Good to see that Congress remains concerned with unconventional warfare.  I asked this question two years ago:  Congress Has Embraced Unconventional Warfare: Will the US Military and The Rest of the US Government?http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/congress-has-embraced-unconventional-warfare-will-the-us-military-and-the-rest-of-the-us-go

I am still waiting for an answer.

You can read Johns Hopkins APL's study on Russia's Little Green Men referenced in the article at this link:  http://www.jhuapl.edu/ourwork/nsa/papers/ARIS_LittleGreenMen.pdf

Countering 'little green men': Pentagon special ops studies Russia ‘gray zone’ conflict

• By Jen Judson, www.defensenews.com
• View Original
• May 15th, 2017

The Pentagon is studying gray zone conflict – otherwise known as hybrid warfare – beginning with a focus on Russia and later moving on to study Iran and China, the acting assistant defense secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict, told members of Congress.

On the heels of a Johns Hopkins University study on the nature of Russian unconventional warfare, U.S. Special Operations – through the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office within ASD SO/LIC – is looking at “developing predictive analytic technologies that will help us identify when countries are utilizing unconventional warfare techniques at levels essentially below our normal observation thresholds,” Theresa Whelan said during a May 2 House Armed Services Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee hearing.

The study will help identify early evidence of unconventional warfare, she added, noting that once her office completes the research on Russian unconventional warfare, it will move on to developing a strategy for Iran and China.

Russian aggression has been characterized by the insertion of “little green men,” special forces that try to discreetly rile up ethnic Russians against the West in countries along its border. Russia’s surprise annexation of Crimea in 2014 has sparked fear in surrounding countries that something similar could take place within their own borders.

And Russia’s behavior in Ukraine and along the Baltic States continue to cause heartburn and worry among the U.S. and its European and NATO allies.

Recently, the top U.S. military commander in Europe said the U.S. has not done enough to reinforce its own and NATO’s nascent efforts to fight Russia’s prolific propaganda against European allies – considered to be classic “gray zone” activity.

By definition, special operations forces in the region would likely be among the first to notice such activity.

The fiscal year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act required the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff along with other U.S. government departments and agencies to develop a strategy to counter unconventional warfare threats posed by adversarial state and non-state actors. Unconventional warfare “means activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, or guerrilla force in a denied area,” according to the legislation.

The strategy was due to Congress no later than 180 days following enactment.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-New York, asked during the hearing, for an update, noting delivery of the unconventional warfare strategy to Congress was roughly two years late.

The Pentagon has “had to shift resources to focus on this and develop capabilities and knowledge bases that had, to a certain extent, atrophied over the years,” Whelan said. “But also, the nature of UW has fundamentally changed because of 21st century technologies and techniques. We really in many ways have been starting from scratch.”

In order to complete the strategy, Whelan added, the Pentagon is working with interagency partners – acknowledgement that UW poses multiple threats to the U.S. government “because of the ways that our adversaries are using it.”

Studies already conducted by the Pentagon, as well as Georgetown University on UW has shown adversaries, “particularly the more sophisticated ones,” are focusing on “seams between our organizational entities and trying to exploit those seams and decision-making cycles in order to gain advantage on us in the space that essentially is below conventional war,” Whelan said.

She added the Pentagon does expect to have an interim “answer with our thoughts” delivered to Congress before the end of June.

The study focused on Russian UW, will feed into the greater strategy. Looking through a Russian lens also makes sense from a special operations perspective because countering the Russian threat is its number two priority. There are roughly 1,400 special operations forces deployed to protect against Russian aggression.

Gen. Raymond Thomas, U.S. Special Operations Command commander, echoed Whelan during the same hearing, stating, “We’re working closely with the department for the overall strategy, but I think as importantly and more practically, we’re focused on the resources and authorities that would underpin that strategy. So we actually are having some pretty substantive discussions specifically as it applies towards countering Russian aggression.”

We know what Russia did. But what we really need to understand is why. by Fareed Zakaria

As Frank Hoffman has been trying to hammer home to us the first principle is to understand.  There have been a number of scholars and experts advocating that we understand where Putin and Russia are coming from and why they are acting the way they do. Perhaps pundits such as Fareed Zakaria will wake people up with his article below.  Yes, the democracy movements around the world are a threat to Russia and democracy overall is a threat to Putin and Russia.  I think this is the fundamental reason why Gerasimov created his so-called Gerasimov doctrine (see Charles Bartles) that has come to be known as non-linear warfare or new generation warfare which in my opinion is modern unconventional warfare with Russian characteristics that is a holistic approach designed to influence political action at all levels from non-violence influence operations to political mobilization, to sabotage and subversion, support to terrorist activities to the integrated activities of all the elements of national power to the select application or threat of application of violence by the full range of military forces (both special and conventional) to achieve national objectives. Unconventional warfare is the most political of all forms of warfare since the focus is on exploitation of resistance movements that seek to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow...

Russia is a revisionist power seeking to undermine the legitimacy of opposing political systems and undermine the dominant international systems and institutions and make them function in its favor and interests in order to protect himself and the Russian leadership from the loss of political power at home and abroad.  China is another revisionist power.   And of course AQ and ISIS are revolutionary who seek to destroy the international system and replace nations with their ideological systems.  The question for the US and like minded nations of the world is whether it is in our interest to protect the international system that we have created since WWII and whether we will the will to commit to the defense of that system or should we let the revisionist and revolutionary powers to have their way?

I would commend everyone to read Charles K. Bartles' Military Review article on "Getting Gerasimov Right" from January 2016. (and we should all learn from the discussion of "foresight" in his article on page 31).

For U.S. readers, Gerasimov’s linking of the Arab

Spring and “color revolutions” (and in later comments,

the Maidan Movement) with military capability development

may seem odd. In order to put his comments

in context, it is necessary to look at the Russian view of

warfare and forced regime change as it has developed

since the end of the Cold War.

...

In the Russian view, the pattern of U.S.

forced regime change has been as follows:

deciding to execute a military operation;

finding an appropriate NATO’s Yugoslavia intervention is one of military

action to prevent mass genocide, Russia has a much different

view. Most Russians generally view the NATO

bombing campaign as having been illegal because it was

conducted without the approval of the UN Security

Council and believe that Serbia was simply being

punished for engaging in counterterrorism operations,

albeit with some excesses. The most egregious sin, from

the Russian view, was the partitioning of Yugoslavia.

This action set a precedent for external actors to make

decisions about the internal affairs and territorial integrity

of sovereign nations alleged to have committed

some wrong. It is important to note that Russia was

dealing with its own Islamic insurgency at the same

time in the North Caucasus. This may have caused

Russian concern about a similar NATO action taking

place inside Russia. One consequence of Western

intervention resulting in the destruction of Yugoslavia 

pretext such as to prevent genocide or seize weapons

of mass destruction; and finally, launching a military

operation to cause regime change (figure 1).

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20160228_art009.pdf

We should also go back to Anthony Cordesman's CSIS report on the "Color Revolutions" written in 2014.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/russia-and-%E2%80%9Ccolor-revolution%E2%80%9D

Here is a summary of Russia's new generation or non-linear warfare from the Latvian Defence Academy.

Russian New Generation Warfare and the Future of War (link to the full report below - and the Poles and Finns have produced some excellent analysis of Russia's UW as well): 

As a result, it follows that the main guidelines for developing Russian military capabilities by 2020 are:

i. From direct destruction to direct influence;

ii. from direct annihilation of the opponent to its inner decay;

iii. from a war with weapons and technology to a culture war;

iv. from a war with conventional forces to specially prepared forces and commercial irregular groupings;

v. from the traditional (3D) battleground to information/psychological warfare and war of perceptions;

vi. from direct clash to contactless war;

vii. from a superficial and compartmented war to a total war, including the enemy’s internal side and base;

viii. from war in the physical environment to a war in the human consciousness and in cyberspace;

ix. from symmetric to asymmetric warfare by a combination of political, economic, information, technological, and ecological campaigns;

x. From war in a defined period of time to a state of permanent war as the natural condition in national life.

Thus, the Russian view of modern warfare is based on the idea that the main battlespace is the mind and, as a result, new-generation wars are to be dominated by information and psychological warfare, in order to achieve superiority in troops and weapons control, morally and psychologically depressing the enemy’s armed forces personnel and civil population. The main objective is to reduce the necessity for deploying hard military power to the minimum necessary, making the opponent’s military and civil population support the attacker to the detriment of their own government and country. It is interesting to note the notion of permanent war, since it denotes a permanent enemy. In the current geopolitical structure, the clear enemy is Western civilization, its values, culture, political system, and ideology.

http://www.naa.mil.lv/~/media/NAA/AZPC/Publikacijas/PP%2002-2014.ashx

We know what Russia did. But what we really need to understand is why.

The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · January 5, 2017

I’m glad that Donald Trump will finally get a briefing on the unanimous conclusion of America’s intelligence agencies that the Russian government was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. But he should also request and receive a political briefing on Russia that can shed light on the backdrop to Russia’s actions. We need to understand why Russia behaved the way it has.

It all started with the Arab Spring. The sudden mass demonstrations and demands for democracy took most of the world by surprise. In particular, they rattled Moscow at a precarious moment. The Kremlin was in the midst of managing the country’s political future and worried about opposition at home. Parliamentary elections were scheduled in less than a year, to be followed by a presidential election. Vladimir Putin was not then president, having stepped aside in keeping with the Russian constitution, allowing Dmitry Medvedev to ascend to the office.

Roland Dannreuther of the University of Westminster in London points out that the “crises in both Libya and Syria coincided with the rise of opposition to the re-election of Putin, with unprecedented large opposition rallies in Moscow and other cities in Russia during 2011-12.” He argues that the Kremlin watched these countries as street protests morphed into broader opposition, created instability, and then attracted the attention and intervention of Western powers. Moscow was determined that no such scenario would play out in Russia or in any of its close neighbors, such as Ukraine.

In fact, there was a rare disagreement between Putin and Medvedev on how to respond to Libya. Putin bitterly attacked his own president for not vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning an intervention in Libya and lambasted the West for launching a “crusade” against a Muslim country. Medvedev, who was technically in charge of foreign policy, flatly contradicted him, calling his rhetoric “inexcusable.” Some Russia hands believe that this disagreement might have sealed Medvedev’s fate, ensuring that he served just one term and then made way for Putin’s return to the presidency. In any event, as Dannreuther writes, “for conservative Russian elites, the evidence of the Arab Spring confirms that such factional divisions in the guise of democracy promotion only lead to internal disorder, societal conflict and the loss of the sovereign integrity of the state.” (The fact that Clinton encouraged Russian democracy protesters at this sensitive moment branded her an archenemy in the eyes of the Kremlin elite.)

About a year later, in 2013, the chief of staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, wrote an article suggesting that Russia’s key challenge was responding to the underlying dynamics of the Arab Spring and North Africa’s “color revolutions.” He urged that these not be viewed as non-military events because “a perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention, and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war.” He advocated that Russia better understand and develop the non-military and asymmetrical methods, including special operations, information warfare and the use of internal opposition to cripple a society.

Since then, Moscow has made information and asymmetrical warfare central to its foreign and military policy. When asserting itself in Georgia and Ukraine, Russia has used a hybrid strategy that involves the funding of local politicians and militias, fake news and cyberattacks. Leading German and Polish politicians assert that Russia has engaged in some such activities in their countries as well. And now there is the apparent involvement in America’s election.

The idea of information warfare is not new. The Soviet Union developed and practiced a strategy of “disinformation” throughout the Cold War, complete with fake news and the penetration of Western political parties and media organizations. But the revival of this approach and the aggressive and sophisticated manner in which it is now being used in a social media landscape mark a new and dangerous trend in geopolitics.

This is the political backdrop behind the technical evidence that Russia interfered in November’s election. It needs to be moved out of a partisan framework and viewed in a much broader context. Since the end of the Cold War, no major country has challenged the emerging international system. But now, a great-power strategy, designed to work insidiously, could well succeed in sowing doubt, division, discord — and ultimately destruction — within the West.

The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · January 5, 2017

DOD watchdog lists top 10 challenges for 2017

A fascinating list from the IG.  Not everything on the list is what I would expect from the IG but I am glad to see eevrything on the list.  The 130 page report can be downloaded here: http://www.dodig.mil/IGInformation/archives/2017_Oversight%20Plan_Final_Signed_508.pdf

Here is the summary of the "Management Challenges" (which I find an interesting way to phrase these).

1.    Countering Global Strategic Challenges

a.    Global Threats From China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea

b.    Interagency cooperation

2.    Countering Terrorist Treat

a.    Developing Security Forces

b.    Insider Threats

3.    Enabling Effective Acquisition and Contract Management

a.    Linking requirements to military plans

b.    Contract management oversight

c.    Illegal Technical Transfer

4.    Increasing Cyber Security and Cyber Capabilities

a.    Offensive and Defense Operations

b.    Technology Platforms/Infrastructure

5.    Improving Financial Management

a.    Financial auditability

b.    Eliminating improper payment

6.    Protecting Key Defense Infrastructure

a.    Installations, Energy, Environment

b.    Space

c.    Defense Industrial and Technology Base

7.    Developing Full Spectrum Total Force Capabilities

a.    Posture and Structure of the force/Building a diverse force despite Capabilities Despite Budget Pressures

b.    Chemical, Biological, Nuclear, Radiological, and Explosive Issues

8.    Building and Maintaining Force Readiness

a. Equipment Accountability and Reset

b. Suicide Prevention

c. Healthcare – Cost, Fraud, Access to Care

d. Talent Management, Force of the Future

9.    Ensuring Ethical

a.    Accountability, Integrity, Whistleblower Issues

b.    Sexual Assault Prevention and Response

10.    Promoting Continuity and Effective Transition Management

c.     Leadership Changes

d.    Planning and Internal Controls

efense

DOD watchdog lists top 10 challenges for 2017

https://fcw.com/articles/2016/12/20/dod-oig-top-10.aspx

• By Sean D. Carberry
• Dec 20, 2016

 

The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General has released its 2017 Oversight Plan that outlines 10 areas of focus, including cyber.

"Increasing Cyber Security and Cyber Capabilities" is one of the DOD's performance and management challenges the watchdog will audit in 2017, along with other areas such as acquisition, countering the terrorist threat and force readiness.

"The DOD OIG identified these challenges based on our oversight work, research, and judgment; oversight work done by other components within the DOD; input from DOD leaders; and oversight projects by the Government Accountability Office," the report states. "While we solicited input from the DOD, we identified these challenges independently."

"The DOD continues to face significant challenges in protecting and securing its networks, systems, and infrastructure from cyber threats and in increasing its overall cyber capabilities," according to OIG, despite some strategic progress from Cyber Command.

The report reiterates what top Pentagon officials have been saying throughout 2016:  cyber threats to the DOD continue to increase, and nation states such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are investing heavily in "sophisticated campaigns to penetrate and compromise DOD's networks."

Last week, the DOD OIG released a summary report of 21 audits conducted between Aug. 1, 2015, and Jul. 31, 2016. That report made 61 specific recommendations the DOD needs to take to improve cybersecurity. Those recommendations were added to 138 outstanding items from previous audits.

The coming year will bring more than 12 tech-related audits covering the defense of DOD networks, developing cyber capabilities and infrastructure, cyber offensive and defensive operations, and building and retaining the cyber workforce.

The audits will drill down on specific topics such as implementation of the Joint Information Environment, physical access controls, security controls over contractor systems, insider threat programs and cyber threat indicator sharing.

The Oversight Plan states that DOD continues to face challenges "in developing or acquiring unique cyber capabilities to conduct defensive and offensive operations."

The report also says that DOD does not have "an effective cloud computing implementation strategy or process to collect data and measure the effectiveness and efficiency of the DOD cloud initiative."

The DOD did not have any comment on the OIG Oversight Plan.

About the Author

Sean Carberry is an FCW staff writer covering defense, cybersecurity and intelligence. Prior to joining FCW, he was Kabul Correspondent for NPR, and also served as an international producer for NPR covering the war in Libya and the Arab Spring. He has reported from more than two-dozen countries including Iraq, Yemen, DRC, and South Sudan. In addition to numerous public radio programs, he has reported for Reuters, PBS NewsHour, The Diplomat, and The Atlantic.

Carberry earned a Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and has a B.A. in Urban Studies from Lehigh University.

U.S. Army Special Operations Command Primer on Russian Unconventional Warfare in Ukraine 2013-2014

Page Count: 78 pages
Date: June 2015
Restriction: None
Originating Organization: U.S. Army Special Operations Command
File Type: pdf
File Size: 8,767,432 bytes
File Hash (SHA-256):2F98D69E0550FB86FB8820C6C936948C0B6B0E3B81C788C4B061A2B6244D93AA

 Download the full PDF file (~8mb) here: https://publicintelligence.net/usasoc-little-green-men/

---

This document is intended as a primer—a brief, informative treatment—concerning the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. It is an unclassified expansion of an earlier classified version that drew from numerous classified and unclassified sources, including key US Department of State diplomatic cables. For this version, the authors drew from open source articles, journals, and books. Because the primer examines a very recent conflict, it does not reflect a comprehensive historiography, nor does it achieve in-depth analysis. Instead, it is intended to acquaint the reader with the essential background to and course of the Russian intervention in Ukraine from the onset of the crisis in late 2013 through the end of 2014. The document’s key points are summarized below.

PART I. CONTEXT AND THEORY OF RUSSIAN UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE

·         Key Principles

o    Strategy to deal with states and regions on the periphery of the Russian Federation

o    Primacy of nonmilitary factors: politics, diplomacy, economics, finance, information, and intelligence

o    Primacy of the information domain: use of cyberwarfare, propaganda, and deception, especially toward the Russian-speaking populace

o    Persistent (rather than plausible) denial of Russian operations

o    Use of unidentified local and Russian agents

o    Use of intimidation, bribery, assassination, and agitation

o    Start of military activity without war declaration; actions appear to be spontaneous actions of local troops/militias

o    Use of armed civilian proxies, self-defense militias, and imported paramilitary units (e.g., Cossacks, Vostok Battalion) instead of, or in advance of, regular troops

o    Asymmetric, nonlinear actions

·         For the purpose of clarity and uniformity within this study, the authors use the term unconventional warfare to embrace the wide variety of military, informational, political, diplomatic, economic, financial, cultural, and religious activities Russia employed in Ukraine.

·         Evolution of Russian unconventional warfare. Russian intervention in Ukraine has featured refined and modernized techniques evolved through observation and analysis of Western methods (the color revolutions, Arab Spring) and Russian experiences since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specifically, they drew lessons from interventions in:

o    Lithuania, 1991

o    Transnistria, 1990–1992

o    Chechnya (and Dagestan), 1994–1996 (1999–2009)

o    Georgia, 2008

·         Russian information warfare has emerged as a key component of Russian strategy. Igor Panarin and Alexandr Dugin are the primary theorists.

·         Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov’s model for interstate conflict reflects the growing importance of nonkinetic factors in Russian strategy.

PART II. RUSSIAN UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE IN UKRAINE, 2013–2014

·         Historical Context

o    Ukraine’s historical, cultural, religious, and economic ties to Russia make it a vital interest to Moscow.

o    Western encroachment into the Russian sphere of influence, primarily through North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion and European Union (EU) economic ties, stimulated a reactionary movement among Russian conservatives to stop the loss of peripheral states to the West.

o    The Crimean peninsula, with a majority of ethnic Russians, includes Russia’s Black Sea naval base of Sevastopol and is a vital interest to Moscow.

o    The Maidan movement is viewed as a product of Western—especially American—conspiracy.

o    Vladimir Putin has boosted his popularity by portraying himself as the defender of Russian nationalism and Russian Orthodoxy in Ukraine.

·         Russian Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures in Ukraine, 2013–2014

o    Political organization within the conflict region to create and sustain pro-Russian political parties, unions, and paramilitary groups

o    Recruitment and support of regional SPETSNAZ

o    Importation of “little green men”—unidentified Russian agents (usually SPETSNAZ) to organize and lead protests and paramilitary operations

o    Importation of Cossack, Chechen, Serbian, and Russian paramilitary “volunteers”

o    Persistent (rather than plausible) denial of Russian operations, even in the face of photographic evidence and firsthand testimonials

o    Domination of television, radio, and social media through the use of highly trained operatives, including “hacktivists” and seemingly independent bloggers; use of Russia Today television as a highly effective propaganda tool; use of professional actors who portray themselves as pro-Russian Ukrainians

o    Use of blackmail, bribery, intimidation, assassination, and kidnapping against regional political opponents and government officials, including police and military officials

o    Use of “relief columns” to import weapons, soldiers, equipment, and supplies to pro-Russian forces

o    Small-scale invasion and precision operations by conventional Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) based along the Russian border

o    Issuing Russian passports to pro-Russian populations and touting Moscow’s need to defend the Russian diaspora against alleged abuses

CONCLUSION

·         Driven by a desire to roll back Western encroachment into the Russian sphere of influence, the current generation of Russian leaders has crafted a multidisciplinary art and science of unconventional warfare. Capitalizing on deception, psychological manipulation, and domination of the information domain, their approach represents a notable threat to Western security.

·         The new forms of Russian unconventional warfare challenge the structure of the NATO Charter, because they obviate the appearance of “armed invasion.”