Enemies Likely to Define Future Threat Environment
The future threat may be a hybrid threat.
Future adversaries are likely to wage new types of warfare against U.S. and coalition forces based on varying types of conflict, according to a panel of experts at Joint Warfighting Conference 2011 in Virginia Beach, Virginia. "I worry about disruptive threats such as cyber and EW [electronic warfare]," said Lt. Gen. William J. Rew, USAF, vice commander, Air Combat Command. Gen. Rew expressed concern that the young people who've grown up always having the global positioning system GPS may be ill-equipped to handle warfare with those high-technology capabilities are denied. He related that the Air Force Injected a significant amount of that activity into a wargame at Nellis Air Force base recently, and that caused significant problems with participants. A similar position was adopted by Lt. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik, USMC, commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Command. "On the cyber side, the question is who's out there that is going to take some magical moments away from us," he declared. "There are some smart enemies out there" that might deny effective us of GPS, for example, the general said. Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., USA, commanding general, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, offered that the future threat is probably a sort of a hybrid threat, such as Hezbollah in its operations against Israel. This is a non-state adversary that wages new types of asymmetrical warfare but, because of its state sponsorship from Iran, has some state capabilities.
