Preparing for
Hybrid Wars
What will be the future Marine Corps capability
by LtCol F.G. Hoffman, USMCR(Ret)
T
he ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan reinforce
Gen Charles C. Krulak’s famous forecast about future
conflicts. He predicted that the character of the next
war would be unlike Operation DESERT STORM and
more like the “stepchild of Chechnya.” Now the Pentagon’s re-
newed interest in irregular wars could renew a debate about the fu-
ture of the Marine Corps. Several analysts suggest that the Marines
revert to pre-World War II roots and focus solely on small wars.
One author has argued that the Marine Corps and Navy should
serve as the system administrators to globalization and export se-
curity and free market economics to the undeveloped world—“the
nonintegrating gap.” The suggestion that the Marine Corps should
devolve into a Third World Peace Corps is a bit much. But there
are others, including the author of Savage Wars of Peace, Max Boot,
who think we should return to our small wars legacy.1 Reembrac-
ing that role is an urgent task because the future of warfare is look-
ing more and more like the Marines’ past. Small wars—
encompassing counterinsurgency, nation-building, and peace-
keeping—seem likely to be the major challenge for the United
States as it fights the war on terror. The Marines are well placed to
play a leading role in this kind of irregular conflict, but to do so
they will have to leave their glorious World War II heritage even
further behind.2
Photo: In hybrid warfare, what will be the role of our conventional forces like tanks? (Photo by GySgt Mark Oliva.)
M a r i n e C o r p s G a ze tt e • M a r ch 2 0 0 7
This school of thought has its proponents inside the Corps. Since
the Small Wars and Tentative Landing Party Manuals were in code-
velopment at Quantico in the 1930s there has been tension inside
the Marine Corps between its amphibious and continental fighting
roles. This line of reasoning argues that state-based conventional
warfare is an increasingly unlikely contingency and that the contin-
ued rise of irregular challengers requires a response. This school
points to the rise of fourth-generation warfare, as well as the need to
govern the dangerous cesspools where jihadists prey on fragile states.
Certainly, this school has its points and can look to the Penta-
gon’s 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The report rec-
ognized the shift, concluding, “In the post-September 11 world,
irregular warfare has emerged as the dominant form of warfare con-
fronting the United States.”3 The QDR noted that fighting the
“long war” against terrorism and meeting rotational requirements
would be the basis for sizing and shaping the military. This view-
point suggests we sharpen our focus on this increasingly likely form
of warfare, but it does not mean we can just dust off the Small Wars
Manual or argue for jettisoning our amphibious legacy.
But the QDR miscast the real future challenge. Tomorrow’s
conflicts will not be easily categorized into simple classifications of
conventional or irregular warfare. In fact, some of today’s best
thinking acknowledges the blurring of lines between modes of
www.mca-marines.org/gazette 57
 FEATURES
Future enemies will seek their own degree of “shock and awe” with crude barbar-
ity (with video) rather than precision weaponry.
war.4 Our greatest challenge will not come from a state that selects
one approach but from states or groups that select from the whole
menu of tactics and technologies to meet their own strategic cul-
ture and geography. Many analysts have captured these trends, with
Russian, Australian, and American authors talking about multi-
modal and multivariant forms of war. A pair of Chinese colonels
is notorious for their conception of unrestricted warfare—or war
without limits. Rather than the “quad chart” found in the new Na-
tional Defense Strategy, future scenarios will more likely present
unique combinations that are specifically designed to target U.S.
vulnerabilities. Conventional, irregular, and catastrophic terrorist
challenges will not be distinct styles; they will all be present in some
form. The combination could include states blending high-tech
capabilities like antisatellite weapons with terrorism and cyber-
warfare directed against financial targets.
The Pentagon has yet to catch up to the front pages of the news-
paper. Its multichallenger quad chart properly shifts the Department
of Defense’s portfolio from an overemphasis on conventional threats.
However, instead of a single option, our adversaries could choose to
explore unknown combinations—something LtGen James N. Mat-
tis once called “hybrid wars.” Hybrid wars blend the lethality of state
conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervor of irregular warfare.5
In such conflicts, future adversaries can be nonstate groups that ex-
ploit access to encrypted command systems, man-portable air-to-
Our greatest challenge will not come
from a state that selects one approach
but from states or groups that select
from the whole menu of tactics and
technologies to meet their own strate-
gic culture and geography.
surface missiles, and other modern lethal systems, as well as promote
protracted insurgencies that employ ambushes, improvised explosive
devices, and coercive assassinations. The term hybrid captures both
their organization and their means. States will employ terrorism as
an operational method, and nonstate actors will gain and use state-
like conventional capabilities. States will shift their conventional to
irregular formations and adopt new tactics, as Iran appears to be
doing. We will face major states capable of supporting covert and
indirect means of attack, as well as groups with state-like capability
sets, or Thomas Friedman’s “superempowered” fanatics capable of
58 www.mca-marines.org/gazette
highly lethal attacks undercutting the sinews of global order. Cun-
ning savagery, continuous improvisation, and rampant organizational
adaptation will mark this form of warfare.
Clearly future opponents will avoid fighting the American way
of war, where we optimize our Industrial Age mass or Information
Age prominence and our preferred rule sets of war. The likeliest
opponents on future battlefields accept no rules. Their principal
approach will be to avoid predictability and seek advantage in un-
expected ways and ruthless modes of attack. We can expect to see
a lot of tactical plagiarism, with our opponent learning from us,
coupled with wild cards or hybrid adaptation where our adversary
has learned how to use high technology in unique and unantici-
pated ways. We will also face primitive forms of warfare and crim-
inal activity that long ago was proscribed by Western society.
Future enemies will seek their own degree of “shock and awe”
with crude barbarity (with video) rather than precision weaponry.
What we ironically call irregular warfare will become increasingly
familiar but with greater velocity and greater lethality than in the
past. Arguably, the Marine Corps could extend its well-founded
legacy of warfighting excellence, its expeditionary ethos, and its in-
stitutional agility for this new era.
Complicating the problem, the battlespace in tomorrow’s hy-
brid wars will take place in complex terrain, most likely the bur-
geoning cities of the developing world. The hybrid challenger
realizes that complex terrain affords defenders a number of advan-
tages that offset our conventional superiority. Recent combat op-
erations suggest a shift toward what can be called the contested
zones.6 These zones include the dense urban jungles and the con-
gested littorals where the majority of the world’s population and
economic activity is centered.7 As seen in Kosovo, Afghanistan,
and Iraq, irregular adversaries are adopting tactics and modes of
operations to offset our firepower and advantages in intelligence
collection, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Today, dense urban
terrain provides similar safe havens to the urban guerrilla or ter-
rorist where the density of population, transportation networks,
public services and infrastructure, and structures gives him multi-
ple avenues of escape and the ability to hide while planning and re-
hearsing operations. The density of the urban complex provides
sufficient cover and noise to mask the adversary’s preparation and
attack position. Engaging American forces in the contested zone
with a range of crude but effective asymmetric approaches is in-
tended to draw out conflicts, protract their duration and costs, and
sap American will. This strategy will come as no news to the vet-
erans of Operation AL FAJR in Fallujah.
Hezbollah and Hybrid Wars
We may have just seen the birth of the first hybrid challenger in
Lebanon. Hezbollah, led by Hassan Nasrallah, demonstrated a
M a r i n e C o r p s G a ze tt e • M a r ch 2 0 0 7
A mixture of guerrilla tactics and high technology can contest conventional forces. (Photo by GSgt Rob Blakenship.)
number of state-like military capabilities, including thousands of
short- and intermediate-range rockets and missiles. This case
demonstrates the ability of nonstate actors to study and decon-
struct the vulnerabilities of Western-style militaries, and devise ap-
propriate countermeasures.
The amorphous Hezbollah is representative of the rising hybrid
threat. This past summer’s battle in southern Lebanon reveals sig-
nificant weaknesses in the posture of the Israeli Defense Forces
(IDF), but it has implications for American defense planners too.
Mixing an organized political movement with decentralized cells
employing adaptive tactics in ungoverned zones, Hezbollah showed
that it could inflict as well as take punishment. Its highly disci-
plined, well-trained, distributed cells contested ground and wills
against a modern conventional force using an admixture of guer-
rilla tactics and technology in densely packed urban centers.
Hezbollah’s use of C–802 antiship cruise missiles and volleys of
rockets represents a sample of what hybrid warfare might look like.
Hezbollah’s antitank weapons include the Russian made RPG–
29, a powerful variation on a standard rocket propelled grenade;
the Russian Metis, which has a range of 1 mile; and the Russian-
built Kornet, which has a range of 3 miles and thermal sights for
tracking the heat signatures of tanks. Hezbollah even managed to
launch a few armed unmanned aircraft systems that the IDF had
little problem knocking down. There is evidence that Hezbollah
has invested in signals intelligence and monitored IDF cell phone
calls for some time, as well as unconfirmed reports that they man-
aged to deencrypt frequency-hopping radio traffic against IDF
communications using an algorithm-based system similar to
SINCGARS.
M a r i n e C o r p s G a ze tt e • M a r ch 2 0 0 7
Claims about a victory for Nasrallah are a bit dubious in strictly
military terms. But one thing is certain, the IDF’s credibility has
been weakened, and Hezbollah has come out of the conflict with
a stronger ideological appeal. However, Israel failed to route out
the Iranian-backed force and may have lost the strategic battle of
perceptions. Hezbollah was able to exploit the political effects of
their limited tactical successes, as magnified by the media. Their in-
telligence was clearly faulty, as was their conventional fighting
readiness and logistics.
Hezbollah’s real advantage lay not in technology but in having
the luxury of being able to prepare the terrain and their tactics for
a single recognized enemy. They operated as decentralized cells,
and their training and tenacity paid off. They proved willing to en-
gage the IDF in prepared close encounters and were willing to ab-
sorb great punishment to inflict a cost. Their Katushyas and Kornet
missiles extracted a price for Israel’s intervention. Retired Army of-
ficer Ralph Peters, who visited Lebanon during the fighting, ob-
served that Hezbollah:
. . . displayed impressive flexibility, relying on the ability of cellular
units to combine rapidly for specific operations, or when cut off to
operate independently after falling in on pre-positioned stockpiles of
weapons and ammunition. Hezbollah’s combat cells were a hybrid
of guerrillas and regular troops—a form of opponent that U.S. forces
are apt to encounter with increasing frequency.8 (Emphasis added.)
Peters is on the money, as usual. Organizations like Hamas are
already emulating Hezbollah. According to Jane’s Defence Weekly,
Hamas has just taken delivery of a supply of AT–5 antiarmor mis-
sile systems as well as some SA–7s.9 Postings on Hamas web sites
suggest that they are an active learning organization, working off of
www.mca-marines.org/gazette 59
 FEATURES
Hybrid warfare does not allow us the luxury of working one block in a three block war. (Photo by Sgt Roe F. Seigle.)
Hezbollah’s perceived success. We would do well to study this pro-
totype of an effective 21st century hybrid army.
Implications
Hybrid wars do not allow us the luxury of building single-mis-
sion forces; we don’t have the luxury of working one block in a
three block war world. What we need is a modern-day synthesis of
our extraordinary expeditionary tools and aptitudes. This requires
a balance between our potent conventional combat capability and
our small wars tool kit. This new balance should retain the Corps’
historical role as the Nation’s shock troops but also prepare the
Marines for more protracted and subtle missions instead of short
“first in/first out” missions or “operational raids” from the sea. Ro-
bust and integrated combined arms teams, capable of adapting
their mode of operations and tailoring their forces against potent
adversaries, are needed. These combined arms teams will require
military forces that are not merely “general purpose” but are pro-
fessional multipurpose units. Because of its institutional capacity
for excellence, continuous evolution, and tactical improvisation,
the Marine Corps is well suited for this coming age. We have his-
torically worked at transition operations, transitioning from peace
to crisis response, from ship to shore, and between the blocks of the
three block war. We have the doctrinal basis and organizational
flexibility to excel in hybrid conflict.10
60 www.mca-marines.org/gazette
A force prepared for this environment would have to possess a
unique set of expeditionary characteristics. The force’s prepared-
ness for close quarters battle would be high, as would its readiness
for protecting and controlling a large number of noncombatants in
densely populated cities. (Think of Najaf and Fallujah in April
2004.) This force would have to be prepared for protean oppo-
nents or known adversaries employing unpredicted tactics or asym-
metric technologies. We will need to improve our long-range
anticipatory intelligence, as well as our research base into future
threats and adversary reasoning. We could also improve our red
teaming and experimentation with irregular and disruptive ap-
proaches.
Such a force would be equally prepared to thwart very adaptive
enemies by posing irregular, catastrophic, or disruptive operations
of its own. A force prepared to address hybrid threats would have
to be built upon a solid professional military foundation, but it
would also place a premium on the cognitive skills to recognize or
quickly adapt to the unknown. Success in hybrid wars requires
small unit leaders with decisionmaking skills and tactical cunning
to respond to the unknown—and the equipment sets to react or
adapt faster than tomorrow’s foe. Organizational learning and
adaptation would be at a premium.
At the individual level, we need to determine the “sweet spot”
to which all Marines must be educated, trained, and equipped for
M a r i n e C o r p s G a ze tt e • M a r ch 2 0 0 7
them to operate successfully and seamlessly in a hybrid battlespace.
We don’t have the luxury of focusing on a single opponent, and we
don’t have the luxury of deciding to focus on a single quadrant in
the Pentagon’s threat matrix either. In short, we need to develop a
hybrid warrior who is capable of seamlessly operating and winning
on any type of battlespace and who has the proper mix of educa-
tion and training to enable that Marine to recognize, adapt to, and
defeat threats not yet known. This should shift the perception of
the Marine Corps from a general purpose force useful for enabling
others to a very professional multipurpose force of choice, with a
commensurate claim for resources. The special operations forces
(SOF) community has this degree of flexibility but not the staying
power required to seize and occupy contested zones against hybrid
threats. But this battlespace will have many uses for the ultimate
“shadow warriors” from the SOF.
2. Boot, Max, “The Corps Should Look to Its Small Wars Past,” Armed Forces Jour-
nal International, April 2006, p. 30.
3. Rumsfeld, Donald H., Quadrennial Defense Review, Government Printing Of-
fice, Washington, DC, 2006, p. 36.
4. Gray, Colin S., Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare, Weidenfeld and Nicol-
son, London, 2006. The strategist characterizes future conflict as a blurring of reg-
ular and irregular warfare.
5. Mattis, LtGen James N. and F.G. Hoffman, “The Rise of Hybrid Wars,” Pro-
ceedings, U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, MD, November 2005.
6. Schmidle, BGen Robert E. and F.G. Hoffman, “Commanding the Contested
Zones,” Proceedings, U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, MD, September 2004.
7. Peters, Ralph, “Our Soldiers, Their Cities,” Parameters, Spring 1996, pp. 43–50.
8. Peters, Ralph, “Lessons From Lebanon, The New Model Terrorist Army,” Armed
Forces Journal International, October 2006, p. 39.

9. Ben-David, Alon, “Hamas Boosts Its Weapon Stocks,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 23
At the individual level, we need to de- October 2006, p. 16.

termine the “sweet spot” to which all 10. Hoffman, Frank G., “How Marines Are Preparing for Hybrid Wars,” Armed
Marines must be educated, trained, and Forces Journal International, April 2006.

equipped for them to operate success-

fully and seamlessly in a hybrid battle-
space.

Ending
So what exactly is the future for today’s Leathernecks? A sim-
plistic choice of big versus small wars is flawed. The United States
can’t imagine all future threats as state based and completely con- >LtCol Hoffman, a frequent contributor to
ventional or assume that state-based conflict has passed into his- MCG, is a Research Fellow, Center for Emerging
tory’s dustbin. There are many who have made that assumption Threats and Opportunities, Marine Corps
before and have been consistently proven mistaken. State-based con- Warfighting Laboratory, Quantico.
flict is less likely, but it is certainly not extinct. We should not as-
sume that all state-centric warfare is completely conventional. Any
cursory reading of Chinese strategic culture suggests otherwise.
The Pentagon’s strategy and QDR expand the U.S. military’s
mission set outside of its comfort zone and beyond its preference
for fighting conventional forces. We can no longer focus just on
battles against preferred enemies, vice campaigns versus thinking
opponents. Nor can we assume that the option set is a nice contrast
of large-scale conventional conflicts versus messy but limited ter-
Do you want to comment on this article? Go to www.mca-
rorists. Hezbollah clearly demonstrates the ability of nonstate ac-
marines.org/forum.
tors to study and deconstruct the vulnerabilities of Western-style
militaries and devise appropriate countermeasures. The price for
complacency—for not preparing for complex or hybrid threats—
is sharply rising.

Notes
1. Boot, Max, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American
Power, Perseus Books, New York, 2002.

M a r i n e C o r p s G a ze tt e • M a r ch 2 0 0 7 www.mca-marines.org/gazette 61