The role of a Chief of Army is to raise, train and sustain the land force. Inherent in these functions is a constant search for balance between current operations and force modernisation for our future capability. As we learnt in East Timor, Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands, the Government may require the Army to deliver land forces for deployment at very short notice. There is, therefore, always a dynamic tension between present operations and future modernisation.
Over the past four years, the Army has witnessed a high operational tempo, although there now seems to be some relief in sight. Our draw-down of troops in East Timor is advancing in accordance with the Government’s policy. We will withdraw our last combat troops from East Timor under the current United Nations mandate by the middle of this year. The Army has also begun to reduce its forces in the Solomon Islands. Both withdrawals are appropriate measures, given the success of operations in both East Timor and the Solomons.
There are, of course, still significant numbers of Army and Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel in Iraq that are operating in a dangerous and demanding environment. Currently, no significant change is foreseen in our personnel numbers in Iraq. An ADF training team to assist in developing the Iraqi Navy has recently deployed, and consideration is being given to some tasks to train the Iraqi Army. In general terms, however, there is likely to be a gradual reduction in the numbers of Australian personnel deployed on operations.
These reductions in operational commitments are welcome since they offer some respite to Australian personnel who have been engaged in sustaining simultaneous operations in numerous theatres.
While the Army must be, and is, prepared for any emerging contingencies, my message, as Chief of Army, to our soldiers has been, ‘get home, get a rest and get back to basics’. Many of our deployed forces have been able to do this, and the Commander Special Operations Command recently reported that his forces are fully rested and reconstituted, ready to deploy again if required.
Preparing for the Future: Implications of the 2003 Defence Capability Review
How is the Army preparing for the future? Many of the projects contained in the White Paper of 2000 and the resultant Defence Capability Plan (DCP), and now the Defence Capability Review (DCR), are en route and will soon be introduced into military service. These new capabilities have begun the process of hardening and networking the Army. While the DCR of November 2003 re-balanced some aspects of capability in the earlier DCP, most of the latter’s fundamentals remain intact. The Army has, however, made some adjustments as a result of changes in the strategic environment—notably the war on terror, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the rise of instances of regional deterioration. The Army has also paid particular attention to recent operational experiences in making military recommendations and decisions. One of the major features of the DCR is the project to strengthen the effectiveness and sustainability of the Army. The ability of the land force to conduct close combat in combined arms teams has been enhanced, and the Army will now acquire the necessary combat weight to be more sustainable and lethal in operations.
Other important decisions in the DCR include the acquisition of combat identification for the land forces, improved communications and the increased provision of night vision equipment. Enhanced communications that are capable of being used at an individual level and night-fighting equipment are both force multipliers and war winners. The Army will move as quickly as possible to network the land force from formation down to individual soldier level by establishing ‘sensor to shooter’ links.
A major feature of the DCR, and one that many commentators appear to have overlooked, is the review’s movement towards an enhanced joint force. The ADF aspires to create a seamless joint force by 2020, and the DCR has pointed the direction. A future joint force will be amphibious, with the Navy and Air Force transporting and protecting the Army on operations and also providing sea denial and counter-air capabilities. At the heart of joint operations are interdependence and the use of the strength of one service to cover the weakness of another. The DCR of November 2003 has strengthened the framework of a future joint force by enhancing air defence protection, strategic-lift requirements and communications. Recent experiences in the Gulf have emphasised the vital importance of close air support to land force operations. Consequently, the Army and the Air Force are working closely together in order to enhance the provision of fighter air support for ground forces. Such cooperation will intensify in the future as the ADF moves closer to acquiring a replacement fighter.
Major Army projects that are proceeding include the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters, troop helicopters, various military vehicles and the Javelin weapons system. The Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters are being assembled in Brisbane and are likely to come into service in December 2004 while the selection process for troop lift helicopters under the Air 9000 project continues. The Bushranger vehicle is under test and in low-rate initial production in Victoria. The vehicle represents an important capability and would appear to have export potential. Similarly, the M113 upgrade and planning for a tank replacement have both made useful progress. The Javelin direct-fire weapon is also now in service and was used with devastating effect during the Iraq War.
The Contours of the Future Strategic Environment
The future is never a single coherent entity. Indeed, it may be accurate to conceptualise in terms of two futures: the near and the distant. The relative diminution in the demands of recurrent operations now permits the Army to take stock of its recent experiences and to analyse the lessons learnt in order to lay a foundation for both our near and distant futures. The War on Terror crystallised many of the elements that were emerging in the strategic environment in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War. In the course of the 1990s, armed conflict became increasingly unpredictable, diffuse, highly lethal and diverse in character.
As the Americans discovered in Somalia and are learning painfully in Iraq today, it is impossible to quarantine warfighting from humanitarian and nation-building operations. As a result, it is now essential that land forces be carefully tailored for specific missions. Yet, such forces must also be capable of rapid transition between different phases and modes of conflict while they are in-theatre. Indeed, even the US Marine Corps’ concept of the ‘three-block war’ may be inadequate in fully capturing the degree of simultaneity, complexity and overlapping that now characterises the 21st-century battlespace.
The most significant change in warfare lies in the more diffuse and lethal nature of the threat environment. The nation-state has lost its near monopoly on the ability to wage war. Increasingly, a wider range of transnational actors—from criminal gangs, through issue-motivated groups to terrorists with global reach—demonstrate that non-state armed violence has become a major international security problem. While professional mastery of conventional warfighting remains the vital component of military capability, state-on-state and force-on-force battle has receded in relative terms and, in the view of many Western military thinkers, this is a trend that may continue over the next decade.
As events in Iraq in 2003–04 have demonstrated, the much-vaunted Republican Guard was not the major threat faced by Coalition forces. Instead, smaller groups of insurgents employing guerrilla tactics, equipped with hand-held anti-armoured and anti-aircraft weapons, and using roadside bombs were able to inflict serious casualties on sophisticated Coalition forces. The situation has been complicated further by the fact that Iraq has been infiltrated by thousands of foreign jihadists, whose thresholds of cost and defeat are seemingly high.
Unlike conventional military forces, the Iraqi insurgents and foreign jihadists do not present easily identifiable, high-value targets. They are irregular forces in the classic mould: difficult to segregate from the local population and even more difficult to bring to a battle of decision. Indeed, they measure success, at least in part, by denying Coalition forces the ability to secure operational decision. The insurgent forces attempt to neutralise the massive technological overmatch of the American, British and Australian militaries by ‘hugging’ population centres and sites of religious and cultural significance. In such circumstances, irregulars are difficult to locate and to strike at with precision munitions. Deficiencies or mistakes in targeting become a weapon in insurgent information operations and are used to undermine Coalition attempts to bring stability and to restore Iraqi self-government.
In Iraq, the insurgents emerged as the most significant threat only after Saddam’s conventional forces had been subjected to massive kinetic destruction. An irregular force of some type is the most likely adversary that the ADF will face over the next decade. Fortunately, we did not encounter this type of threat in either East Timor or the Solomon Islands. However, in a world of porous borders, characterised by the proliferation of black-market weaponry, we must ensure that Australian forces are adequately protected in order to survive in a dangerous security environment. In the future it will be prudent to assume that even the most low-level adversary will possess advanced portable missile weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
The Background to the Hardening and Networking the Army Initiative
When announcing the DCR in November 2003, the Minister for Defence, Senator Robert Hill, stated that he had accepted a series of recommendations that would contribute to making the Army more sustainable and lethal in close combat. The overall impact of the November 2003 DCR has been to facilitate progress towards the Hardened and Networked Army initiative— a scheme designed to enable the land force to meet the challenge of future combat.
The announcements made in November 2003 have resulted in considerable public discussion and some controversy. Nonetheless, the quality of the debate over the implications of a Hardened and Networked Army has been generally disappointing. Two criticisms can be levelled at opponents of the Army’s new initiative. First, opponents of modernising the Army have concentrated almost exclusively on the issue of hardening through the replacement of the current tank capability. Because of this concentration, critics have almost completely ignored the networking aspect of the Army’s modernisation plan. The debate about a replacement tank has been shrill, misinformed and, in some cases, erroneous.
Second, there is a suggestion that the Army is seeking tanks because it is in the grip of an expeditionary fantasy. Yet, the extant guidance contained in the 2000 Defence White Paper specifically directs the land force to develop the capability to deploy simultaneously a brigade and a battalion group within the immediate regional littoral. The Army’s doctrine of MOLE (Manoeuvre Operations in the Littoral Environment) was developed to conform to a regional offshore role. The idea that the Australian Army has ever envisaged fleets of tanks engaged in sweeping conventional manoeuvres, as in World War II, is an invention. In essence, the Army views the tank as primarily a close-support weapons system to protect the combined arms teams.
Let us be clear about the issue of armour. The Australian Army possesses tanks. The strategic guidance in the 2000 White Paper, makes it clear at paragraph 8.12 that Australia would not embark on ‘development of heavy armoured forces for high-intensity conflict’. As Deputy Chief of the Army, the author was directly involved in drafting the above passage of the White Paper, and it represented his best professional judgment at that time. Nothing that has occurred operationally since 2000 has changed that view. Moreover, the author helped write the very next sentence in the 2000 White Paper that added a vital caveat. This caveat was that, although the Government of Australia was not developing heavy armoured forces, it was nonetheless determined to provide the land forces with the appropriate combat weight required in order to permit the Army to accomplish any military mission without undue risk. Armoured protection and firepower are both essential for the infantry.
What has changed since the White Paper of 2000 is not the character of strategic guidance, nor the Army’s assessment of its role in the Defence of Australia. Rather, what has changed is the character of the military threat that Australia’s land forces may encounter in conducting their missions. A direct consequence of this threat is that the definition of adequate combat weight has altered. It is a fact that the current Leopard tanks are extremely vulnerable to a range of modern and easily acquired weapons systems. As a result, the deployment of current tanks would not provide protection and may expose soldiers to unnecessary risk.
The most efficient and safest way to enhance the Army’s combat weight and protect Australian troops is through the replacement of the ageing Leopard with a more robust main-battle tank. The modernisation of the Army’s armoured capability is not a radical step. On the contrary, it represents policy continuity. The Army is simply updating its existing tank capability in order to ascertain that combat weight is adequate to meet assessed threats. All Chiefs of Army have a moral responsibility to ensure that the young men and women that are sent into a threat environment are as protected as possible from the effects of lethal fires.
At the time of the release of the 2000 White Paper, the current Leopard main-battle tank was considered capable of remaining in service until 2015 and perhaps beyond that date. This assessment has since proven to be overly optimistic. The indisputable truth is that threat to Australian troops has changed, and has changed rapidly.
The proliferation of RPG 7, 16, 18 and 22 weapons, along with a range of other deadly anti-armour weapons, means that close combat without protection from armour is highly dangerous. It would be irresponsible, to the point of immorality, to risk the lives of Australian soldiers through exposure to lethal fires. Contemporary conflict environments require the provision of adequate armoured protection for deployed military personnel.
Close combat remains the Army’s core business; it is the acme of professional skill. Moreover, close combat is what the Government directs the Army to provide to the ADF’s joint capability. In short, by acquiring new tanks, the Army seeks to take prudent steps to maintain its vital close-combat capability in order to achieve tactical decision. Close combat is dependent on effective combined-arms teams comprising balanced elements of infantry, armour, artillery, engineers, aviation and signals, supported by a range of ground- and airbased indirect fires and logistics support. One key element of our combined teams, namely the tank, is now vulnerable due to an enhanced weapons threat and must, therefore, be replaced.
Those critics that portray the acquisition of a modern, better-protected tank as a radical departure from current strategic guidance are misguided and wrong. There have been a number of canards thrown up in the wake of the decision to procure new armour. One is the belief that the decision on tanks undermines the primacy of the Defence of Australia as a force-structuring principle. Yet, the combined arms team, with a tank at its core, is the best and safest way of delivering Army fighting power, regardless of weather or terrain. While a direct attack on the Australian mainland is currently regarded as a remote prospect, it is the Army that would bear the ultimate responsibility for the final defeat of an incursion.
As recent events have demonstrated, Australia’s national interests are not defined by its geography. Again, this proposition is not a heresy concocted within the Army. Indeed, the 2003 Foreign Affairs and Trade White Paper, Advancing the National Interest, states: ‘geography has never been the sole determinant of our international links’. As a responsible ally and a good world citizen, Australia has provided military forces to a range of missions right across the globe.
This approach is not purely a consequence of the War on Terror. After all, in the 1990s the ADF conducted operations in Cambodia, Somalia and Rwanda. In particular, the mission to Somalia in 1992–93 emphatically demonstrated the central importance of combat weight even in a humanitarian mission. Deployed Australian forces needed Coalition support to protect them from Somali militia mounted in vehicles known as ‘technicals’. The tragic Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu, graphically portrayed in book and film, could have been avoided by the more timely intervention of armoured vehicles.
Although the issue of hardening the land force in the form of the tank has captured the attention of critics, there is a bigger picture to be considered—that of the creation of a mobile and well-protected Army. With the equipment enhancements that are forecast in the DCP and the DCR, the Army is undergoing a transition from a primarily light infantry force to a medium-weight, all-arms force. There will be substantial improvements to military capabilities in terms of firepower, protection, communications and mobility. By the end of the decade, the land force is likely to possess almost 900 good-quality armoured vehicles, including the M113A3, the ASLAV and the Bushmaster. The Army’s combat power will also be enhanced by a wider distribution of armoured fighting vehicles in order to provide appropriate battle grouping of forces, which will meet a range of contingencies.
Hardening and Networking and the Future Army
The Australian Army that currently exists in barracks is not the Army that will deploy on operations. The Hardened and Networked Army of the future will be capable of tailoring packages of mission-specific combat forces that are seamlessly linked to both Australia’s joint and coalition partners. The Australian Army cannot operate without the support of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). The Army needs the support of both of its sister services for deployment, redeployment and sustainment on operations. It is difficult to imagine a circumstance in which the Army would work without the Navy and Air Force as its indispensable partners. In this respect, the mission to East Timor is instructive as a joint operation. Troops were deployed into Timor by HMAS Tobruk and by C13 air transports. Firepower, communications, intelligence and medical support were supplied by HMAS Adelaide and HMAS Jervis Bay, and were redeployed by all elements of the Navy and Air Force. The joint capabilities in the November 2003 DCR will substantially enhance the ADF’s potential as a joint force. There will be an appropriately sized amphibious capability that can be protected by air and sea elements.
The Army’s aim, then, is to deploy flexible and versatile land-force components as part of a joint or combined force that provide the Government with military options across the spectrum of operations. To this end, the Hardening and Networking the Army initiative is currently the subject of a high-level staff appreciation to analyse the changes that need to be made in the land force. In particular, the Army is seeking, wherever possible, to remove singular capabilities and create an ‘Army of twos’, thus better meeting the deployment and rotation requirements of government. There is also a commitment to removing hollowness from the force, to optimising the Army’s structure to create task-organised combat teams, and to enhancing firepower, protection and networking, along with the introduction of new roles for the Army Reserve.
Alongside the hardening of the Army is the requirement to network the land force—a requirement that is sometimes overlooked. Because the Army is reliant on the RAN and RAAF to arrive at, and survive in, the Area of Operations, the land force must be ‘networked’ with air and sea elements in order to enhance the power of cumulative operational effects. For this reason, in an ambitious project, the ADF is moving towards the ‘Seamless Force 2020’.
The mode of warfare to which the Army and the ADF aspire was indicated in the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which effects on land were achieved through the seamless orchestration of fires from the sea and air, often using space-based assets.
Australian Special Forces have already mastered many of these skills. Ultimately, the entire ADF will be networked throughout the battlespace with sensor–shooter links achieved in real time and the most appropriate fires will be brought to bear on targets, irrespective of the service designation of the provider.
In many respects, we are entering an era of warfare in which a private soldier may be capable of identifying a target for a cruise missile. Such a capacity will, of course, place extraordinary responsibility on the men and women who serve in the land force. Although it is common to hear the term ‘strategic corporal’ employed, we may be on the cusp of an era when every soldier will become an individual node in a networked battle group—in effect, a ‘strategic private’. Indeed, over time, it is possible that many of the tasks once considered as being exclusively within the province of the Special Forces will increasingly be performed by members of conventional forces. Such a development will impose a huge burden on the Army in attracting, training and retaining the right kind of individuals. The complex, lethal and diverse battlespace of the future will test Australian soldiers severely, and units will need to learn to switch rapidly between civic aid and humanitarian tasks to warfighting without supplementation.
In other words, alongside the technological innovations to warfighting will be the requirement for cultural and educational changes. The Army will require personnel skilled in foreign languages, cross-cultural knowledge and understanding of the Laws of Armed Conflict, and who are able to discriminate in the use of force. Australian soldiers are already regarded highly for several of these qualities, but the Army will have to improve its skill levels even further. The soldier who fights in the Seamless Force of the future may be a warrior first and foremost, but he or she must also be prepared to be an aid worker, diplomat and media relations expert if circumstances demand such expertise.
Conclusion
It is important to note that Hardening and Networking the Army is not only about changes in technology and equipment, but also about force structure and doctrine. It is only through balanced and carefully considered changes to the three elements of technology, structure and doctrine that true military progress can be made. Currently the land force is changing its equipment, but the parallel tasks before it concern establishing the right force structure and military doctrine in order to make the optimum use of new equipment.
Ultimately, there is no greater symbol of a country’s national resolve than when its young men and women are deployed on the ground, in harm’s way. In the future, Australian Army personnel will be operating in highly ambiguous and lethal environments. The leadership of the Army has a responsibility to its soldiers to ensure that they have the right equipment, force structure and doctrine to succeed in combat. The Hardening and Networking the Army initiative is designed to facilitate that vital success.
