The Defense Identity Crisis: It's a Hybrid World

Abstract

The defense enterprise is abuzz with lively debates on "hybrid threats" and "hybrid war." Yet, newly emergent defense trends do not automatically merit exquisite definitions, new doctrine, or new operating concepts. As Frank Hoffman implies, such a caveat might be true of "hybrid warfare." Hybrid war may not yet be reducible to a pristine, doctrine-ready definition. Continued efforts by Hoffman and others to describe it, however, remain invaluable.2 This trend is admittedly unsatisfying to concept developers and doctrine writers. By nature, they want to neatly categorize and define every aspect of military affairs. Yet, in this instance, patience is a virtue. For its part, too, the defense bureaucracy cannot rush to artificially dismiss a wider universe of defense-relevant, "wicked" challenges, in favor of a more limited and "tame" set of not-so-new, defense-specific ones.3 Unfortunately, the hybrid debate is moving in this direction.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2009
Accession Number
ADA510424

Entities

People

  • Nathan Freier

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Cyber
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Asymmetric Warfare
  • Civil War
  • Combat Operations
  • Counterinsurgency
  • Department Of Defense
  • First Responders
  • Governments
  • Hybrid Threats
  • Hybrid Warfare
  • Military Science
  • National Security
  • Security
  • Unconventional Warfare
  • United States
  • Violence
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Irregular Warfare and Special Operations Cyberspace Operations against Adversarial Threats.
  • Strategic Security Studies