Irregular Warfare Center Joins National Resilience Discourse, Focuses on Energy Grid Vulnerability

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Irregular Warfare Center (IWC) played a key role in the recent Defense TechConnect / Resilience Week conference, where Dr. Robert Redding, an IWC Contractor and U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) Deputy Regional Advisor, served as a panelist to discuss “Fostering Whole-of-Society Resilience through Energy Assurance,” November 19, 2025.

The panel convened national security practitioners, energy sector professionals, researchers, and emergency management leaders to examine the intersection of infrastructure resilience, hybrid threats, and irregular warfare.

Dr. Redding, representing the IWC, provided vital irregular warfare expertise, emphasizing the conceptual alignment between adversary hybrid tactics and energy infrastructure targeting. He focused on the Department of War and IWC perspectives on deterrence by denial, societal resilience, critical infrastructure interdependencies, and NORTHCOM/homeland implications for effective civil-military coordination, as well as the essential need for integrated national security, energy sector, and community-based planning frameworks.

“We must operate from the understanding that our adversaries are not just targeting military assets. They are targeting the interdependencies that hold our society together, with our energy infrastructure being the primary seam,” said Dr. Redding. “True deterrence, therefore, isn’t just about a military response. It’s about deterrence by denial, building a resilient and integrated framework where the energy sector, civil authorities, and national security are already coordinated. Effective homeland defense demands we close these gaps through civil-military cooperation before a crisis, not in the middle of one.”

The newly named National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), formerly known as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which hosted and facilitated the panel, established the context by highlighting the energy grid as a growing target and focus of national vulnerability. Panel host Dr. Bobby Jeffers utilized NLR’s energy resilience analysis to show the major national-level consequences of energy system disruption, including degrading mission assurance and inducing societal unrest, a concept also called “One Target, Dual Outcomes”.

The central focus of the discussion was on achieving “whole-of-society resilience as a form of deterrence by denial” against hybrid threats targeting critical infrastructure, cyber networks, and vulnerable societal nodes. Dr. Redding educated the energy-sector-heavy audience on the characteristics and relevance of irregular warfare (IW) and how adversaries are interested in civil infrastructure degradation to shape strategic outcomes.

Other panelists, including Tim Tetreault of NLR and Jonathon Monken of Converge Strategies, addressed complementary aspects, covering technical/operational considerations for energy resilience and state-level emergency management insights, respectively.

The event successfully placed the IWC as a key contributor to national energy resilience discourse and reinforced the importance of energy infrastructure as a primary IW-relevant target set.

Following the strong audience reception, the IWC is positioned for collaborations focusing on joint analytic work, integrating state emergency management perspectives into its activities, and providing additional resources for critical infrastructure security.

The IWC will build on this foundation with the NLR to integrate energy infrastructure vulnerability considerations into IWC curricula, scenario planning, and assessments. The Center also plans to explore opportunities for NLR participation in the IWC’s Defense of the Homeland Working Group. “The IWC team is excited to work jointly with the NLR,” said Dr. Redding. “This collaboration could only make our energy infrastructure security stronger; we can’t afford to have blind spots when it comes to the country’s power infrastructure. Bringing NLR to the table regularly is the best way to make sure our training and assessments are actually ready for a real-world attack.”