Within the military sphere, there are two constants: the idea that newerr is always better, and that a good goal to shoot for is to risk as few of your own people’s lives as possible…Neither of these things are true, but they do remain constants.
As we pointed out last week, the “newer is always better” mantra is fundamentally flawed, both in concept and in execution. The perfect example of this is a situation this author was made aware of just a couple of days ago: there is now, apparently, an offering out there for a belt-fed AR-15 type upper receiver chambered in .300 Blackout. To be clear, this is basically a toy for big kids with big bank accounts – it has zero utility for any real-world tactical application. The .300 Blackout cartridge is designed for a very specific role, at which, it does very well…but for anything outside that role, it is basically dead weight.
But it is neat.
This is not a digression – the .300 Blackout perfectly fits the “newer is always better” paradigm…but ignores the “general use” nature required of almost every type of “tactical” system. And, in line with that idea, is various drives for incorporating “cyberwarfare“.
The evolving landscape of modern conflict has fundamentally altered how nations project power and pursue strategic objectives…in the public eye, at least. As military and political leaders grapple with the complexities of 21st-century warfare, the integration of conventional kinetic operations with cyber capabilities has indicated the possibilities of both a strategic imperative and a source of significant operational challenges. This seeming convergence may represent a paradigm shift that demands careful analysis of the distinct advantages and limitations of each domain…or, it could be simply a re-branding of older, traditional tool kits, with eye-wateringly expensive toys.
The Traditional Foundation: Conventional Warfare’s Enduring Strengths
Conventional warfare retains several critical advantages that cyber operations cannot fully replicate or counter. Physical destruction remains the ultimate form of military persuasion — when infrastructure is physically destroyed, it requires substantial time and resources to rebuild. The psychological impact of conventional military action is immediate and visceral, creating clear demonstrations of state capability and resolve. Moreover, conventional forces operate within well-established legal frameworks under international humanitarian law, providing clearer rules of engagement and attribution mechanisms.
The command and control structures of conventional military operations have been refined over centuries, offering predictable hierarchies and time-tested operational doctrines. When NATO recognized cyberspace as a domain of operations alongside air, land, and sea in 2016, it acknowledged that traditional military structures provide the foundational architecture for multi-domain operations.
Additionally, a little-spoken of aspect of conventional warfare is that it requires little in the way of advanced communications, power systems or satellite support – those things all certainly help, but plenty of lower-tier conventional forces repeatedly fight and win without them.
The Digital Revolution: Cyber Warfare’s Strategic Appeal
Cyberwarfare, however, offers unique advantages that conventional operations cannot match. The speed of digital operations allows for near-instantaneous effects across vast distances, while the relatively low cost of entry democratizes access to sophisticated capabilities. Research indicates that cyber attacks have become increasingly prevalent, with Russian cyberattacks on Ukraine jumping by nearly 70% in 2024, surpassing 4,000 incidents targeting critical infrastructure.
The important thing to remember, though, is that cyberwar campaigns have to be targeted for maximum and immediate impact in support of the conventional battle, versus the “pre-kinetic” oeprational phase.
Perhaps most significantly, then, cyber operations excel in the “gray zone” between peace and war, enabling states to pursue strategic objectives out of public sight, while maintaining plausible deniability about what could be viewed as actual acts of war. This ambiguity complicates adversary response calculations and allows for persistent, low-level campaigns that can achieve strategic effects over time without triggering conventional military responses.
Integration Challenges: Technical and Operational Complexities
The convergence of conventional and cyber warfare presents substantial integration challenges. The UK’s establishment of CyberEM Command represents one approach to addressing the fragmentation of cyber and electromagnetic capabilities across different military units. However, coordinating across multiple government agencies and military branches requires overcoming significant bureaucratic hurdles and distinct organizational cultures.
At the same time, technical integration poses equally complex challenges. For states dependent on legacy military systems, those systems must interface with cutting-edge cyber capabilities, creating potential vulnerabilities and incompatibility holes while demanding substantial investment in both personnel and infrastructure. The military cyber security market, valued at $17.0 billion in 2025, reflects the significant resources required to achieve effective integration.
This creates a significant divide, where wealthier nations with stronger economies potentially have a distinct advantage over poorer nations. However, the inverse is also true, where the perception of dominance is not actually the case, because the poorer nation’s electronic systems cannot be directly impacted by the richer state’s cyber systems.
Strategic Advantages of Hybrid Integration
When successfully integrated, conventional and cyber capabilities create magnified effects that exceed the sum of their individual contributions. Cyber operations can disable enemy communications and sensors immediately before conventional strikes, while kinetic operations can destroy hardened targets that resist digital infiltration. This combined approach enables more efficient resource allocation and creates multiple dilemmas for adversaries who must defend across both physical and digital domains simultaneously.
Recent exercises like Cobra Gold 2025’s CYBEREX demonstrate the value of integrating cyber capabilities into multinational military training, building interoperability and collective defense capabilities essential for modern warfare.
The caveat, of course, is that the targets must be dependent on systems that can be attacked via cyber tools. This is the fundamental flaw in Tofflerian-derived concepts, because cyber advantages do not work in reverse.
Limitations and Vulnerabilities
Despite these advantages, integrated warfare approaches carry inherent risks, as noted above. Cyber weapons can be unpredictable, potentially causing unintended collateral damage or being reverse-engineered by adversaries. Analysis suggests that in sustained conflicts, cyber attacks tend to be “scattershot, unfocused and ineffective against hardened systems“, particularly military command-and-control networks designed with cyber resilience in mind.
The attribution challenge in cyberspace can complicate escalation management, while the interconnected nature of modern military systems creates new vulnerabilities. A successful cyber attack on integrated systems could potentially cascade across multiple military functions, creating systemic failures that purely conventional forces might better compartmentalize. Worse, cyberattacks, as happened with the STUXNET virus, can easily spread far outside the “cyber battlespace”, directly attacking the deploying nation’s own computer infrastructure.
Future Implications
As hybrid warfare continues to mature with AI-enabled operations and increasingly sophisticated state and non-state actors, military organizations must develop comprehensive strategies that leverage the strengths of both conventional and cyber domains while mitigating their respective weaknesses. This requires not only technological investment but also doctrinal evolution, training adaptation, and international cooperation frameworks that address the borderless nature of modern conflict.
The path forward demands careful balance – embracing the transformative potential of cyber-conventional integration while maintaining realistic expectations about what digital operations can and cannot achieve in the broader context of national security strategy.
“Newer“, as stated, is not necessarily “better“. Like any software implementation, careful thought needs to be applied to any new injection into the calculus, because there are “do-overs” in a “digital Blackhawk Down“.
