Warfighting
A Vital Dedication
In the award-winning 1970 film, Patton, there is a scene in which General George C. Patton (played by George C. Scott) watches the German Afrika Korps wither before his prepared defences. Viewing the battle through his binoculars, Patton shouts: ‘Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!’. While the scene may be a Hollywood rendition of Patton’s reaction, it is a tribute to his knowledge of warfighting as the foundation stone of the profession of arms. Knowledge of warfighting requires years of training and education, and in the 21st century the question of the balance between the two vital areas has increasingly become a question of debate. Arguably, most contemporary problems in warfighting preparation do not emanate from problems of training, but arise from shortcomings in professional military education. Patton was not simply a trainer of soldiers; he was also a keen student of the military art who was familiar with the latest professional military writings.
There is much truth in the adage that ‘one trains for certainty but one educates for uncertainty’. In the early 21st century, the two features that distinguish the character of the battlespace are uncertainty and complexity. Such features must be recognised and understood, particularly at the level of campaign planning. It is in campaign planning that military education comes into its own. Knowledge of military theory, and of the connections between politics and the three levels of war—tactics, operations and strategy—becomes vital. So does an understanding of the operational art. In the Anglo-Saxon military tradition, the theory of war and the operational art have been embraced only since the 1980s, and there remains much for soldiers to learn about linking the art of war to the science of military technology. Such a linkage can only be accomplished by a greater emphasis on relevant military education—particularly military history, and the history of technology and of political economy. It was deficiencies in education, not training, that led Liddell Hart to reflect that ‘a professional soldier is rarely a professional strategist’.
The Winter 2004 edition of the Australian Army Journal (AAJ) presents, once again, a rich miscellany of articles that focus on warfighting and related issues. These articles attempt to traverse the areas of training and military education, and the art, history and technology of war. In Point Blank—our section for sharp, topical material—the Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, sets the tone for the Winter 2004 Edition with an important and timely article that addresses the perennial issue of how best to use the resources of the Army Reserve in future operations. Lieutenant General Leahy highlights the significant impact of the 2001 legislative amendments to the Defence Act in beginning a dynamic process by which the Army Reserve will achieve greater relevance and readiness in the future. The Chief of Army’s article is followed by Michael O’Connor’s contrasting essay on the importance of Australia’s trade and security in the new millennium.
Moving into the main body of the AAJ, the Chief of Army and Lieutenant Colonel Roger Noble provide introductions to the new Hardening and Networking the Army (HNA) initiative. Lieutenant General Leahy outlines his vision of the HNA project and emphasises the complexity of the new strategic environment and the need for the Australian Army to possess a credible combined-arms warfighting capability to engage in close combat—the land force’s core responsibility. In his article on Australian light armour, Lieutenant Colonel Noble provides a spirited defence of the virtues of cavalry in contemporary operations. In our section on command and leadership, the Land Commander, Australia, Major General Ken Gillespie, reflects on the challenges faced in force preparation for operations in an era of little warning time and one that is marked by the need for ‘best effect’ arrival. Major General Gillespie’s article is followed Major Stephanie Hodson’s essay on the division in post–11 September 2001 Australian strategy between what she describes as contending regionalist and globalist schools of thought.
In the AAJ’s section on special operations, two US Army officers, Majors Michael A. McNerney and Major Marshall V. Ecklund, explore the little-known subject of nonconventional assisted recovery in urban areas of the Middle East. The journal then presents two contrasting views of effects-based operations. The first article by Brigadier Justin Kelly and Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen of the Directorate of Future Land Warfare provides a sceptical analysis of the claims of the effects-based school of operations. The second article in the section by Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Ho of the Singaporean Armed Forces provides an Asia-Pacific perspective on the dimensions and potential of effects-based thinking in contemporary military operations. In the area of joint warfare, two Royal Australian Navy officers, Lieutenant Commander Bob Moyse and Lieutenant Tom Lewis, reflect on amphibious operational needs and on the contentious question of carrier aviation for the Australian Defence Force respectively.
Professor Christopher Coker of the London School of Economics, and Michael Bonner and Tin Han French of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation examine the subject of military technology. Christopher Coker presents a chilling insight into the future of biotechnology and war, focusing on technicity, genetics and the possibility of ‘post-human warfare’. For their part, Bonner and French analyse various lesser known problems in Australian network-centric warfare, including human engineering, mission command and the human–machine interface. These reflections on military technology are followed by a section devoted to law and ethics. In the latter section, Malcolm Brailey examines the contentious issue of pre-emptive and preventive military action in an era when global terrorism has transformed many of the rules of engagement in warfare.
In the realm of ‘ways in war’, the AAJ presents three contrasting articles by Victor Davis Hanson, Roger J. Spiller and Michael Evans. Professor Hanson—an American scholar and author of the bestselling book, Why the West Has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam—delivers a perspective on why Western armies have been so successful on the battlefield since the time of the Renaissance. Roger Spiller, the George C. Marshall Professor of Military History at the US Command and General Staff College, examines the reasons that the United States has been so reluctant to learn the lessons from the multiple, unconventional ‘small wars’ that it has fought. The section concludes with an investigation by Michael Evans into the Australian way of war, focusing on the interaction between culture, politics and strategy over the course of a century.
An interesting contribution by former Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General John Coates, on British and Australian generalship in the 1942 Malayan campaign dominates the AAJ’s military history section. Lieutenant General Coates’s article is followed by two short pieces by Major David Caldwell and Captain Kellie Robinson on defence self-reliance and field intelligence respectively in Insights. In the Retrospect section, the AAJ is proud to reproduce an edited version of Lieutenant Colonel John Monash’s 1912 Gold Medal essay from the Commonwealth Military Journal. For a modern military reader, there is much to relish in Monash’s analysis of the 1864 Wilderness campaign during the American Civil War—not least of which are his elegant prose and his ability to penetrate swiftly to the core of an operational issue. In Monash’s essay we see the analytical skills of an engineer, lawyer and soldier combined in a single, powerful mind. It was this mind that would take Monash to battlefield success in France in 1918 and make him, in the view of many observers, the greatest Australian soldier of the 20th century.
Part of the AAJ’s mandate is to honour the service of Australia’s soldiers and, in the Winter 2004 edition, we salute four distinguished officers who have recently passed away. They are Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Daly, Chief of the General Staff from 1966 to 1971; Major Generals Tim Cape and Kenneth McKay; and Brigadier Monsignor Gerald Cudmore. All four were men of great distinction and achievement. We also farewell Professor Gunther E. Rothenberg, a distinguished soldier–scholar and a foundation member of the AAJ Editorial Advisory Board. We pay tribute to his service to the journal by publishing Professor Peter Dennis’s graveside eulogy delivered in April of this year.
This edition of the AAJ also includes a review essay on 20th-century combat by Russell Parkin, the new coeditor of the AAJ; book reviews by Jeffrey Grey, Michael Evans, Russell Parkin and Christopher Enemark; and concludes with letters and commentary from our readers. The editors of the AAJ trust that the content of the first edition for 2004 will encourage widespread military debate, and lead to a constant exchange of views and ideas throughout the Army. The journal also hopes to stimulate the study of warfighting throughout the Army and the Australian Defence Force. The creation of able, uniformed strategic thinkers depends on military professionals pursuing not simply training, but also an education in war. If military professionals neglect such study, it will not occur elsewhere.
Western postmodern education prefers to study Greece without the phalanxes, Rome without the legions, Christianity without the sword and Islam without the scimitar. For this reason, warfighting should represent the main focus of the curriculum of the Australian professional military education system. As General Douglas MacArthur once remarked, warfighting is the uniformed military professional’s ‘vital dedication’. Soldiers may, on operations, be compelled to act occasionally as diplomats, peacekeepers and humanitarians, but it is war—’Mars’s fiery steed’—that remains a military professional’s true mission. It is a mission that no civilian can fulfil.
