A new Pentagon directive officially broadens the responsibility for irregular warfare (IW) well beyond the remit of special operations forces (SOF). This move, considered by former practitioners and experts to be a significant development for America’s posture in the „gray zone,” will only have an impact if it is followed by concrete real-world implementation, according.
A New Paradigm for Irregular Warfare
In late September, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby signed off on an updated Department of Defense Instruction for Irregular Warfare. The document states that irregular warfare “is a joint force activity conducted by conventional forces and special operations forces.”
This seemingly dry language, experts quoted explain, amounts to the formalization of a push the military has been attempting, with limited success, for years. Seth Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS): “It’s not like irregular warfare has been completely ignored by elements of the US [Defense] Department outside of the special operations community. But I think this is helpful as a directive in bringing the applicability of irregular warfare outside of just the special operations community and highlighting its importance in competition for the department at a much bigger level.”
Jones, who previously served in special operations roles, emphasized that for IW to be effective, it “had to be much bigger than just a special operations activity. It really needs to leverage the full conventional might of the US military, as well as the capabilities across other government agencies.” However, he, along with other former servicemembers with intelligence or irregular warfare experience, warned that this “instruction” might still not be enough.
Alex Crowther, a retired Army colonel strategist specializing in unconventional competition, stated that DoD instructions do not hold the same weight as other foundational documents such as strategies, doctrine, or joint publications. “It’s really good to be talking about this stuff,” he said, “but… the place where we need to see it is the National Defense Strategy and then the National Military Strategy because those are the things that everybody, [from] all the planners at the Pentagon and the combatant commands and the services, all read those and pay attention to those.”
Redefining Asymmetric Conflicts: Meeting the Adversary in the Gray Zone
The instruction also updates the definition of irregular warfare to be more expansive, noting that it is used by state and non-state actors to assure or coerce others through “indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities.” According to the instruction, “IW provides an important complement to other joint force activities, operations, and investments in both competition and conflict.” IW strategies and tactics “can involve the threat or use of force, including the use of non-lethal weapons, for purposes other than physical domination over an adversary.”
These activities, traditionally carried out primarily by special operations forces on the US military side—including unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency, psychological operations, and civil affairs—are not entirely new for conventional forces. Their involvement in irregular warfare, especially in a support role, was evident in the counterinsurgency context during the past 20 years of the war on terror.
For instance, in an annex to the 2020 National Defense Strategy, the DoD stated it “must institutionalize irregular warfare as a core competency for both conventional and special operations forces, sustaining the ability to impose costs and create dilemmas for our adversaries across the full spectrum of competition and conflict.” Over the last few years, the military services have been building their own information and irregular forces within conventional units, such as the Army’s Theater Information Advantage Detachments and the Marine Expeditionary Force Information Groups.
With the „Global War on Terror” in the rearview mirror and the US settling in for a long-term „competition” with China, experts noted that the role of irregular warfare has grown—including in Beijing. China’s historical attitudes toward irregular warfare have been different, viewing conflict as a continuum where IW represents a gray zone, unlike the more binary US view.
“If one looks at the United States’ most notable challenger, the Chinese, they have long focused on this aspect of warfare,” Jones affirmed, adding that the new directive aims to bring “US capabilities up in areas that its major adversaries are spending resources, time and attention to.” He pointed to China’s so-called „three warfares” strategy: public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare (lawfare). None of these involve kinetic activity, but rather rely on irregular warfare and the use of information to influence populations.
While irregular warfare operations are by design difficult to attribute, Jones noted that China is suspected, for instance, of having severed undersea cables linking Taiwan to the outside world. Short of a full military conflict over Taiwan, gray zone tactics are expected to continue indefinitely in a region where the US will be obligated to be more present.
Strategic Implications and Lessons from Ukraine
One of the major policy implications of the new instruction, according to Jones, involves support that could be lent to partners to help blunt the activity of mutual adversaries such as Russia or China. If the US wants to impose costs on China, especially seeking to blunt its activity in Taiwan, it needs to work with the Taiwanese to ensure they are more equipped in the IW realm.
The successful US training and equipping of Ukrainian forces ahead of Russia’s 2022 invasion, carried out by US special operators as well as some conventional forces, did not deter Russian aggression, but did help blunt it. Moreover, the US could learn from Ukraine’s own asymmetric and irregular techniques, like its audacious „Operation Spiderweb,” in which Ukrainians clandestinely shipped hundreds of drones to Russian territory that were then free to cause millions of dollars of damage to major Russian weapons platforms such as aircraft. “There’s some massive policy implications in key areas that I think are big priorities of the department,” Jones said.
Brian Russell, a retired Marine colonel who served in cyber and information-related commands, also welcomed the new DoD instruction because it recognizes the role conventional forces can play in newer warfighting domains: cyber and space. “What I think excites me about the new directive is it does highlight the importance of cyber and space as domains… it’s like a recognition that military forces are applied, in fact, across a spectrum of conflict and this is just kind of the formal recognition of that reality,” he said in an interview. Russell believes the directive will allow special operations forces to focus on their truly specialized missions and capabilities.
Challenges of Implementation: From Document to Reality
Still, it remains to be seen how the instruction will be translated into real-world operations. “I want to believe it will lead to progress, but I have seen this movie so many times before where there have been these bursts of interests… but I’ve seen this movie so many times before. I’ll believe it when I see it,” a former top defense official in this sphere on condition of anonymity, echoing analysts’ concerns. “The proof will be in the pudding.”
The former official and others mentioned that irregular warfare is not well understood outside specialist circles, which could lead to skepticism from conventional force commanders regarding specific missions. It is often easier, they said, to get approval for a missile strike than an influence operation.
Crowther emphasized that, historically, it has been difficult to integrate irregular warfare into the culture of conventional forces. “It’s really important for everybody that isn’t in special operations to understand that they’re part of the solution in irregular warfare as well,” he said. “The name’s irregular. It says it all. They’re not irregular, they’re regular forces and they’re very conventional and hierarchical. Honestly, irregular warfare is neither conventional nor hierarchical.”
Another problem is the lack of a promotion structure, and thus, little incentive to conduct these types of activities among conventional forces. “If someone were to ask me, how many general officers have been created, have been promoted, have been elevated to flag rank because of their skill proficiency and risk tolerance in the area of irregular warfare, my answer will be, I can’t think of a single one,” the former official stated. “Which said a different way means there’s no professional incentive for a service member, officer, non-commissioned officer, flag officer to devote their careers to this because all they have to do is look around say, ‘Well, nobody’s ever been promoted for doing this, so why am I doing this?’”
Moreover, the services have their own responsibilities, personnel, and capabilities to fill, and irregular warfare is typically not on that list. “In the bureaucracy there, there still is likely to be what I’ll call an irregular warfare within the department to continue to make this a priority. I don’t necessarily believe that all senior service members within the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps and the Army are suddenly going to gravitate towards the importance of irregular warfare,” Jones explained.
Thus, Crowther concluded that the future of irregular warfare in regular formations might come down to just who is behind the push. “Until you get the senior leaders of the military to buy into it, which is why you need to see it in the NDS and the NMS, you need to see the same message in all of the documentation that goes along, [it] should start with the National Security Strategy and go down into the service doctrine and everything in between,” Crowther said.
Although there is no official release date for the National Defense Strategy, expected later this year, previous reports indicated it is expected to prioritize homeland defense.
