The Future of Warfare is Irregular

Laura Jones, Air Force special operations pilot, PhD student at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University

The future of warfare conjures thoughts of cyber war, autonomous vehicles on the battlefield and flying overhead, cutting-edge artificial intelligence that integrates warfighting and information, and sleek new weapons and aircraft that promise to revolutionize war. However, the future of war is simpler in concept: it is irregular. The inclusion of irregular warfare as a foundational component of national security will ensure that the United States will have the capabilities, flexibility, and scope to militarily compete with great power rivals on the global stage. This article lays out how China and Russia are already challenging the United States using irregular means and expands on how the United States can leverage irregular warfare to build its response to increasing asymmetric threats. The main argument is that the United States has seen irregular warfare as a twenty-year anomaly and national security leaders are keen to focus on competition with geo-political rivals like China and Russia through conventional military means. However, this shift away from irregular warfare will make the United States less capable of competing with its adversaries by limiting engagement below the level of armed conflict and focusing solely on winning a conventional war through technological overmatch. This article uses the definition of irregular warfare laid out in the 2020 Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy: unconventional warfare (UW), stabilization, foreign internal defense (FID), counterterrorism (CT), and counterinsurgency (COIN).

(Read the full article here at The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs.)