UK following Russia into era of Hybrid Warfare?
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/r...fuse-832sw9tfs
Royal Marine commandos on mission to disrupt and confuse
Small groups of Royal Marine commandos will be deployed on covert missions overseas to operate in the “grey zone” between peace and war where they can disrupt enemy activity.
Lieutenant Colonel Simon Rogers, commanding officer of 40 Commando, said that they would carry out “special operations” in sensitive places where a conventional deployment would increase political risk.
Commandos will take on the role of special forces so that the “highest end troops” are free to focus on the most demanding operations, he said.
Tasks could include deception operations where commandos send fake electronic transmissions to confuse adversaries, or missions to disrupt online systems and deceive enemy forces by making them think UK troops are positioned elsewhere.
Rogers told a conference at the Royal United Services Institute think tank that special operations referred to normal activity in unusual or sensitive places where sending large numbers of troops would cause problems for the government.
He said “special operations are now no longer the preserve of special forces” and that under the Future Commando Force programme the Marines would take on some of their roles to “ease the burden”.
What is more, terrorist threats and hostile state activity are overlapping and they are on a global scale,” he added, noting that the Future Commando Force programme needed to increase the Marines’ ability and capacity to operate in a “sub-threshold” space, a type of warfare where armed clashes are avoided.
By stopping the adversary operating in that area between peace and war, this could in turn prevent such activities leading to all-out conflict. Rogers added that the UK needed to ensure there was a “cost to malign activity below the threshold of conflict”.
Vice Admiral Jerry Kyd, fleet commander of the navy, told the conference that the military needed to recognise that the UK’s adversaries sought to win battles without having to take part in
a conventional war.
That meant troops needed to be more proactive but still able to fight in a full-blown conflict. “When deterrence fails, we go to a shooting war very quickly indeed”, he said.