Hybrid Warfare in 'Future Challenges'

The Chief of the Army at the conference (Photo:MINISDEF)

The Minister with some of the event participants (Photo:MINISDEF)

"The Army must be prepared to face all challenges that lie ahead." This is the message that the Defence Minister, María Dolores de Cospedal, wanted to get across in her inauguration yesterday at the third edition of "Spanish Army and Future Challenges," focused on hybrid warfare, which will conclude today in the "Escuela de Guerra del Ejército" (Army War College).

The Minister, accompainied by the Chief of the Army, Jaime Domínguez Buj, assured that the current threats "have changed our understanding of security in an unprecedented way," because each time more non-conventional tactics are being used, such as terrorist and criminal acts, cyber attacks and physcological and opinion warfare.

Cospedal underlined that Defence is not a uniquely military concept, rather it has a multidisciplinary dimension that brings together the Government Security bodies and intelligence and diplomatic services, as the challenges faced are multidisciplinary, multiethnic, multireligious and multicultural.

The Minister has emphasised the importance of the work of the Army, "not only on national territory, but on our borders and further afield." In this line, the Chief of the Army also stated that the new approach is a "real and current" need that has already been considered in the planning of operations and deployments abroad.

During the two-day conference, on 21st and 22nd March, the role of ground forces will be extensively analysed within the conceptual framework of hybrid warfare through presentations from researchers from Real Instituto Elcano, the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies, the Escuela de Guerra, the Army Intelligence Centre, the National Distance Learning Institute and the Escuela de Guerra (Army War School).

The Russia-Ukraine conflict, insurgence analysis, the role of military intelligence in new scenarios, the information war and Army capabilities in asymetric conflict are some of the topics that will be discussed during the conference.