While I’m not sure I truly understand what Gen. Martin Dempsey is trying to say in this Small Wars Journal post — if I follow him, he’s saying that hybrid threats are extremely complex things that require institutional changes on the part of a military seeking to confront them — I’d be interested to hear him cash out this statement:

The enemy adapts to leverage their strengths and to exploit our vulnerabilities. I believe LTG Stan McChrystal—one of our truly innovative senior leaders—had it right when he said, “to defeat a network, you have to be a network.” So our challenge is to adapt our institutions and develop our leaders to confront the complexity and decentralization inherent in the future operational environment.

How far does this go, though? If Dempsey — the commanding general of the Army’s crucial Training and Doctrine Command –  means to say that senior officers ought to absorb the experience of their platoon, company or battalion commanders and their top enlisted men, who have the greatest frontline experience encountering such threats, that’s one thing, and it seems uncontroversial. But how much decentralization can an army withstand and maintain discipline and excellence? And is it the case that battling insurgent networks requires the army to become such a network? What would that mean, in practice? I’m not making an argument, just trying to gain clarity on what Dempsey (and McChrystal) means here.

Regardless, it’s cool that Dave Dilegge has Gen. Dempsey contributing stuff for SWJ.