News Archive - Page 6 of 16 - Hybrid CoE - The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats

September 1, 2021

Virtual training on maritime hybrid scenarios looks at exploitation of Exclusive Economic Zone / continental shelf as maritime hybrid instrument

Hybrid CoE conducted the third consecutive virtual training event on maritime scenarios along with their corresponding legal scan. On this occasion, the training focussed on scenarios one and eight in the Handbook on Maritime Hybrid Threats, namely on the protection of an underwater gas pipeline and the exploitation of a contested continental shelf / Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), as well as a new, proof-tested Handbook-derived scenario – fishing in a contested EEZ area as a possible hybrid instrument. The training was targeted at Hybrid CoE Participating States, the EU and NATO.

According to Jukka Savolainen, Director of COI Vulnerabilities and Resilience, the aim of the training series is to raise awareness of potential hybrid threats in the maritime domain, and to familiarize the Centre’s stakeholders with the existing international rules and norms, such as the Law of the Sea and international humanitarian law, and their applicability to each scenario. More scenarios will be integrated into the updated version of the Handbook on Maritime Hybrid Threats upcoming in 2022.

August 30, 2021

Unique hybrid wargaming course launched

During the month of August, the US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) together with Hybrid CoE conducted two wargaming courses focussing on hybrid threats, in support of the Centre’s Participating States. This marked the first time that such a course was organized, where game-like simulations were conducted to train participants’ strategic thinking in the context of hybrid threat scenarios.

Representing 10 Participating States, various national ministries, academia, and the private sector, thecourses brought together a unique group of students in Helsinki. Aimed at a diverse group of participants, these practical and educational workshops were designed to encourage a whole-of-society approach to cooperation in countering hybrid threats. Through the creation of a unique hybrid threats wargame, the courses increased awareness of hybrid threats and understanding of nations’ ability to respond to them.

We asked the main instructor on the courses as well as some of the participants to tell us more about the training. The video clips below include a selection of their comments.

Jeffrey Appleget, a senior lecturer at the US Naval Postgraduate School, on what wargaming is, conducting the game, and the purpose of wargaming.

Comments from the participants of the Joint Hybrid CoE & US Naval Post Graduate School Wargaming Course

Source: Shutterstock

June 2, 2021

Multidomain situational awareness: Using technology to outthink hybrid opponents

On 2 June 2021, Hybrid CoE and its Community of Interest on Strategy and Defence presented the ‘Hybrid Warfare Future and Technologies’ (HYFUTEC) curriculum for the second time, as an educational tool for the Joint Command and General Staff Course ‘Innovation and Military Technology Module’ at the Baltic Defence College in Tartu, Estonia.

The HYFUTEC curriculum focused on technological means of improving multidomain situational awareness in hybrid warfare/conflict/threat scenarios, including perspectives on: artificial intelligence and big data, options for serious gaming in hybrid warfare scenarios, open-source intelligence and media monitoring, space and satellite communication, AI-driven analysis and monitoring of military exercises, as well as views on the game-changing capabilities of the use of drones in hybrid warfare. The curriculum was concluded with an update on the DE-MASC Project, which is currently developing a multidomain situational awareness cockpit, combining web-based analytical information tools already on the market.

For further information on Hybrid Warfare and the HYFUTEC project/workstrand, read more here.

June 29, 2021

Croatia joins Hybrid CoE

H.E. Mr Josip Buljević, Ambassador of Croatia, visited Hybrid CoE today to hand over the Letter of Notification to Director Teija Tiilikainen, officially making Croatia the 29th Participating State of the Centre of Excellence.

“With hybrid threat activities against democratic states being amplified during the pandemic, there is an increasing need for joint efforts to counter the phenomenon with a more proactive approach. Hybrid CoE welcomes Croatia to its ever-enlarging community of EU and NATO members firmly engaged in strengthening the resilience of their joint democratic model,” Teija Tiilikainen said.

“Joining the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats is a very important step for strengthening the resilience of our country to this kind of challenge. Hybrid threats are complex and as allies we need to work together to counter them effectively. We are confident that our participation in Hybrid CoE will substantially enhance our capacities for countering Hybrid Threats. This is of paramount importance to Croatia as we are continuously confronted with hybrid activities in our country as well as in our neighbourhood. We are therefore grateful to be part of the Centre of Excellence in Helsinki, which is one of the crucial institutions for developing effective means to counter hybrid threats and strengthen allied and European security,” said Ambassador Buljević.

Besides Croatia, the Participating States of the Centre of Excellence include Austria, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Centre cooperates closely with the EU and NATO.

Source: Arthimedes/Shutterstock

June 16, 2021

Non-state actors as state proxies: A new Hybrid Coe Research Report looks at the situation in China

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long traditions of using political influence and interference methods, which would be described as hybrid threat activities today. The use of non-state actors (NSAs) is a key element in such activities.

In Hybrid Coe Research Report 1, Dr Jukka Aukia from the University of Turku applies the hybrid threat paradigm to study Chinese non-state actors.

According to the report, longstanding developments in China’s political system and thinking dictate strong public-private collaboration. This approach is known as the “united front” (tongyi zhanxian). Equating “love for the Party” with “love for the country”, the united front builds ethnic-based nationalism, which is produced top-down by party elites and bottom-up by active patriotic citizens.

“As a result of the united front approach, a large repertoire of NSAs as state proxies create opportunities and capabilities for the Party,” writes Aukia.

According to the report, the political control of the Party has advanced in all non-state, non-party organizations under the leadership of Xi Jinping. The CCP has effectively developed capacities to direct the non-state sector to support regime preservation, which is the Party’s highest priority. The united front enables the Party to use the same influence tools both domestically and internationally.

In analyzing the use of non-state actors abroad, the report looks at united front-related actors, state-controlled enterprises, state-organized NGOs, as well as media- and academia-related actors and their activities. According to Aukia, “while not all Chinese entities are state proxies, as Chinese social and business organizations continue to internationalize, the blurring of state and non-state sectors extends beyond China’s borders.”

In developing countermeasures, the report emphasizes the importance of analyzing two frameworks in particular: the domestic experiences of the CCP, and the vulnerabilities of democratic societies.

Read the whole report on our website here.

By examining China’s expanding use of united front tactics inside democratic societies, as well as the ideological, cultural and political elements underlying this trend, this Research Report marks a significant step forward in Hybrid CoE’s capabilities to analyze China and its practices. The report offers timely, thorough, and practicable knowledge for the Centre’s Participating States and institutions as they enhance their resilience and deterrence against hybrid threat activities. The report is part of Hybrid CoE’s ongoing workstrand on non-state actors.

Source: Whitelion61/Shutterstock

June 11, 2021

Drones in hybrid warfare: New study provides lessons from current battlefields

Revolutionary change in military affairs is an integral part of the history of conflict and war. Today, technology is driving this revolution with unprecedented speed. Even now, drone warfare capabilities provide game-changing potential on real-world battlefields, as they integrate sensor technology with precision strike effectors and communications. They also have close links to hybrid warfare.

It can be expected that a trend towards AI-based autonomous systems and swarming will further exponentiate these revolutionary developments. Their military and warfare-related implications can hardly be overestimated.

This motivated Hybrid CoE and its Community of Interest on Strategy and Defence (COI S&D) to address this topic within its workstrand on Hybrid Warfare: Future and Technologies. As a first step, situational awareness regarding the current use of drones in the context of hybrid warfare needs to be built.

To this end, the latest Hybrid CoE Working Paper, written by Frank Christian Sprengel, identifies and analyzes lessons regarding the use of drones on five current battlefields: Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Nagorno-Karabakh. The paper serves as the starting point for a series of studies on the topic.

You can read the paper here.

Source: Shutterstock

June 1, 2021

Technology matters for hybrid

Dr Johann Schmid, Hybrid CoE’s Director COI Strategy & Defence, contributed to TechNet Europe 2021 (1–2 June, Lisbon, Portugal) with a keynote speech on Hybrid Threats/Warfare: Key Characteristics, Strategic Challenges, New Developments and Implications.

“New technologies, with their disruptive potential, have a catalytic effect on hybrid means, methods, tactics and strategies,” according to Schmid. “It is worrying that they provide offensive options in particular. At the same time, new technological developments may offer options to better identify, understand, defend against and counter hybrid attacks.”

“In order to prevent, defend against and – if necessary – counter and outmanoeuvre hybrid opponents, it is important for political, civilian and military leaders and decision-makers, as well as for industry and academia, to develop a common and comprehensive understanding of the implications of new technologies in a hybrid threats/warfare context,” Dr Schmid said.

The event was organized by AFCEA Europe under the patronage of the Defence Minister of Portugal with the motto: “Challenging Times for National Security – Technologies for Better Cyber Defence and Battlefield Resilience”. The event brought together leading experts from EU and NATO member nations, particularly from the military and industry.

Source: Shutterstock

June 9, 2021

Josef Schroefl on Geospatial Information to Tackle Hybrid Threats

Josef Schroefl, Deputy Director of COI Strategy and Defence at Hybrid CoE, contributed to Geospatial World Magazine on the importance of intelligence capabilities, and geospatial information as a part of them in countering hybrid threats. He points out that by recognizing the possibility of a hybrid attack by a hostile actor, intelligence not only offers a potentially decisive defence capability, but there is also a chance that the opposing side will refrain from the attack if it fears that the threat has already been discovered.

Read the whole article here.

June 2, 2021

The third Hybrid CoE expert-pool meeting on cyber

Building on the findings of the previous cyber expert-pool meetings, as well as on the findings of two Cyber-Power in Hybrid Conflict and Warfare (CPH) Symposiums, Hybrid CoE’s Community of Interest on Strategy and Defence together with the Research and Analysis team organized a virtual roundtable on the hybrid threat implications of activities in cyberspace, paying particular attention to the capabilities of the armed forces in the future.

Eighteen experts from 14 Participating States, the EU and NATO discussed questions related to command-and-control systems in cyberspace, cyberattack deterrence, building defensive capabilities to counter cyberattacks in the context of hybrid operations, and small states’ possibilities to gain significant wins over big nations and their armed forces with cyber capabilities. The objective of the roundtable was to feed in ideas for the Annual Cyber Symposium that is planned to be held in November 2021.

Source: Shutterstock

June 1, 2021

When preparing civilians for hybrid threats, engagement is key – new publication calls for out-of-the-box thinking

A core question in hybrid threat preparedness is how a state or society can prepare its civilian population for disruptions that potential hybrid threats may cause. This is relevant, as hybrid threat actors aim at undermining public trust in democratic institutions and challenging the core values of societies to gain political influence.

According to a new Hybrid CoE Working Paper authored by Research Professor Cedric de Coning from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), adaptive engagement with the affected community is key: Emergency officials, relevant authorities, civil society and the private sector must all collaborate in an adaptive process to generate context-specific solutions suitable for the hybrid threats in question.

“Planning and preparedness thus shift away from a pre-planned step-by-step response strategy approach carried out by emergency officials, to a pre-planned process approach,” de Coning writes.

According to de Coning, in this kind of approach “the engagement process is pre-planned, but the content and outcome are context-specific and need to emerge from the process itself”. Calling for new, out-of-the-box thinking, de Coning lists concrete proposals and roles in the paper for those engaged in preparedness planning.

Read the complete Hybrid CoE Working Paper on our website.

The paper is part of the Resilient Civilians in Hybrid and Population-Centric Warfare project led by Professor Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv at the Arctic University of Norway, and is partly funded by the NATO Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme.

Hybrid CoE is an independent international Centre enhancing Participating States’ capabilities to counter hybrid threats. It does so by sharing best practices, testing new ideas and approaches, and providing training and exercises. The Centre currently has 28 Participating States. Participation is open to all EU member states and NATO allies.