COI Strategy & Defence kick-started its new StratDoc Analysis workstrand with a virtual brainstorming event on 27 January.
By introducing the workstrand and the preliminary work already carried out by COI Strategy & Defence in mapping the relevant strategy and policy documents, the event identified the particular interests and needs of Hybrid CoE Participating States, the EU and NATO. The active brainstorming session provided inspiration and helped to focus the future work of the new workstrand.
The objective of the workstrand is a systematic comparative analysis and assessment of the âhybrid threats/conflict/warfare complexâ in the official strategy and policy documents of Hybrid CoE Participating States, the EU and NATO. To this end, the workstrand is designed to achieve a better mutual understanding among the different parties regarding their interpretation of and response to hybrid challenges. It aims to identify gaps in a more systematic manner, share experiences and best practices, and provide mutual inspiration.
On 17 December, Hybrid CoEâs Research Director Dr Hanna Smith received the âSecurity Researcher of the year 2020â award at the virtual âFinnish Security Awards Galaâ. The award is presented to a researcher or team of researchers who, through their research work, have made a significant contribution to the understanding of safety and/or enabled the development of new security solutions. The award committee stated that Hanna Smith is an active developer and collaborator, who possesses an exceptionally wide and deep range of expertise on Russia as well as on hybrid threats. The award also highlights the positive Finnish measures in this new threat genre.
The Finnish Security Awards (FSA), established by Turvallisuus & Riskienhallinta magazine in 2015, and sponsored by 17 Finnish security, safety and risk management associations and societies, has 11 award categories.
COI Strategy & Defence organized its second annual Cyber power symposium on hybrid warfare virtually in November 2020. Building on the first cyber power symposium, organized a year ago, the second symposium focused on actor analysis regarding  power depiction capabilities and interests of defensive and offensive cyber players in the cyber field.Â
Key take-aways of the event:
Cyber power has become an integral component of military and nonmilitary activity on the international arena. With technological advancement, state backed cyberattacks have become regular tools in geopolitical competition.
The global cyberthreat landscape today is more likely to produce long-term, lingering issues of political subversion and interference, rather than a sudden catastrophic event.
Cyber-enabled new technologies are proving highly disruptive to traditional security, defence doctrines and legal frameworks in political and institutional contexts, as well as modern battlefields.
Several powers with global ambitions have begun to incorporate cyber power into their national defence strategies. This is seen for example in upgrades of conventional weapon systems and increased focus on cyber security of critical infrastructure.
Cyber power is inherently international, as well as a multi domain challenge, which countries and institutions cannot tackle alone. Alliances like NATO and the EU are incremental in enhancing their member states cyber edge.
Hybrid CoE, together with the Multinational Medical Coordination Centre / European Medical Command (MMCC/EMC) and the German Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief (BBK), hosted Resilient Response 2020 (RERE 20) from 24 to 26 November. RERE 20 was an online pandemic response exercise in which national teams strove to protect their populations from a novel virus, while simultaneously countering hybrid threats.
Over the course of three days, participating nations played out four consecutive rounds of a pandemic scenario, beginning with the initial outbreak of a novel disease and ending with the availability and distribution of a vaccine. Each round had a specific focus and characteristics, including hybrid influencing factors.
The main objectives of the exercise were:
To practise a whole-of-government response to a crisis situation (Epidemic/Pandemic) influenced by hybrid threats on the basis of existing emergency concepts, best practices and lessons identified / learned during the COVID-19 pandemic.
To increase decision-makersâ awareness of the complexity of decision-making.
To practise cross-governmental coordination and cooperation within an epidemic / a pandemic hybrid crisis scenario.
Shiho Rybski and Markus Metsala from Hybrid CoE were producing hybrid elements to the ‘RERE 20’ exercise.
The exercise featured 12 national teams, with representatives from the EU, NATO and USEUCOM totalling over 120 participants across Europe. In the end, all of the teams were successful in overcoming the pandemic and keeping hybrid threats at bay, thanks to effective national responses and solidarity within the EU and NATO communities.
RERE 20 highlighted the importance of social resilience for countering hybrid threats. Proactive messaging stood out as a crucial tool for dealing with disinformation. Nations that benefitted from diverse, cross-government teams showed creativity in their responses to hybrid threats. They used the exercise to experiment with different approaches and were the catalyst for knowledge expansion among players.
Based on feedback and evaluation, the exercise objectives were achieved. RERE 20 supported the fail-safe practice and enhancement of planning, communications and decision-making in a credible and relevant scenario. There is now a greater understanding of the capacities and procedures for EU and NATO cooperation mechanisms, which will increase preparedness and facilitate a quicker response.
The exercise enabled the comparison and evaluation of national crisis management strategies and enhanced the exchange of experiences and strategies to deal with the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Hybrid CoE contributed to the NATO Command and Control Centre of Excellence (NATO C2COE) annual seminar on âMulti-domain operations â Keys to master complexityâ. Dr Johann Schmid gave a presentation during the event on Hybrid warfare and multi-domain operations and contributed to the panel discussion that followed.
Hybrid warfare extends the battlefield by exploiting multiple military and non-military domains and dimensions. Culture, information, economy, technology, and society as a whole can become âbattlefieldsâ in this context. Hybrid warfare of a type demonstrated, for example, on the Ukrainian battlefield, if waged against European countries, would pose a particular challenge for Europe and the crisis management and defence of both NATO and the EU. Although it may seem unlikely from todayâs perspective, in an extreme case, NATOâs military defence and deterrence posture could be bypassed by subversive means in a âdownward or horizontal escalation mode.
Countering hybrid actors and activities calls for a comprehensive and coordinated response in multiple domains. Creating an accurate multi-domain situational awareness picture is a first step in this direction.
The NATO C2COE annual seminar focused on multi-domain operations and their impact on command and control (C2). The aim of the seminar was to challenge participantsâ preconceived notions of multi-domain operations by providing the latest insights into and perspectives on command and control in the context of a changing operational environment with hybrid warfare as a key element.
Please find the read-ahead article written by Johann Schmid on Hybrid warfare â operating on multidomain battlefieldshere.
Building on the findings of the February 2020 cyber-expert workshop â âFuture of cyberspace and hybrid threatsâ â Hybrid CoE’s  Community of Interest on Strategy & Defence together with the Research & Analysis team organized a virtual round table on actors in cyberspace. The experts discussed the hybrid threat implications of activities in cyberspace, with a focus on actor analysis, and the power depiction capabilities and interests of defensive / offensive state and non-state cyber players.
Of particular interest during the discussions were questions on the identified adversarial and predatory behavioral patterns for advancing geopolitical objectives, activities to re-shape the data-related regulatory framework in the rules-based order, and efforts to gain an advantage by deliberately operating below the threshold of armed conflict.
Dr Johann Schmid, Director COI Strategy & Defence at Hybrid CoE, contributed to the latest issue of Ăsterreichische Militärische Zeitschrift (ĂMZ) (Austrian Military Journal) with an article on ‘The archetype of hybrid warfare. Hybrid warfare vs. military-centric warfare’.
The article elaborates the thesis that hybrid warfare as a concept would only be well grounded if based on the existence of a respective counterpart. This counterpart is identified in military-centric warfare and was exemplified in the case of the Falklands War (1982). In comparison with the Second Indochina War as an ‘archetype’ of hybrid warfare, conclusions are drawn in the article for a theory of hybrid warfare.
The main arguments advanced:
As ‘a continuation of policy by other means’ (Clausewitz), war is inherently hybrid. At the same time, however, a specific hybrid way of conducting war can be identified. This is hybrid warfare in the narrower sense.
In order to conceptualize this hybrid warfare, it is particularly important to distinguish it from its counterpart. Without such a counterpart, any concept of hybrid warfare would not be well grounded.
This counterpart can be identified as ‘conventional’ or, more precisely, military-centric warfare. The main distinguishing feature relates to the question of where the centre of gravity in awar/confrontation is located.
In contrast to military-centric warfare, the centre of gravity in hybrid warfare is not primarily located in the military domain but rests in a broad, combined and flexibly used spectrum of multiple domains and dimensions, both military and non-military.
Dr Johann Schmid, Director COI Strategy & Defence, contributed to the webinar âMilitary police (MP) in hybrid warâ with a keynote lecture on âHybrid warfare â a specific style of warfareâ.
Key messages relayed about hybrid warfare during the webinar:
Hybrid warfare exploits vulnerabilities in the grey areas of interfaces. Therefore, hybrid warfare actors tend to operate simultaneously in multiple domains in the shadows of various interfaces: e.g. between warand peace, friend and foe, internal and external security, civil and military domains, state and non-state actors, as well as between the virtual and the real world, and between reality and propaganda.
In this way, hybrid warfare blurs traditional lines of order and responsibilities while aiming for their subsequent dissolution with the ultimate goal of creating ambiguities, making attribution difficult, andparalyzing the decision-making process of the opponent.
Countering such a blended, non-linear hybrid warfare approach in multiple domains also poses new challenges for the traditional role of the military police.
The goal of the webinar was to provide the NATO MP Community of Interest with an opportunity to examine specific tactical issues of interest to the military police within the context of hybrid war, with the aim of benefitting NATOâs future capability development. The event drew on experience of hybrid warfare in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, and addressed topics relating to defence policing in the context of hybrid war.
The webinar was organized by the NATO Military Police Centre of Excellence (NATO MP COE) in cooperation with the Ukrainian Military Law and Order Service (MLOS). It included contributors from Canada, Germany, Slovakia, and Ukraine, as well as from NATO Headquarters and Allied Command Operations (ACO). In addition, a large number of participants from across NATO allies and Partnership for Peace countries were part of the endeavour.
For further information on the event, please see: here.
For further information on hybrid warfare, please see: here.
Dr Josef SchrĂśfl, Deputy Director of the Community of Interest Strategy & Defence, contributed as one of the keynote speakers to the âHybrid threats and the use of the cyber domainâ virtual conference, organized by the Portuguese Military University on 21 October. The aim of the conference was to raise awareness of hybrid attacks and cyber power, and to shed light on the trends of hybrid threats and their use in the cyber domain, as well as the avenues they open up for developing European defence capabilities and resilience against cyber threats.
Hybrid and cyber threats are paramount areas of interest, playing an important part in the agenda for the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union (PPUE) in 2021. During the presidency, Portugal will host both the âCyber Phalanx 2021â combined course and exercise, as well as a âComprehensive cyber strategic decision-makingâ exercise providing hybrid scenario training opportunities and an information and experience sharing platform.
âCyberattacks against EU countries have increased by over 200% during the COVID-19 pandemic, while cyber has emerged as a major enabler of hybrid threats posed by government agencies and non-state actors. An understanding of the shape of the new threats posed by cyber power is needed more than ever,â concluded Dr SchrĂśfl during his keynote speech.
Jori Arvonen, Under-Secretary of State for EU Affairs at the Prime Minister’s Office of Finland, has been re-elected for a new three-year term as chairman of Hybrid CoE Steering Board. Mr Arvonen has led the Steering Board since the establishment of the Centre.
âSince we established Hybrid CoE in 2017, hybrid threats have been on the rise, showing that our joint effort was indeed a necessary one. In the meantime, the Centre has helped the participating states as well as the EU and NATO to share best practices, build capabilities, test new ideas and counter hybrid threats,â Mr Arvonen said.
âDuring these early years, I have been privileged to work closely with the Centreâs highly professional staff. By bringing these brains together, we have created a true centre of excellence, working together with our global network. Thatâs why I still value the original idea of how the Centre is structured,â he noted with satisfaction.
Hybrid CoE is an independent international centre enhancing participating statesâ 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.
