Hybrid Warfare and Propaganda

[mrgenie]

We see this evolving very strong in the modern times of social media.

This concept - I have no idea how - but I'd love such a feature in SR as well.

You can weaken enemy morale with propaganda
you can incite government overthrow/uprising/etc with propaganda
with hybrid-warfare you can cut gas/oil supplies
with hybrid-warfare you can crash the enemy power-grid
with hybrid-warfare you cut command-lines and your troops don't know what to do anymore - they start to surrender due to propaganda telling them your government has fled - that's why no more commands for you, surrender..

that kind of stuff.. I think in modern digital age - 2030 SR - such features could be very nice

[Tnarg]

I attempted something like this with the Unit Overhaul Mod. The only downside was that attacks like these can only work in SRU if you have DW on who you are doing these attacks on. Yes, it would be great if cyber attacks, sanctions, drug wars, religious terrorism, political tinkering, messing around with moral of both civilian and military, disrupting communication lines. All of these before actually DW, could use this to also build up casus beli, maybe enticing your target to actually declaring war on you.

Also maybe different levels of war (Hybrid, "Special Action", Limited War, Full Declaration) and mobilization stances.

Mobilization stances being how many personal you have available to man all of your units, forcing one to deploy the amount of forces that you only have available man power for. Base it on a percentage of total population. The higher the mobilization the higher the percentage of total manpower you can draw from. If a defensive war full mobilization will not hurt your DAR, if you are the aggressor, full mobilization will hurt your DAR significantly.

[mrgenie]

cyber attacks, sanctions, drug wars, religious terrorism, political tinkering, messing around with moral of both civilian and military, disrupting communication lines.

That's a great list already additionally to what I was thinking - yeah I really would love more "modern age warfare" additional to classic warfare.

and have the AI being capable to use this -

And don't forget to that list -
cutting water supplies
disrupt power grid, so factories stop working
taking over the internet in some country - disrupting the whole society and their economy collapses, etc..

I mean going to war against an AI which has the lack of troop numbers in both quantity and quality - you think that's an easy target..

and then it's not because their army of hackers/trolls/etc going to undermine your society.. and everything falls apart

[Tnarg]

I figured out an "abstract" way to conduct cyber attacks on infrastructure, communications(whole units), and individual units in SRU and implemented this in the Unit Overhaul Mod; however, these can only be conducted if at war. As mentioned earlier, it would be great to conduct these kinds of attacks in peace time, with a chance of being caught. If caught, there would be ramifications, maybe even drive the other country to declare war on you.

Endless possibilities:

Drug Wars - a country whose economy is based off of income from corruption and drugs, could overwhelm another country by flooding their market with bails of cocaine, creating income for the country, but lowering DAR of the target country. Target country can counter by boosting costly social programs (Law Enforcement, have to research anti-drug programs), create a DEA building to lower the effect, can conduct anti-drug cartel raiding missions. As form of corruption, countries that utilize the drug economy could lose control and cartels form mini countries, which could then lead to the target country and country that formed a cartel to form a temporary alliance and a little mini war could ensue.

Religious Terrorism - Incorporate religion into the population. Countries with with populations whose religions clash with other countries religions can conduct terrorism strike on other countries. I have this implemented already in the Unit Overhaul Mod, but again, would like to see this done in peacetime.

If water is implemented as a resource (hopefully!) Countries that share rivers or water supply could utilize damning to increase their water supply or cutting off water downstream hurting their neighbors.

Would love to see wi-fi implanted as form of infrastructure that could be built up to improve DAR, improve production speeds and cost, and unit efficiency. And targeted with disrupting this crucial infrastructure with cyber attacks, or being able to steal research, or mess with political outcomes during voting times. Could counter with costly social programs or researching tech to improve wi-fi capabilities, anti-hacker research, or maybe cyber espionage building that increase cyber attacks and increases defense against, or even cyber soldiers/agents as units that could be placed in key areas that might be targeted or sent abroad to greatly enhance cyber attacks in target country.

Piracy - Countries near major naval trade routes (in game, this would be nautical choke points) could conduct piracy missions to steal resources, demand money. Countries that utilize Piracy missions or units would target countries with high amounts of cash on hand. Target countries that are targeted by piracy attacks or raids, could declare limited war to conduct anti-piracy missions to eliminate pirate type units.

Would love to see influence building with countries being able to build up a target countries infrastructure (roads, rails, wi-fi, water, industrial capabilities, military bases...) greatly improving relations leading to trade alliances, or falling into spheres of influence. Perhaps a country could build up relations so well that they just peacefully become part of the influencing country as a colony.

Intimidation Attacks - A country could navigate a large naval force near a target countries border, fly aerial missions near a border, mobilize a large ground force to intimidate a country lowering its DAR, forcing it to counter the naval, aerial, or ground encroachment. This could do a number of things. Increase casus beli between the two nations over time, or there is a chance that a unit accidently fires, causing a huge hit to casus beli, or maybe ultimately triggering a war (10% chance) triggering a declaration of war from target country.

Special Operations Missions - With out declaring war, a country can conduct raids during peacetime using SOF units to target infrastructure, sabotage a base, destroy a crucial unit. If a unit conducting the raid is destroyed it is caught and target nation discovers the attacking country, leading to a huge hit on casus beli, world opinion hit, attacking country MAR hit, or declaration of war.

ELINT Missions - Utilize those units that have that Electronic Warfare tag! Units with Electronic Warfare or ELINT tags can fly near target borders and collect intelligence over time. This intelligence shows up in the Atlas as "Target country has 30-50 Infantry, 5-10 Recon, 10-20 Armor, .... 15-25 Helicopters, 22-32 Fighter Interceptors....., or if battlegroups is utilized in another post to create brigades and divisions Target country has 10-15 Brigades, or 10-15 Infantry Divisions, 5-10 Armor Divisions..." The more ELINT Missions, the more accurate the number becomes over time.