NATO faces a military problem: adversaries are undertaking acts of aggression that deliberately stay below the lethal force threshold or that ensure a lethal response from NATO incurring costs—undesired escalation, risks of collateral damage including civilian casualties, negative narratives, and other adverse strategic or political outcomes—to the Alliance. Intermediate Force Capabilities (IFC)—active means (non-lethal weapons, particularly non-lethal directed energy, cyber, electronic warfare, information operations, and other effectors) beyond presence but below lethal thresholds—help solve this problem. SAS-151 and Allied Command Transformation developed and conducted wargames and IFC Concept Development Workshops that demonstrated the ways in which IFC improve NATO’s ability to deter, counter, and defeat adversaries via: Enhanced Engagement: If fielded and incorporated into tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), IFC can enable lethal engagements by isolating, stopping, or moving targets to positions of advantage, also, reversible (and in many cases unseen) effects allow for earlier employment, including potential autonomous/AI use of IFC where lethal capabilities would require human-inthe-loop; Tempo/Initiative: Instead of adversaries dictating the time and place of engagements, IFC help NATO gain/maintain the initiative by suppressing, imposing delays, and making adversaries reactive (even inactive); Active means across the Competition Continuum: NATO needs to develop, acquire, and effectively employ IFC across the continuum to win engagements, impose costs on the adversary, and win the narrative.
BT - Connections: The Quarterly Journal DA - 2022 DO - https://doi.org/10.11610/Connections.21.2.05 IS - 2 LA - eng M3 - Journal Article N2 -NATO faces a military problem: adversaries are undertaking acts of aggression that deliberately stay below the lethal force threshold or that ensure a lethal response from NATO incurring costs—undesired escalation, risks of collateral damage including civilian casualties, negative narratives, and other adverse strategic or political outcomes—to the Alliance. Intermediate Force Capabilities (IFC)—active means (non-lethal weapons, particularly non-lethal directed energy, cyber, electronic warfare, information operations, and other effectors) beyond presence but below lethal thresholds—help solve this problem. SAS-151 and Allied Command Transformation developed and conducted wargames and IFC Concept Development Workshops that demonstrated the ways in which IFC improve NATO’s ability to deter, counter, and defeat adversaries via: Enhanced Engagement: If fielded and incorporated into tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), IFC can enable lethal engagements by isolating, stopping, or moving targets to positions of advantage, also, reversible (and in many cases unseen) effects allow for earlier employment, including potential autonomous/AI use of IFC where lethal capabilities would require human-inthe-loop; Tempo/Initiative: Instead of adversaries dictating the time and place of engagements, IFC help NATO gain/maintain the initiative by suppressing, imposing delays, and making adversaries reactive (even inactive); Active means across the Competition Continuum: NATO needs to develop, acquire, and effectively employ IFC across the continuum to win engagements, impose costs on the adversary, and win the narrative.
PY - 2022 SE - 67 SP - 67 EP - 84 T2 - Connections: The Quarterly Journal TI - Developing a NATO Intermediate Force Capabilities Concept VL - 21 ER -