From Ukraine to the streets of Italy. The Ministry of Defence is preparing for hybrid warfare

One need only look at the 500 soldiers from the Folgore Brigade sent to Milan to bolster ‘Strade sicure’ – the mission most detested by the military – to be reminded of how the government’s refrain about the ‘hybrid threat’ is now at the top of the list of concerns even within the Italian military. “It is not always discussed correctly,” General Giovanni Maria Iannucci, commander of the Joint Forces Operational Command (Covi), pointed out yesterday in passing, speaking of hybrid warfare. Every military operation relating to the country’s defence, from space downwards, passes through him – Iannucci. But the current priority is security on the streets and in public squares. It is a matter of identifying “that grey area, below the threshold, which lies just below open conflict and where an attack cannot even be easily attributed to anyone”.

Of course, it is not just the demonstrations taking place across Italy today that are causing concern for the Ministry of Defence. For the Armed Forces, the whole world is in turmoil, from the eastern to the southern fronts. In short, the country’s defence sector must seek out resources and ensure sustainability, whilst at the same time learning to fight ‘a war that none of us has ever fought and which we are enduring’, as Crosetto said a few days ago when speaking of hybrid warfare.

The armed forces are learning to do this and yesterday, in Rome, General Iannucci presented Joint Stars 2026, the Italian Defence’s largest joint forces exercise, planned by Covi. The aim is to assess the current state of the country’s military capabilities. “It is not about assessing how good we are, but where we need to improve,” said the commander. The hypothetical scenarios range from the Mediterranean to North Africa, via the eastern front, from Finland to the Black Sea. The National Defence Plan will undergo a ‘stress test’ until the middle of next month, with the aim of identifying any weaknesses, if any, in the event of a more or less conventional attack.

And it is a sign of the times that much of the attention yesterday at Centocelle military airport – the exercise’s headquarters – was focused on hybrid warfare and cognitive threats. For whilst fighting rages in Ukraine and the Russian shadow fleet sails the Mediterranean, here in Italy it is the mobilisation for protests that is causing fear. So, for the first time, the 28th Regiment from Pavia – the only operational unit within the Armed Forces dedicated to operational communications and psychological operations, known in jargon as Info Ops and PsyOps – was also involved in the exercise’s decision-making process. Among the scenarios our military personnel trained for is the proliferation of bots and information campaigns via social media pages, giving rise to two distinct platforms from which hypothetical cognitive attacks were simulated. This is a scenario in which influencers become threats and the security approach can no longer rely solely on law enforcement intervention but requires integrated action with the military. We are aware that there is an underlying regulatory issue, because finding the ‘smoking gun’ of a cognitive war is no easy task. “Often that grey area cannot be attributed to any specific party, and consequently we do not always have the tools to respond appropriately,” summarises Iannucci. The underlying point is that it is not always possible to intervene preventively. “Do we have the tools to respond to these threats? The answer is yes. So are we sorted then? No, because we need to work as a system. We live in a data-centric world, where everything relies on the rapid sharing of data. And it is precisely this process that makes us vulnerable.” Data which, Iannucci continues, must be made available in a form that is easily interpretable by those in command and decision-making positions, “that is, the political leadership itself, such as the Prime Minister”. One need only look at the figures for the areas “trained” during Joint Stars, where the cognitive domain stands out with 16 per cent of activations, comprising 78 planned events. “We are fortunate to live in a democratic system,” the Covi commander pointed out. “But democratic systems are based on consensus, and any threat aimed at influencing that consensus is a threat to democracy.” While the Defence forces are training, the protests taking place these days already resemble an open-air laboratory.