Army targeting hybrid warfare training

http://www.c4isrnet.com/story/military-tech/show-reporter/ausa-2015/2015/10/12/ausa-army-targeting-hybrid-warfare-training/73840498/

Amber Corrin, Senior Staff Writer, October 13, 2015

Warfare is taking on increasingly multi-dimensional operations, and the Army is adjusting training to take on hybrid threats emerging around the world, according to a top official.

Today hybrid can mean a lot of things – a combination of conventional capabilities, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, irregular warfare and cyber threats brought together in varying mixes, times and spaces. Mixes of warfare tactics aren't new, but there are distinct differences between the past and today, according to Army Chief of Staff GEN Mark Milley.

"What is uncommon today is the level of energy and sophistication that some of these actors are carrying out in hybrid warfare," Milley said Oct. 12 at the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting and exposition in Washington, D.C. "And there are new piece parts in the mix, such as electronic warfare, cyber warfare and precision munitions…it is a unique application we see unfolding in the Middle East [and] Ukraine. The current twist is a bit new."

Responding to evolving hybrid warfare means operating across an entire range of military operations, around the world and in conjunction with the other military services. It also means "re-energizing" combined arms-maneuver skills in addition to the counter-terrorism ground force skills in which the Army has excelled over the past 15 years of fighting, Milley said.

To that end, Army Training and Doctrine Command is issuing new general guidance on hybrid warfare, he added.

At TRADOC officials "have taken an amalgam of wars and conflicts going on right now, analyzed and studied that [and] published some training doctrine for the troops to use," Milley said. "The general guidance is if you're going to a named operation – specifically, if you're going to Afghanistan or Iraq – then you'll train specifically for that operation. However, absent going to a named operation, we're expecting our formations to train against a hybrid threat."

Part of that changing approach to training includes ongoing tweaks to the Decisive Active Training Environment (DATE), evolving scenarios and virtual environments at the Army's national training centers where changes are made to reflect real-life conflicts and lessons learned. That can include integrating training against scenarios like Russian artillery use in Ukraine, or increasing use of unmanned aerial systems, said GEN David Perkins, TRADOC commander.

Within DATE, "nation-state capabilities, peer-like nation-states, insurgency activity, terrorist activity, hyper-empowered individuals – we have to balance all of that. We're not trying to duplicate any specific place, but we're trying to replicate the types of environments you're going into," Perkins said in a press briefing at AUSA. "We're going back to an Army of preparation – you don't know when or if you're to war, but you're building a broad skill sets…then [once the mission is identified,] defining the capabilities you've been building on for years. We have to get back to that full range of capabilities."