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Students of the devolvement of Western military forces the last three decades have witnessed a constant reduction in numbers, and prioritization of extensive technological systems. The trend has been stand-off fire, rather than the ability to take and hold key terrain. Operation Desert Storm in 1991, was the first real sign that advanced technology led to new opportunities. The air operations against Serbia and Kosovo in 1999 and the initial phases of the wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 seemingly showed that an adversary could be defeated with minimal risk to own forces. The conclusion at the time was that technology could replace troops. Additionally, technology promised predictability and low losses to such an extent that the threshold to enter a war became significantly lower. This report points out that the tide seems to be turning. The current COIN operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are first and foremost troop intensive. Technology still plays an important role, but it is no longer an end in itself. A real and tangible sign of this was the cancellation of US Army’s ambitious “Future Combat System” last summer. The US Army’s new Capstone Concept and the US Department of Defense’ 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review both point in the same direction. An incipient US debate about reintroducing the draft is also part of the same picture. As the potential of technology increased throughout the 1990s, new military concepts grew in the wake of technology, offering a framework for its use. Network centric warfare (NCW) and effects based operations (EBO) were the two most important concepts. This report discusses the theoretical foundation of both concepts, and highlights some of the critique against them. Each chapter is summed up with an assessment of NCW and EBO in a Norwegian context. Hybrid threats and hybrid wars have been much discussed as the next threat to prepare for. This report looks into what hybrid threats might mean, and concludes that the concept of hybrid warfare presents few new insights. In short, it explains the fact that the enemy has adapted to the preferred Western way of fighting wars. The enemy has learned to avoid our technological strength, but at the same time exploits commercial technologies in furthering his own ends. In that respect facing hybrid enemies is not necessarily about inventing totally new concepts, but about making difficult choices. Highly trained and flexible forces seem best fit to face the new threat, but at the same time they must also be robust when it comes to numbers and self protection. This report also points out the fact that the West seems to have a lacking coherence between tactics and strategy. The operational level of war was introduced to avoid such discrepancy, but it seems to have failed to do so, and in the process has isolated strategy from policy. Western military forces have delivered some spectacular tactical wins the last 30 years, but these victories have not correspondingly led to lasting strategic gains in accordance with the initial political goals.