DOD 2024

In 1961, NATO’s von Kármán committee (VKC) convened some 100 natural scientists from 12 member states to compile a classified study on a “the scientific factors which may have an effect on the military art” and place “military long-term planning […] on a sound scientific basis.” Intoxicated by the Faustian possibilities of a nascent nuclear age, the findings from this now-declassified forecasting experiment characterized by the “attempt to control and weaponize the earth’s natural systems” are so wantonly destructive and environmentally reckless they still read more like dystopian science fiction than actionable military advice.

Poised as we are on the threshold of another technological revolution, military planners and forecasters of disasters—natural, manmade, and hybrid—have something to learn from the hubristic blind spots of this sixty-year-old thought experiment…and from each other. Thankfully, the VKC’s most diabolical suggested uses of nuclear weapons are not only proscribed by international law but are absent in military planning for all but the most extreme scenarios of great power conflict. Though the place of euphemistic “tactical” use of nuclear weapons is still debated, nuclear deterrence is considered sufficiently intact to keep most strategy and planning around great power conflict limited to two areas: the large-scale combat operations (LSCO) of conventional warfare, and a more amorphous unconventional area known as variously “irregular,” “grey zone,” or “hybrid warfare.”

This paper offers a more precise definition and theory of the latter while exploring the paradox in the title: that enthusiasm for hybrid warfare’s supposed virtues of plausible deniability and exploitation of relatively new domains such as information, space, and cyber invite vicious, unintended, cascading, and escalatory consequences of the kind they seek to avoid.

To start, what is hybrid warfare? This paper defines hybrid warfare as the use of all instruments, elements, determinants of power in coordinated, comprehensive, and holistic ways (including violence or the threat of violence) to achieve national ends. It does not mean the sole use of uniformed armed forces to achieve vital or important national interests.

Much attention has been paid to the false notion of a “Gerasimov Doctrine,” named after a 2013 speech and article by General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation. While he was not articulating a new approach by Russia to warfare, as both subsequent military acquisitions, training, and the conventional invasion of Ukraine in 2022 clearly indicate, he did make an important point, stating:

“In the 21st century we have seen a tendency toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace. Wars are no longer declared and, having begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template…The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness….All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character, including carrying out actions of informational conflict and the actions of special-operations forces. The open use of forces — often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis regulation — is resorted to only at a certain stage, primarily for the achievement of final success in the conflict.”

Some scholars of war call this approach hybrid warfare, others refer to it as gray-zone warfare, others refer to irregular warfare, others like to note a competition continuum, or call it unconventional or asymmetrical warfare. There are multiple ideas and often slightly different definitions for the same phenomenon. Rather than get involved in the complexity of name-calling, this paper adopts hybrid warfare as defined above and attempts to explain it in terms of yesterday, today, and the future application of the approach. The work in this paper should apply similarly to other titles for the hybrid warfare phenomenon.

Above all else, hybrid warfare is meant to stay below conventional conflict. This requirement is often met by using non-military ways of inducing or forcing a change in policy by an opponent, such as spreading rumors, assassinating enemy officials, disrupting agriculture or trade in an opponent’s territory, or initiating a peace deal knowing that in due time the user will attack the opponent. Ancient military manuals and theories articulate various approaches, and can be found in Sun Tzu, Sun Bin, the Thirty-Six Stratagems, Kautilya, and in the writings of various Western theorists. When these approaches are used separately or with no involvement of the military, we can refer to this as simple hybrid warfare. Using proxies as Iran does throughout the Middle East is a good example of simple hybrid warfare, and also has been indicative of the approach used by smaller actors who cannot afford to go to a higher level of combat. In the case of Iran, it divides its military into Artesh (domestic) and Sepah (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, or international), with the IRGC-Quds Force as the “Special Forces” that run the international proxies. This separation provides a pretense of lack of control that is always utilized by the dominant actor in a proxy relationship to prevent an escalation from a stronger adversary.

Hybrid warfare tactics are as many as can be imagined. The following 13 tactics are illustrative:

• Attack an opponent diplomatically (eg, ally with your opponent’s adversary),

• Attack an opponent’s economy (eg., crash your opponent’s economy via a run on the stock market),

• Attack an opponent’s cyber systems and/or critical infrastructure,

• Attack an opponent’s government and electoral systems,

• Spread rumors and fake news by social media,

• Utilize agents of influence,

• Engage in targeted assassination,

• Deploy military assets under thin cover of legality or deniability,

• Construct islands to then claim territorial waters,

• Steal opponent’s intellectual and real property and enrich yourself,

• Use organized criminal networks to destabilize an adversary’s society through the trafficking of drugs or humans,

• Create a refugee crisis for an adversary,

• Use proxies to do any of the foregoing (can fund with cash or in kind).

The strength and danger of hybrid warfare is that it can be endless, everywhere war, especially because it can be argued that it is not war, but merely statecraft, or the unintentional behavior of loosely-affiliated proxies.

Complex hybrid warfare is the conscious mixing of military/physical force with non-physical force. This notion is often captured in Western “War College” ideas using the DIME (diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments) together, and thus has its roots in the idea of grand strategy. George Kennan’s notion of “political warfare” prefaces this concept. Modern usage of complex hybrid warfare was seen in Russian efforts against Chechnya and Georgia, where military action quickly followed after cyber, diplomatic, and economic attempts were initiated.

Future forms of hybrid warfare represent the reality of what humankind will likely face in the 21st century. The advent of a globalized world, potentially wracked by the depredations of climate change, and full of new approaches that can bring about forceful or threatened outcomes. The United States now has a Cyber Command and a Space Force, and other leading powers have versions of the same entities. China adopted a doctrine of warfare that specified “three warfares,” namely information warfare, legal warfare, and psychological warfare. But the linear nature of most war planning and the fact that the military is invariably in charge of war planning invariably means that most complex hybrid warfare today involves using non-military or quasi-military ways at first, followed by a quick turn to conventional or sub-conventional conflict.

Soon, however, complex hybrid warfare will give way to advanced hybrid warfare, in which the timetable, the targets, the means and ways, and the ability to venture into using force or the threat of force in entirely new ways changes how wars will be fought.

Advanced hybrid warfare uses multiple types of force collectively against both a primary adversary and others (either allies/partners of the primary adversary or possibly opponents). For example, using election meddling against the primary adversary or targeted assassination to replace its government leaders, while attacking an ally with financial or economic misdirection that blames the primary opponent, or using cyber methods to bring about a DOS or DDOS failure, while also cyber or information approaches to undermine an adversary—all done in a contextual way, albeit perhaps on different timelines. This can be extended in multiple directions if pursuing power is the sole goal of the country in question.

Future of hybrid warfare – There is every reason to believe that the future will see more efforts to engage in advanced hybrid warfare, which will undoubtedly incorporate new opportunities, many having to do with artificial intelligence-empowered autonomous systems, biological and chemical weapons, cyber capabilities, climate change, disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, data analytics, economic and financial opportunities, legal warfare, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and robotics, to name but a few that come to mind of what is known already. Also, the timetable for warfare will change irrevocably, as it will exist all the time between powerful states, unless we are able to abandon our realist hearts and adopt a constructivist willingness to outlaw the games of power and live together in harmony. As the nature of warfare is held to be enduring, it is likely that its rapidly changing character will make advanced hybrid warfare the reality of the future.

Ultimately, hybrid warfare will require substantial changes to state leadership and bureaucracies. The militaries cannot manage defense/wars when so much of war behavior will be non-military. Having a multitude of organizations working together will also fail, as whole-of-government approaches always run afoul of the reality that unity of effort is not the same thing as unity of command. And, above all else, being the individual in charge of a long-term effort involving everything that a state may use against another state is impossible, even with the help of AI enhancements or acolytes. Nonetheless, the future of warfare will travel in this direction. We should prepare for it.

Changes within the worldwide security environment proceed to challenge our ability to comprehend and react to the constantly changing hybrid threats that are becoming more diverse, emanating from a wide range of actors who are enabled by technology. Actors can wield an array of means and ways to further their security interests at the expense of a target and are able to do so without being identified.
Developing proper situational awareness is the first and crucial step on the road to achieving better protection against hybrid threats. Here we propose a novel framework for hybrid risk analysis that enables a better understanding of the operations of the adversary before their taking place. The idea of the framework is based on the model of hybrid operations, which combines the elements of space, time, objects at risk, goals, and actors into a single structure - a hyper-forest of multi-trees. Taking into account that hybrid operations are carried out according to certain scenarios characterized by the repeatability of tools in relation to certain goals, we propose using a case-based reasoning approach based on calculating the dynamic similarity of the information structure of ongoing attack to retrospective sequences of hybrid attacks for which the goals, tools, and methods are known. Retrospective data is stored in the case base. The proposed framework combines several models and methods, the main of which are the multi-tree model of hybrid attack representation, the spatially-distributed model of hybrid attack distribution, and the method for hybrid risk analysis. The method for hybrid risk analysis is based on two additional models such as vulnerability model and the consequences assessment model that are developed for each type of object at risk. The suggested framework for hybrid risk analysis offers a better comprehension of adversary operations prior to them occurring and aids in formulating an appropriate reaction to the changing scenario.

In an era described by heightened digitalization and interconnectedness, safeguarding the security of railway systems assumes paramount importance. Despite historical instances of attacks from various actors, a comprehensive analysis of the system's vulnerability has been notably absent. This paper aims to bridge this gap by undertaking a meticulous examination of potential threats in both physical and cyber realms within the railway infrastructure. The paper systematically identifies and evaluates diverse sources of attack, shedding light on their origins and ramifications. By delving into the intricacies of these vulnerabilities, the research not only raises awareness but also offers insights into underlying causal factors. Furthermore, it delineates the potential impacts of such threats on the operational integrity and safety of the railway system.

A notable aspect of this analysis is the inclusion of hybrid threats, where traditional physical attacks are complemented or facilitated by cyber means, or vice versa. The emergence of hybrid threats underscores the evolving nature of security challenges in the railway domain, necessitating a multifaceted approach to risk mitigation. Moreover, the paper acknowledges newly emerging threats precipitated by the convergence of physical and cyber domains. These threats, often stemming from the increased integration of digital technologies in railway infrastructure, pose novel challenges that demand proactive responses. Drawing from the findings, the paper provides actionable recommendations for short- and medium-term security enhancements, accompanied by implementation strategies. These recommendations are tailored to address the identified vulnerabilities and mitigate potential risks effectively.

In conclusion, this research constitutes a significant contribution to fortifying the security of railway systems amidst a rapidly evolving technological landscape. By offering a comprehensive analysis of threats, encompassing both traditional and contemporary dimensions, the study equips stakeholders with valuable insights to safeguard the integrity and resilience of railway infrastructure.

Purpose
The paper uses the newly available Austrian Micro Data Center (AMDC) data to analyze inventory development during the recent crisis as one lever to combat supply chain disruptions. Moreover, it evaluates company performance with link to inventory, taking location, industry, and size parameters into consideration.

Approach
The panel data contains Austrian firm-level data with more than 3.6M observations across 11 years and 196 variables. The data is analyzed by statistical means and regression analysis to understand correlation of variables to describe the role of inventory amid crisis and its implications on company performance.

Findings
The role of inventory can be manifold and is discussed in SCM research. One aspect is the impact on cash-flow another a buffer to combat supply chain disruptions. This research adds findings to this discussion.

Research implications
This study provides additional insights on the role of inventory based on a rich data set. It can serve as example on how to use micro/big data in SCM research.

Practical implications
The outcomes can serve as benchmark to understand and compare company’s inventory strategies. Moreover, identified levers can provide additional insights on company performance over time and in crisis.

Social implications
Additionally, findings can help policy makers formulate potential stock keeping strategies for goods of public interest.

Original/value
The study uses newly available data, which for the first time allows for a study of Austrian company inventory levels at the micro-level.

Purpose: This study explores the potential of combining International Business (IB) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) research perspectives and joining forces to address organizing paradoxes that occur during supply chain disruptions. We focus on what we coin “ad-hoc strategic change”, i.e., transformations undertaken amidst crises that bear long-term strategic consequences for the organization, which seem of significant practical relevance but are, to date, largely neglected in either perspective.

Approach: The study design applies a paradox lens to reveal and structure joint research opportunities and new research areas. Following the process view of paradox management, we focus on actions to address salient paradoxes amid supply chain disruptions that can be structured according to whether they are pursued in stable environments or during crisis and whether they occur on operational, tactical, or strategic level. We use expert interviews from Supply Chain and Strategy/Marketing professionals to underpin the relevance of these actions for future research and highlight exemplary research opportunities.

Findings: Supply chain disruptions amplify latent organizational tensions into salient organizational paradoxes that can be addressed on operational, tactical and strategic levels. Existing research has predominantly focused on understanding the operational and tactical aspects of supply chain management amid crisis, which represent well-established streams of literature. Insights from expert interviews, however, prove strategic adaptation and transformation in response to supply chain disruptions amidst crises as equally important and critical. Examples of such strategic adaptations are investments in supply chain resilience and changes in the organizational structure. Addressing these issues requires insights from IB and SCM perspectives. IB can contribute knowledge on foreign direct investments, global integration versus local responsiveness or arbitrage. SCM can provide insights on supply chain design, such as facilities and locations and how to translate corporate strategies into strategic SCM decisions. Moreover, both perspectives can build on each other’s expertise regarding different methods and cross-fertilize theory development.

Research implications: By identifying ad-hoc strategic change amid supply chain disruptions as relevant research gap and suggesting fruitful avenues for future, joined research in the fields of IB and SCM to close that gap, including suitable methods and theories, this study contributes to the advancement of supply chain resilience research. Overall, investigating supply chain disruptions through the lens of paradox management extends the traditional functional collaboration between IB and SCM. It builds on and leverages the rich body of knowledge, methods, and theoretical frameworks from both research areas to delve into strategic changes/advancements on an ad-hoc basis amid crises.

Practical implications: Practitioners benefit from this study by gaining fresh insights into ad-hoc strategic change amidst crisis and how it may contribute to supply chain resilience.

Data plays a critical role in crisis response and intervention efforts by providing decision-makers with timely, accurate, and actionable information. During a crisis, various data resources are required, which are typically provided by different stakeholders. To this end, Knowledge Graphs can gather pertinent information for crisis management purposes and offer a comprehensive and collective view of urban infrastructure, service networks, and diverse relevant information. Given that the relevant data will be provided incrementally, we propose an agile approach for constructing incident knowledge graphs, which also considers the specific views of different service providers. This paper presents a top-level crisis management knowledge graph and outlines the methodology for developing incident-based and dynamic knowledge graphs tailored to crisis management scenarios. Our approach leverages pertinent contextual and spatial data to construct agile and responsive frameworks for crisis resolution.

Firefighting depends on quick and efficient decision-making. Delays can lead to large areas being devastated and many lives at risk. On the other hand, when there are simultaneous ignitions, prioritization criteria must be used to minimize this phenomenon's impacts. Decision-making in this context of urgency and effectiveness has led to the use of Operations Research techniques, both in the optimization process and in the simulation of possible scenarios. In this work, the Genetic Algorithm was used to optimize the firefighting scheduling for several fire ignitions, using various available resources. The scenarios were simulated using Discrete Event Simulation models generated in Flexsim software, to assess the impacts of these decisions and identify the one that minimizes their effects.

In recent years, disaster risk reduction efforts have been shifted towards the ex-ante part of disaster risk management (DRM) cycle. This new focus has been codified in various international documents, most prominently in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. In both the prevention and preparedness components of the DRM cycle, disaster scenarios play a crucial role and they are an ongoing important topic in disaster research. In this talk, we are interested in describing disaster scenarios by (various notions of) constraints and in the use of appropriate solvers for their subsequent construction. We discuss how to model and express requirements coming from the disaster domain in terms of constraints and also point out differences between multiple formalizations of constraints. In particular, we distinguish between soft- and hard-constraints and discuss the consequences of their differences on generated sets of scenarios from solvers. We contrast CSP, SAT and higher-order logic programming for the generation of disaster scenarios.

Banda Aceh is particularly susceptible to heightened vulnerability during natural disasters due to its concentrated exposure to multi-hazard risks. Despite urgent priorities during the aftermath of natural disasters, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, several public facilities, including school buildings, sustained damage yet continued operations without adequate repairs, even though they were submerged by the tsunami. This research aims to evaluate the consequences of column damage induced by tsunami inundation on the structural integrity of buildings. The investigation employs interaction diagrams for columns to assess their capacity, taking into account factors such as rebar deterioration and corrosion. The analysis result shows that one-fourth of the K1 columns on the first floor fall outside of the column interaction diagram, indicating that the column structure cannot handle the load above it. This suggests that the five columns of K1 should be cause for concern, as the column's capacity is decreasing. These results indicate that the structure of the building cannot sustain the applied load because the column cross-section has deteriorated. In contrast, all K2 columns meet the design strength, indicating that the column structure can withstand the structural loads.

Background
In the context of the EU Horizon 2020 project PANTHEON, a community-based digital ecosystem and Smart City Digital Twin (SCDT) are being developed to aid in increaseing disaster resilience by improving decision-making efficiency and preparedness before, during and after disasters. Through extensive analysis of community vulnerabilities with a focus on vulnerable groups, local hazard analysis & risk assessment including a wide range of simulation tools as well as regulatory and DRM analysis, considerations regarding multiple disasters is made possible. The main focus of this initiative is the implementation of SCDT technology for assessment of potential man-made, natural and hybrid disasters and their cascading effects for improved preparedness.

The PANTHEON digital-twin is being developed in close cooperation with first responder organisations from Greece and Austria and will be tested through pilot deployments in Athens and Vienna in 2025. The final development stage of the simulation system will be tested with a use-case focusing on a cyber-physical attack and the cascading effects of its impact regarding life, infrastructure and emergency response.


Methods
Deploying a SCDT as a planning and training tool will incorporate an evolution from deployment as a supplemental decision support system to a fully integrated module in first-responder organisations and disaster relief organisations. The technical development is executed by organisations with expertise in simulation and data integration system’s develoment in close cooperation withfirst responder organisations. Workshops and requirement groups are augmented by an international expert user advisory board.

Expected Results
Emphasis on the development as a planning and training tool stems from the emergence of cummulatively more complex hybrid-threats and disaster scenarios that are ever-increasing in frequency but not yet adequately covered by existing preparedness and education concepts. Development of standard operating procedures (SOPs) for unexpected but simulatable threat combinations can be implemented, even in smaller organisations without a large disaster relief force, and interactions with external partners can be well prepared and trained for.

Conclusions
Deployed simulation technologies and their applicability regarding disaster preparedness and training of the diverse group of players taking part in disaster risk reduction will be showcased in realistic scenarios. Cascading effects stemming from hybrid threats during a disaster can be simulated and thus practically included at an unforseen level of fidelity tailored to the local environment in disaster preparedness and relief force training.

Standardized hazard definitions are a key element of the analysis of disasters. Without them, monitoring and reporting of the impacts of the hazards is difficult, and so is the development of effective early warning systems. Forecasting of future events and the generation of disaster risks reduction strategies are also hindered by a lack of standardized definition. To address this gap, in 2019 the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the International Science Council (ISC) established a Technical Working Group to identify the full scope of hazards relevant to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction as a basis for countries and other actors to review and strengthen risk reduction policies and risk management practices. The resulting UNDRR/ISC Hazard Information Profiles (HIPs) were published in 2021.

Following on from recommendation in the UNDRR/ISC HIPs for regular review and update, experts from different disciplines, types of organizations (United Nations agencies, academia, government agencies, intergovernmental organizations and the private sector) and geographical regions are again working together to review the UNDRR/ISC HIPs. This process will systematically review all sections of the current HIPs to identify potential updates in alignment with new scientific information and decide on the inclusion of additional evidence additionally addressing the multi-hazard context of each hazard.

The experts will specifically review the interrelations between the hazards in a multi hazard approach. Another important aspect of the review is to make the HIPs machine actionable, to support a broader range of applications when machine readability is essential, for example, data analysis of large databases, development / maintenance of databases, etc.

This second review will conclude in 2025, with the release of the enhanced UNDRR/ISC Hazard Information Profiles at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction. The updated document will continue to inform a broad community and support data analysis resulting in better early warning and event forecast and disaster risk management and planning.

The problem of decision-making by government agencies and rescue services during the liquidation of consequences and evacuation of the population in the event of a volcanic eruption is considered. Cause-and-effect relationships and the main damaging factors of the eruption have been identified. A multifactorial model of the distribution of tephra fall deposits has been developed. A model for identifying critical sections of the road transport network is presented. A scenario approach for the response of rescue services in the event of a volcanic eruption is proposed.

A security twin is a specialization of a digital twin focused on the security and robustness properties of an ICT/OT infrastructure. By running adversary simulations that use a security twin, we can discover how a hybrid threat can exploit vulnerabilities to build intrusions to penetrate and control a critical infrastructure. According to the target infrastructure, the control by a threat may result in a disastrous impact on the whole society. Information on possible intrusions is fundamental to anticipate potential disasters and to increase the resilience of a (digital) society. Due to the highly dynamic evolutions of both infrastructures and hybrid threats, we advocate that only adversary simulation using a security twin can convey the information to forecast intrusions and prevent social and economic disasters. We also discuss adversary simulations and how a security twin is built and updated.