Press, 2004), 376; Andrade, 147. Andrade refutes Krepinevich’s argument in The Army and Vietnam that a secured countryside would 

have withstood the NVA’s 1973 and 1975 campaigns; he illustrates that continued pacification would not have addressed “the enemy lurking in the shadows” 

(across the border) to sweep away these gains. This reflects Abrams’ earlier contention that “[y]ou just can’t conduct pacification in the face of an NVA division” 

no matter the standoff.

205. Johnson, The Biggest Stick: The Employment of Artillery Units in Counterinsurgency, 164-262. This section on Context draws heavily on the author’s original 

work while researching the employment of artillery units in counterinsurgency 

operations. It is intended as a brief overview of the cultural, historical and strategic context, not an exhaustive treatment on the roots of conflict in Iraq.

206. 1st Infantry Division, Soldier’s Handbook to Iraq (Wurzburg, GE: 1st Infantry 

Division, 2004), v. 1st Infantry Division issued this handbook to soldiers before 

deployments to Iraq in 2004. It is representative of handbooks developed internally by U.S. Army units in the earlier years of the war. These handbooks are 

thick with background facts of Iraq and useful Arabic phrases, but neglect a 

thorough analysis of culture in Iraq.

207. 1st Infantry Division, v.; Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (New York: Cambridge 

University Press, 2005), 8-9. Equally important is the demographic aspect of Iraqi 

society in terms of urban and rural populations. Iraq has many large and modern 

metropolitan centers, to include Baghdad at over 5.6 million residents, Mosul (in 

the north) and Basra (in the south) each have over 1 million inhabitants. Kurdish 

population centers in northern Iraq include Irbil (839,600), Kirkuk (728,800), 

and As Sulaymaniyah (643,200); predominately Shi’a Arab cities to the south 

include An Najaf (563,000), Karbala (549,700), and An Nasiriyah (535,100). Cities 

in the Sunni Arab heartland are considerably smaller: Fallujah and Ramadi in 

the Euphrates River Valley, and Balad, Samarra, Tikrit, and Bayji in Tigris River 

Valley.

208. Interview BF020, Civilian Advisor to MNF-I, Interview by Richard Johnson 

and Aaron Kaufman, Boston, MA, 11 March 2011. Disaffected Shi’a exiles and 

nationalistic Kurds that influenced early U.S. plans for civil re-development in 

Iraq drove this perception among strategists and planners. Arguably, urban 

Sunni and Shi’a nationalists had more in common than urban and rural Islamists 

from the same sect or ethnicity in 2003.

209. Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco (London: Penguin Press, 2007), 5-6. Critically, the 

Coalition force failed to destroy the core of the 80,000-strong Republican Guard 

during this campaign before terminating operations at a position of military 

advantage.

210. Ricks, Fiasco, 13-15.

211. Michael R. Gordon and Bernard Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006).This is merely a 
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summary of “The Ground War,” which will be examined later as the first phase 

of hybrid warfare. One of the best sources for further research into this conventional campaign is Gordon and Trainor’s comprehensive account and analysis.

212. These measures included the prohibition from flying American flags or displaying 

any other overt signs of foreign power within direct view of the Iraqi population.

213. Peter R. Mansoor, Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq (New 

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 356. At the time of this observation 

(June 2003), Colonel Mansoor was a brigade commander in eastern Baghdad.

214. Ahmed S. Hashim, “The Insurgency in Iraq,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 14, no. 

3 (August 2003): 5-9. The notion of a “passive” interconnectedness is the author’s 

own characterization.

215. John Mackinlay and Alison Al-Baddawy, Rethinking Counterinsurgency (Santa 

Monica, CA: RAND, 2008), 58.

216. Ricks, The Gamble, 172. Ricks cites the example of C/2-16 IN in Adamiyah.

217. David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 

2009), 137. At the time of his observations, Kilcullen was working as a counterinsurgency advisor to Petraeus.

218. Gordon and Trainor, 447.

219. Timothy S. McWilliams, Al-Anbar Awakening: U.S. Marines and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 2004-2009 (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2009), 

86.

220. Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War Through Western Eyes (New 

York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 172, 179. This is strikingly similar to 

the IDF’s generalized preconception of an Arab enemy that pervaded the 2006 

conflict in Lebanon, ignoring the fact that while Arab armies are historically 

less successful in regular campaigns, they have a decent record in irregular 

campaigns. 

221. Ahmed S. Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 33.

222. Ibid., 12-16. The Hussein regime conceptually understood the value in an admixture of regular and irregular units, but did not implement them to sufficiently 

exhaust U.S. forces indirectly. In spite of over 4,000 foreign fighters to complement the Saddam Fedayeen, they failed to stop (or even significantly delay) the 

approach to Baghdad. 

223. Carter Malkasian, “Counterinsurgency in Iraq: May 2003-January 2010,” in 

Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare, ed. Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2010), 290-291, 296; Matt M. Matthews, 

Operation Al Fajr: A Study in Army and Marine Corps Joint Operations (Fort 

Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2006), 37, 45-46; Combat 

Studies Institute, Eyewitness to War: The US Army in Operation Al Fajr, An 

Oral History (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2006).The 

two battles of Fallujah (March - April 2004 and November - December 2004) 
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included complex obstacle systems covered by fires, strongpoint defenses of 40 

-50 fighters, and well-constructed fighting positions much like a contemporary 

U.S. Army or Marine unit would defend urban terrain. For first-hand accounts 

of the regular warfare aspects of this engagement, see Operation Al Fajr and 

Eyewitness to War. 

224. Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, xviii; Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual 3-24: Counterinsurgency (Washington, DC: 

Department of the Army, 2006), p. 3-14. Hashim points out that the insurgency 

began during a perceived foreign occupation, before the constitution of a legitimate host nation government. Interestingly, according to U.S. Army counterinsurgency doctrine (developed specifically to address doctrinal shortcomings 

highlighted in OIF) this would categorize it as a “resistance movement” which 

would “tend to unite insurgents with different objectives and motivations.”

225. Hoffman, “The Hybrid Character of Modern Conflict,” 46. As Hoffman observes: 

“It is not clear how we adapt our campaign planning...in Iraq we continue to 

separate warfighting from “population-centric counterinsurgency,” or think of 

counterterrorism and counterinsurgency as two separate approaches.” 

226. Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, 148-151.

227. Ibid., 150. This graphic is adapted from Kilcullen’s original work, to apply his 

graphical representation with the terminology and context herein. 

228. Ibid., 152.

229. BF020, Interview.

230. Mackinlay and Al-Baddawy, 39-42.

231. Brian Burton and John Nagl, “Learning as We Go: the U.S. Army Adapts to 

COIN in Iraq, July 2004-December 2006,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 19, no. 

3 (September 2008): 323.

232. BD010, Field Grade Officer, Interview by Benjamin Boardman and Dustin Mitchell, Fort Knox, KY, 14 March 2011. The respondent had direct knowledge of 

Operation Baton Rouge, a combined operation to clear insurgent and terrorist 

forces in Samarra.

233. Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 178-179.

234. Carter Malkasian, “The Role of Perceptions and Political reform in Counterinsurgency: The Case of Western Iraq, 2004-2005,” Small Wars and Insurgencies

17, no 3 (September 2006): 379-385. Malkasian describes four events that reinforced this notion within Sunni groups (the April 2004 uprisings, the ceasefire 

in Operation Al Fajr I, the June 2004 transfer of sovereignty, and continued 

promises of a timetable-based U.S. withdrawal), and five events that reversed the 

notion (suppressing JAM in Najaf, Operation Al Fajr II, partnered presence for 

security, successful national elections, and the adoption of a conditions-based 

withdrawal). 
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235. BH020, Field Grade Officer, Interview by Mark Battjes, Ben Boardman, Robert 

Green, Richard Johnson, Aaron Kaufman, Dustin Mitchell, Nathan Springer, 

and Thomas Walton, Washington, DC, 21 March 2011.

236. BH070, Iraqi Mayor, Interview by Mark Battjes and Robert Green, Washington, 

DC, 25 March 2011. This mayor had direct knowledge of these efforts in Tal Afar.

237. Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 179.

238. BF010, Former Army Officer, Interview by Richard Johnson and Aaron Kaufman, 

Boston, MA, 11 March 2011.

239. John Lewis Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Cambridge, 

MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 86; BF010, Former Army Officer, Interview 

by Richard Johnson and Aaron Kaufman, Boston, MA, 11 March 2011. This 

strategic analyst (with experience as an Army officer) provided the following 

insight in 2011: “The purpose of the GWOT when it began, to my mind, was 

informed by a conviction, an honestly held conviction by people in the Bush 

administration, that the only way to really guarantee there wouldn’t be another 

9/11 was to fix the dysfunction of the Islamic World; to transform the Islamic 

World, and therefore remove those conditions giving rise to jihadism.”

240. Ricardo Sanchez, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story (New York: HarperCollins, 

2008), 444-446; Burton and Nagl, 304, 306; Ricks, Fiasco, 173; George Packer, 

“The Lesson of Tal Afar,” The New Yorker 82, no. 8 (10 April, 2006), www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/10/ 060410fa_fact2 (accessed 13 May 2011); Peter 

Chiarelli and Patrick Michaelis, “The Requirements for Full-Spectrum Operations,” Military Review 85, no. 4 (July-August 2005): 4. Through 2004, there was 

effectively no operational approach in Iraq. There was no link between the civil 

reconstruction effort at the Coalition Provisional Authority and the military 

headquarters, CJTF-7. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez did not have a published campaign plan during his command, nor did he provide the capacity to 

guide unified action. Sanchez claims that CENTCOM did not enact a plan for 

reconstruction in Iraq, and that he was initially unaware the plan even existed. 

Given this, and the fact that Army units still held a conventional mindset to win 

large-scale maneuver wars, many general officers doubt any commander could 

have done well. 

241. BA010, Brigade Commander, Interview by Richard Johnson and Thomas Walton, 

Fort Leavenworth, KS, 22 February 2011.

242. BI020, Battle Group Commander, Interview by Aaron Kaufman and Thomas 

Walton, United Kingdom, 31 March 2011. The respondent augmented the MNF-I 

staff at the time.

243. BA010, Brigade Commander, Interview by Richard Johnson and Thomas Walton, 

Fort Leavenworth, KS, 22 February 2011.

244. BH030, Iraq Veterans Panel, Interview by Mark Battjes, Robert Green, Aaron 

Kaufman, and Dustin Mitchell, Washington, DC, 22 March 2011.

245. Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, 124, 126.
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246. BH030, Interview. The units that this respondent refers to are: the 3rd Armored 

Cavalry Regiment, the 2nd BCT of the 1st Armored Division, and the 2nd BCT 

of the 1st Infantry Division, respectively.

247. Baker-Hamilton Commission, Iraq Study Group Report: Gravel Edition (Washington, DC: Filiquarian Publishing, 2006), 9, 52, 55, 71, 72-76. Commonly 

known as the ‘Iraq Study Group,’ this report recommended a mix of an external approach to leverage regional powers like Syria and Iran (to responsibly 

encourage disaffected groups to reconcile), and an internal approach to make 

security force assistance the primary mission of American forces until withdrawal. Significantly, the report did not allow for additional troops since it saw 

their presence as the “direct cause for violence in Iraq.”

248. Frederick W. Kagan, Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq (Washington, 

DC: American Enterprise Institute, 2006), 1.

249. Ricks, The Gamble, 95-97. Keane’s unofficial relationship with Petraeus and 

Odierno was unknown to Kagan at the time. Fortuitously, Odierno was already 

departing to take command of Multi-National Corps - Iraq, and Petraeus would 

soon follow to take command of the higher echelon, Multi-National Force - Iraq.

250. Kagan, 1. After vetting the concepts and operational feasibility of the plan with 

then-Colonel H.R. McMaster and some of his veterans of the Tal Afar campaign, 

it was refined by a council of colonels in the Pentagon. AEI presented the concept to several congressional representatives, then President Bush reviewed the 

resulting proposal, enacting the strategy in January 2007.

251. Ricks, The Gamble, Appendix B, Appendix C. The Gamble illustrates this contrast 

between the two approaches: Appendix B contains the brief Odierno received 

upon arrival in December 2006, and Appendix C contains Odierno’s inbrief to 

Petraeus, dated 8 February 2007. When considered sequentially along with AEI’s 

original concept in Choosing Victory, the transformation of the approach in Iraq 

takes shape. 

252. BH030, Interview. By virtue of his position on the MNF-I staff at the time, this 

respondent on the panel had direct knowledge of this planning effort. For clarity, 

the author substituted appropriate surnames for the callsigns and nicknames in 

the respondent’s original quote. 

253. Ibid. This respondent had direct knowledge of Petraeus’ efforts, owing to his 

experience in the MNF-I Initiatives Group.

254. BA070, Battery Commander, Interview by Richard Johnson and Thomas Walton, 

Fort Leavenworth, KS, 24 February 2011; BA010, Interview. Several measures 

influenced this, primarily the organizational increase in tactical commanders’ 

experience, but also the advent of an in-country repository for counterinsurgency adaptation and the application of refined doctrine. The Taji COIN Center 

provided a unique means of harmonizing operations, since all incoming units 

studied the commanders’ intents from multiple levels of the counterinsurgency 

effort. One commander said that since he understood these intents, he could 

adapt methods to a changing environment in order to obtain that desired end 
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state within his area. Doctrine encapsulated in Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency was perhaps the largest institutional effect, since it provided a common 

concept and lexicon for all deploying forces and augmentees. However, this was 

more evolution than a revolution, as many practitioners in Iraq held the view that 

this doctrine simply distilled practices and concepts that were already widely in 

use when it was published in 2006. 

255. BH020, Interview.

256. Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, 126-127.

257. Sean MacFarland and Neil Smith, “Anbar Awakens: The Tipping Point,” Military 

Review (March-April 2008): 42; BH040, Afghanistan Veterans Panel, Interview 

by Richard Johnson, Aaron Kaufman, Nathan Springer, and Thomas Walton, 

Washington, DC, 24 March 2011; Malkasian, “Counterinsurgency in Iraq: May 

2003-January 2010,” 303; McWilliams, 91. AQI viewed Ramadi as the future 

capital of its caliphate in Iraq and enjoyed relative freedom of movement in the 

area, making it almost exclusively denied terrain in the eyes of coalition forces. 

However, AQI had already worn out its welcome by late 2005, attempting to take 

over the lucrative smuggling routes to the west. One of the first groups (the Albu 

Issa tribe) to actively oppose them took its cue from these earlier efforts against 

AQI in Al Qaim (by the Abu Mahal tribe).

258. MacFarland and Smith, 43; William Doyle, A Soldier’s Dream: Captain Travis 

Patrinquin and the Awakening of Iraq (New York: NAL Caliber, 2011), 200-206. 

One factor that enabled this was the leeway given to an Army unit serving under 

a Marine headquarters, corroborated in interview with Interview BA010 (the 

respondent had direct knowledge of the planning and conduct of these operations in Ramadi).

259. Panel discussion during U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Art of 

War Scholars Seminar, Iraq Session, 3 February 2011, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

260. BC030, Battalion Commander; Interview by Benjamin Boardman and Richard 

Johnson, Fort Bragg, NC, 1 March 2011. The respondent operated in the Baghdad 

belts during this “wave of moderation” emanating from the west.

261. Malkasian, “Counterinsurgency in Iraq: May 2003-January 2010,” 290.

262. Ricks, Fiasco, 224, 261, 280. These early efforts lacked focus; at one point in 2003 

multiple intelligence analysts inside Abu Ghraib estimated that between 85% to 

90% of all detainees sent there were of no intelligence value. Units such as the 82d 

Airborne Division adapted and began to discriminate by screening, detaining 

over 3,800 Iraqis between August 2003 and March 2004 but only sending 700 

to Abu Ghraib.

263. Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar.”

264. Ricks, The Gamble, 210; BA010, Interview. The Gamble illustrates this point in 

the story of an AQI commander in Salah-ad’-Din province, whose captured diary 

from 2007 indicated that reconciliation reduced his strength from 600 fighters 

to only 20. 
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265. BH030, Interview.

266. Panel discussion during U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Art of 

War Scholars Seminar, Iraq Session, 3 February 2011, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

267. James N. Mattis, “USJFCOM Commander’s Guidance for Effects-Based Operations,” Parameters 38, no. 3 (Autumn 2008): 18. EBO was effectively abandoned 

in 2008, with General Mattis’ guidance for future dispensation of the model: “I 

am convinced that the various interpretations of EBO have caused confusion 

throughout the joint force and among our multinational partners that we must 

correct. It is my view that EBO has been misapplied and overextended to the 

point that it actually hinders rather than helps joint operations.”

268. Bousquet, 233-234; Cordesman, 54. Significantly, NCW pre-supposed eventual 

advances and proliferation of military networking technology, much in the same 

manner that early strategic air power advocates pre-supposed dominant advances 

in aircraft. Cordesman’s assessment of IDF information sharing equipment in 

2006 illustrates that modern forces do not have this capability yet, concluding 

that “A ‘Net’ is not a half-assed IT Dinosaur or a Failure Prone Toy.”

269. Antulio J. Echevarria II, Rapid Decisive Operations: An Assumptions-based Critique (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2001), 7-8.

270. Frederick W. Kagan, Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy (New York: Encounter Books, 2006), xv, 393-397; William J. Gregor, 

“Military Planning Systems and Stability Operations,” Prism 1, no. 3 (June 2010). 

Gregor’s analysis is an even account regarding the role of organizational culture 

and competing agendas as the American military struggled to adapt planning 

systems (to include EBO and NCW) in an era of persistent hybrid and irregular 

warfare among the populace.

271. AA510, Former DivArty Commander, Interview by Travis Moliere and Jesse 

Stewart, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 4 November 2010.

272. Ricks, Fiasco, 221. Ricks illustrates this with a 2004 quote by then-Major General 

Peter Chiarelli, who at the time commanded the 1st Cavalry Division.

273. BA010, Interview.

274. Panel discussion during U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Art of 

War Scholars Seminar, Iraq Session, 3 February 2011, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

275. AA810, Battalion Commander, Interview by Ken Gleiman, Matt Marbella, Brian 

McCarthy, and Travis Molliere, Washington, DC, 13 September 2010; BH030, 

Interview. The latter, a Battalion Commander during this time in OIF added: 

“I could almost care less on who is JAM in my sector. You need to focus on the 

people who influence, use that information to inform the PRT [the Provincial 

Reconstruction Team]. What the bad guys were doing was almost irrelevant at 

that point.”

276. BF020, Interview; Gordon and Trainor, 564, 586-590. This Cobra II contains the 

ORHA briefing slides and the actual CPA order. Against the counsel of many 

Iraqis (to include secular Shi’a interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi), the CPA 
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declared that all Ba’ath Party members would be banned from holding senior 

in the army and government. This effectively dissolved most security forces, 

though a review of officer records indicated that only 8,000 of the 140,000 officers 

were committed Ba’athists. Collapsing the army also resulted in a mass of up to 

400,000 military-aged males. Since Hussein’s regime virtually required Ba’ath 

Party membership for any middle and upper class government job, there was 

an overwhelming dearth of civil service professionals. This directly contributed 

to the environment absent of effective local security in 2003, resulting in nearlawlessness that the American military simply could not address itself.

277. Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar.” 

278. Kilcullen, 152.

279. “Winograd Commission Final Report.” Council on Foreign Affairs, accessed at: 

www.cfr.org/israel/winograd-commission-final-report/p15385 on 30 August 

2011.

280. This section’s epigraphs are drawn from: Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar;” BA040, 

Brigade Commander, Interview by Aaron Kaufman and Dustin Mitchell, 23 

February, 2011, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

281. The requirement to arrange tactical actions in pursuit of a strategic aim is not 

listed as a distinct imperative to avoid redundancy, because by definition the 

operational approach is the broad, episodic employment of operational art in a 

specific context. 

282. Author’s discussion with Israeli Diplomat, 7 March 2012, Jerusalem, Israel; 

Author’s discussion with Retired IDF General Officer and Land Warfare Analyst, 8 March 2012, Latrun, Israel. The IDF’s failure to consider the social and 

historical aspects which enabled Hezbollah’s evolution is but one example of 

this.

283. Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 72-73. Conversely, the employment of 

sound operational art should not impart additional complexity to the environment. Fighting complexity with complexity is actually the antithesis of holistic 

systems thinking, since it is more effective to understand the underlying dynamic 

interrelationships and address it with a simple solution. As such, the linearity of a 

solution is not a similarly ill-suited characteristic when compared to a solution’s 

uniformity and prescriptiveness in hybrid warfare. 

284. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual 100-5: Operations (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1982), page 2-2. This discussion of shock 

and dislocation is not a unique concept, rather an amalgam of existing theory. 

For example, the 1982 version of AirLand Battle doctrine provides a similar 

exhortation: . “... we must make decisions and act more quickly than the enemy 

to disorganize his forces and to keep him off balance.” 

285. Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence, 16-17; Paul J. Blakesley, Operational 

Shock and Complexity Theory (master’s thesis, School of Advanced Military Studies, 2005), 68-69. This assertion must be considered with the additional insight 
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that the actor, the force attempting to strike a hybrid threat to induce operational 

shock, is also profoundly interconnected in the same system of warfare.

286. Ofra Gracier, Between the Feasible and the Fantastic: Orde Wingate’s Long-Range 

Penetration - A Spatial View of the Operational Manoeuvre (doctoral dissertation, 

Tel Aviv University, 2008), 48-49.

287. Naveh, “The Cult of the Offensive Preemption,” 182. Israeli maneuver theorist 

Shimon Naveh develops this concept of an operational strike further, describing 

three chief components: “fragmentation - aimed at preventing the horizontal 

synergy among the components of the rival system from materializing; simultaneous action by the elements of the friendly system along the entire physical 

and cognitive depth of its rival’s layout in an attempt to disrupt the hierarchical interaction among its various elements; and momentum, predicated on the 

initiation of a successive chain of tactical actions, guided by a single aim and 

operating within the decision-action loop of the rival system.” 

288. Author’s discussion with Israeli Military Analyst, 8 March 2012, Tel Aviv, Israel.

289. Blakesley,18-19, 73. A combat operation which induces operational shock not only 

changes the physical vestiges of the environment from the enemy’s point of view, 

it also fundamentally changes the nature of the problem the enemy commander 

or command structure faces. This indelibly pushes the enemy’s system towards 

a chaotic state, which in more colloquial terms may represent ‘dissolution’ or 

‘collapse.’ 

290. BA010, Interview; Author’s discussion with Israeli Military Analyst, 9 March 

2012, Tel Aviv, Israel. In the Israeli experience, Hezbollah reorganized very 

clearly once the IDF could maintain contact with their forces on the ground, 

availing additional opportunities for action.

291. Leonhard, 66.

292. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual 3-0: Operations (Incl. 

Change 1) (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2011), page 7-7. This 

discussion casts dislocation with respect to functional relationships, a departure 

from the traditional military view of dislocation with respect to spatial relationships: “Dislocate means to employ forces to obtain significant positional advantage, rendering the enemy’s dispositions less valuable, perhaps even irrelevant. 

It aims to make the enemy expose forces by reacting to the dislocating action. 

Dislocation requires enemy commanders to make a choice: accept neutralization 

of part of their force or risk its destruction while repositioning.” 

293. B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (London: Faber and Faber, 1967), 323-325; John Boyd, 

Patterns of Conflict (unpublished presentation), 98, 115; Osinga, 34-35.

294. Author’s discussion with Retired IDF General Officer and Member of the Winograd Commission, 8 March 2012, Tel Aviv, Israel. One example of this could 

arise in a sequel to the 2006 war; as Hezbollah transforms its military to a more 

hierarchical system in the wake of the conflict, approaches like High Value Target 

(HVT) methodology may be considerably more effective in disrupting their new 
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logic after the initial operational shock of 2006. Although it is pure conjecture, 

this opportunity may have emerged had the 2006 war lasted longer than 34 days.

295. Hart, 327.

296. Ricks, The Gamble, 210. The account of the AQI leader in Salah-ad’-Din cited 

in the previous chapter provides one example of this. Few, if any, unclassified 

sources describe or analyze a similar mindset among AQI leaders in Fallujah or 

Tal Afar (roughly 2004), much less JAM leaders in Sadr City (2007-2008) or Basra 

(2009). However, it is likely they felt a similar sense of being trapped. Although a 

hybrid threat’s individual elements can always find at least one physical rat-line 

out of town, the utility of dislocation lies in this being trapped in a psychological 

sense, not a physical sense. 

297. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual 3-0: Operations (Incl. 

Change 1), pages 7-6 to 7-8. In the course of this study, the other three U.S. Army 

doctrinal defeat mechanisms were analyzed for their utility in hybrid warfare. 

Destruction through a single decisive attack is highly unlikely to present itself in 

the course of hybrid warfare. The sequential application of destruction, attrition, 

is not a viable option to defeat the hybrid threat, as seen in the previous case 

studies. In any case, this defeat mechanism will prompt a cost-benefit analysis 

by the hybrid threat to continue conflict, which may be summarily resumed 

once combat power is regenerated. Isolation may be a useful local tactic, but 

is nearly impossible in both physical and cognitive terms in a war including 

irregular forces distributed among the populace. Consequently, disintegration 

is another ill-suited defeat mechanism owing to its reliance on prior destruction 

or isolation. 

298. The term “end state myopia” first appears as a metaphoric affliction of commanders in: Steven Rotkoff, “Introspection and Emotional Vulnerability as Leader 

Development and Team Building Tools,” Small Wars Journal, www. smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/777-rotkoff.pdf (accessed 13 December 

2011).

299. Author’s discussion with Israeli Strategist, 7 March 2012, Jerusalem, Israel. This 

imperative becomes increasingly important because American forces will almost 

always face questions of legitimacy from a rival organization during expeditionary operations, much like Israeli forces in 2006.

300. BF010, Interview.

301. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Doctrinal Publication 3-0: Unified 

Land Operations, 4.

302. Author’s discussion with Retired IDF General Officer and Land Warfare Analyst, 

8 March 2012, Latrun, Israel. Conversely, land maneuver should convince the 

adversary that its position is one of a relative disadvantage, given a continuous 

arrangement of the force’s tactical victories.

303. Dolman, 96-100; Bousquet, 189-191. This relationship between the three respective modes of thought and contemporaneous military theory was brought to the 
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author’s attention during a seminar discussion by Major James Davis, Australian 

Army.

304. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Doctrinal Publication 3-0: Unified 

Land Operations, 10.

305. Department of Defense Joint Staff, Planner’s Handbook for Operational Design 

(Suffolk, VA: Joint Staff J-7, 2011), II-5, II-8 - II-9. This reflects the difference 

between a system or solution which is interactively complex (what we see as truly 

complex or nonlinear) and one which is structurally complex (what we see as 

merely complicated or linear). 

306. Author’s discussion with Israeli Military Analyst, 9 March 2012, Tel Aviv, Israel. 

Despite the IDF’s perceived predilection for SOD, this analyst succinctly asserted 

that it is a conceptual planning tool and not a method for coordination and 

synchronization.

307. Bar-Joseph, 154, 156-157; Sultan, 54, 56; Harel and Issacharof, 119-120, 126-128, 

136-139; Matthews, We Were Caught Unprepared, 45.

308. Attributed to Colonel Patrick Roberson, who used this as an illustration of the 

inherent complexity in warfare during a discussion with the author.