Counteroffensive Irregular Warfare: A Doctrine of Signature Reduction for Strategic Competition

Abstract:  This article argues that U.S. Special Operations Forces have experienced an atrophy in counteroffensive irregular warfare capacity amid the shift to strategic competition, leaving Western interests vulnerable to adversarial gray-zone strategies. It advances signature reduction—the deliberate management of physical and digital detectability—as a human-centered doctrine capable of restoring freedom of maneuver, renewing Special Operations Forces (SOF) heritage competencies, and providing a scalable counteroffensive IW framework below the threshold of armed conflict. The author contends that institutionalizing signature reduction within IW doctrine and training is essential to preserving human primacy in an era of asymmetric technological competition.

The Strategic Imperative for Irregular Warfare

The world has gone digital. When wearable Strava fitness trackers exposed the location of previously undisclosed U.S. special operations forces operating locations in Syria in 2018, policies were quickly put in place to ban the devices. Operations continued with little risk to the mission or force. A mere four years later, when Russian surveillance equipment observed a small number of mobile devices registered in the UK on Ukrainian networks at a military base near the Polish border, 30 Russian cruise missiles tore into the facility where British volunteer fighters had been, killing 35. The technology-fueled contrast between these operational vignettes starkly exposes the hidden costs of attribution in strategic competition – tech which poses exponential risk to both mission and force beyond that which has previously been visible in the past three decades of warfare. Irregular warfare finds itself most authentically in the dynamic heart of this contrast, not as an ancillary auxiliary but rather a central character.

DoDI 3000.07 defines Irregular Warfare (IW) as a “form of warfare where states and non-state actors campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities.” IW can be conducted either proactively to impose costs on an adversary’s capabilities and capacities or employed as a counteroffensive against an adversary’s specific aggressive behavior. This essay argues for a spirit of retrieval of the essential elements of IW from SOF heritage organizations such as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to renew institutional primacy for the art and science of IW. The shift from the Global War on Terror to strategic competition has revealed atrophied IW capacity. Rather than espousing the wholesale disposal of existing policy, structures, or systems in an apparently strong but ultimately frantic and ineffectual call to arms, what is necessary is the strengthening of these atrophied SOF capabilities – in light of strategic competition – as a catalyst to spur growth in capacity and effects. The doctrine that represents this growth is that of signature reduction, the counteroffensive IW key to renewal beginning in the SOF enterprise and the humans that comprise it.

Technology in Modern Competition

Within policy circles, we are becoming increasingly and rightly troubled by the proactive IW efforts levied upon us in the context of strategic competition. These efforts are best represented by adversarial doctrines such as Russian New Generation Warfare or Chinese Unrestricted Warfare. This is clearly on display on the ground in war-torn Ukraine: Warfare has metastasized into a Frankensteinian hybrid – World War I-style trench brutality grafted onto the AI-driven, lethal-effects drone warfare of tomorrow. Indeed, Ukraine is but one such demonstration of a new form of hybrid warfare in which asymmetry has not been greater. Breakneck, commercially fueled technological innovation splices itself into geopolitics, order of battle, and sheer numbers of bodies available to fight. The conditions and challenges of this environment have rightly proven a clarion call for a SOF enterprise, which certainly honed its craft in decades of legacy SOF activity, but which atrophied other capabilities and capacities – namely, an adequate counteroffensive IW capacity – necessary to bring a whole and effective response to bear well before conflict arises.

Indeed, the costs imposed on Western interests by adversarial doctrines in other theaters and domains appear disturbingly disproportionate to the relative capabilities and capacities of their zealous apparatchiks. The advantages here remain clear and distinct insofar as the United States and its allies maintain an adequate innate advantage across numerous sectors, such as economic influence, technological innovation, energy, and aerospace and defense. Yet, seemingly hampered by a multiplicity of factors, the United States and its allies lack the unitive principle demonstrated by competitors such as China. This unitive principle is necessary to mount an adequate response employing a whole-of-government approach. What is necessary then is not the disposal of existing mechanisms, but rather an organic renewal of IW activities from within.

Retrieving Human-Centered IW in Strategic Competition

To that end, we discover the doctrinal key of the science of signature reduction, or “the intentional implementation of practices to diminish the ‘signature’, or attributable and detectable characteristics, of an individual or organization across both the physical and digital domains”. The context of signature reduction is best understood in light of the concept of gray zone warfare, or that which encompasses state and non-state actions conducted below the threshold of armed conflict but above routine competition.

As the West’s doctrinal rejoinder to strategic competition, it is necessary to develop and reach a sound understanding of the necessity for gray zone warfare in light of adversarial strategies. It is also necessary to mount an adequate response that offers freedom of maneuver and freedom for action in such a way as to meaningfully and strategically compete. This necessitates integrated humans who can maneuver and act on the ground, hearkening back to the SOF truths and the stuff of legend from SOF heritage organizations such as the OSS.

Indeed, when routine competition rises to conflict, interceptor missile inventories eventually run low, critical ammunition shortfalls occur, and overly expensive lethal drones prove ineffective. What remains decisive in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity, and exposure is not a 900% increase in drone manufacturing capacity or its competing production goal, but the integrated human in action. It is within the historical context of the OSS that we recall the spirit of retrieval, which readily relieves us of our rabid obsession with rapid, commercially fueled technological innovation and which situates us more firmly not on frantic (or scalable) calls to arms, but a real foundation from which true and lasting growth can occur. With the human person at the center of its aim, signature reduction thus reveals itself as the most proper and willing instrument: as the doctrinal representative of counteroffensive IW capability and capacity from within the heart of the SOF enterprise and its heritage.

Signature Reduction: Doctrine and Practice

Signature reduction, then, is precisely the integrated capability and discipline stemming from a mindset and practice of identifying, managing, and reducing the physical and digital signatures of both individuals and organizations personally and operationally. This allows SOF to preserve operational freedom of maneuver and freedom for action in asymmetric environments, while reducing all-hazards risks in such a way as to preserve operational effectiveness.

To begin the retrieval and renewal of counteroffensive IW capacity and capability through the doctrine of signature reduction, the Department of Defense would:

• In accordance with DoDI 3000.07, identify and name signature reduction as a priority concept of IW policy through the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (USD(P)), for recommendation to the Secretary of Defense.
• Through USD(P), incorporate signature reduction as both an IW concept and approach into strategic planning and guidance documents.
• Assist USD(P) in developing and supervising the implementation of signature reduction policy with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict (ASD(SO/LIC)), particularly in creating and codifying standards for signature reduction training, capabilities, and capacity within the SOF enterprise.
• Incorporate signature reduction training standards in curriculum development within the Irregular Warfare Center (IWC), in collaboration with public and private partners for enterprise-wide effects.

Conclusion: Renewing SOF Capability from Within

The modern competition space demands both a capability and capacity from individuals to organizations that achieve meaningful strategic effects. This is the context in which signature reduction best applies, as a counteroffensive IW key that might unlock the potential for renewal within the SOF enterprise. The costs of inaction amount to a fundamentally decisive loss of human primacy in favor of technological bias in an arena in which humans are said to be more important than hardware. SOF welcome technological innovation as a complement to operational necessity, but not as a replacement for fundamental capabilities or capacities. The doctrine of signature reduction recognizes the asymmetry of digital technology in relation to the physical domain and equips SOF to both renew core IW capacities while retaining its human-centric essence.

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