The Pentagon on Friday released a document detailing the department’s push to expand its use of irregular warfare (IW) operations beyond just special operations forces, including an emphasis in artificial intelligence investments to bolster IW tactics across the joint force.
The newly declassified 12-page Irregular Warfare Annex was originally put together as an amendment to the National Defense Strategy in 2019, and discusses a need to embrace “proactive, dynamic, and unorthodox approaches” that will be required to compete with countries such as Russia and China.
“This approach does not require significant new resources to meet our strategic vision; it requires new ideas and new means of employing existing capabilities,” officials wrote in the document. “We must creatively mix our traditional combat power with proactive, dynamic, and unorthodox approaches to IW that can shape, prevent, and prevail against our nation’s adversaries and maintain favorable regional balances of power alongside our key partners and allies.”
The document calls for “preserving a baseline of IW-focused expertise and capabilities” and using “IW capabilities proactively to expand the competitive space, defeat our adversaries’ competitive strategies, and prepare for an escalation to conflict, if required.”
To bolster existing capabilities and ensure a more IW-ready joint force, the annex cites a need for advancements in AI and quantum computing to assist with future information operations and the ability to more rapidly disseminate intelligence.
“We must aggressively pursue these innovations in order to defeat the multi-domain, stealthy irregular warfare campaigns conducted by our adversaries. We will also invest in and employ our capabilities in a more cost-informed and resource-sustainable manner to manage risk effectively,” officials wrote in the document. “We will also invest in and employ our capabilities in a more cost-informed and resource-sustainable manner to manage risk effectively.”