Defense Primer: What Is Irregular Warfare?

U.S. military doctrine distinguishes between two types of warfare: traditional warfare and irregular warfare. In Department of Defense (DOD) Joint Publication “Joint Warfighting,” conventional warfare is characterized as “a violent struggle for domination between nation-states or coalitions and alliances of nation-states, fought with conventional forces.”

The publication differentiates between that and irregular warfare, which is defined 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, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare.”