An issue that has always puzzled me has been the reluctance of Australian military officers, unlike their US counterparts, to actively engage in the intellectual debate concerning their profession. Many are willing to express their opinions in the mess on a Friday afternoon, or are forced to do so to a greater or lesser degree when writing essays during their time at Staff College or on other training courses. The 1st Armoured Regiment has a long tradition of requiring its officers to write essays that are presented as the annual Paratus Papers. But these efforts to pen one’s thoughts are the exception rather than the rule and, as an organi- sation, we are poorer for it, not only for the amount of conceptual thought that lies fallow, but because it betrays a lack of understanding as to how contemporary debates can be shaped.
By eschewing the opportunity to use their experience to shape the debate by adding a practitioner’s voice, those within the Army who have the ability to articulate arguments increase the risk of abandoning the intellectual field to external commentators or ‘security academics’. It is only by giving voice to one’s opinions based on operational experience, backed up by thorough research and written in an appropriate style, that these thoughts are likely to become part of the broader debate. The Australian Army Journal exists both as a professional journal and as a forum for debate about land warfare and issues that relate to it. As the operational tempo of the Army slows, there will be an even greater need for all ranks to examine the Army’s role in contemporary and future warfare and to use their operational experience to inform debates on such issues.
This edition of the Journal features several examples of how that experience can be captured and exploited to both inform and stimulate debate. Three artillery captains have combined to argue their case for the employment of the Royal Australian Artillery in post-Afghanistan warfighting, while Lieutenant Tink has examined the tactical level nuances essential in any consideration of the platoon- level operations future infantry officers will be required to conduct
The two other articles address capability issues. Mitch Ferry examines the current approach to targeting and posits a way of developing future targeting methodologies. Captain Mark Bali provides readers an insight into the availability of home-made explosives and the ways in which organic peroxides pose a threat both operation- ally overseas, but also potentially domestically as part of a terrorist’s arsenal. A key speech delivered by Chief of Army in Hawaii recently on Land Power in a Maritime Environment, provides insights into a key topic in determining the future utility of the Army post-Afghanistan. Rounding off this edition are interviews conducted by Major Cameron James with Major General Ian Gordon, AO (retd) and Warrant Officer Peter Rosemond, CSC, OAM (retd), who discuss their own experiences of the Vietnam-era army and suggest valuable comparisons with the modern post- Afghanistan army.
Having spent the first part of this editorial exhorting people to write for the Journal, it seems that the next issue of the Journal, a themed edition on the issue of culture in the Army, promises to be a raging success if the number of submissions is anything to go by. It would be no exaggeration to say that it has been several years since there have been this many articles submitted for the Journal.
We understand that both the Journal and the other papers produced by the Land Warfare Studies Centre need to be more readily accessible to our audience and we are currently working hard to improve our web and social media presence. Once this project has been completed we hope that people will respond to this expanded capacity for conveying ideas and that the ideas themselves will be made more freely available. Finally, and on an optimistic note, there have been no deaths on opera- tions since the last edition of the Journal was published and we very much hope that trend continues.
