An Adaptive Army

The past decade has been one of constant change and adaptation for the Australian Army. Since the deployment to East Timor in 1999, the Australian Army has been constantly deployed in a range of different environments on several continents. The resulting tempo has challenged our personnel, training and material resources. While this keeps Army busy, there is an ongoing need to ensure that the Army keeps its eye on the future.

The threats to the forces deployed on operations are not static in nature. New threats cannot always be predicted with certainty; they may often appear with little or no warning. This is particularly the case in places such as Iraq or Afghanistan, where improvised explosive devices are often the insurgents’ weapon of choice and have resulted in the killing and maiming of our soldiers. Our adversaries have proved adept at conducting information operations to shape the perceptions of different populations (including our own). Insurgent tactics vary from province to province, but they have demonstrated the capacity to adapt rapidly to changes in the operational environment and to achieve an effective blend of kinetic and non-kinetic operations. We must ensure that our soldiers are appropriately trained and equipped to succeed in such an environment.

Contemporary operations are characterised by the need for deployed land forces to work among the people and establish a broad relationship with the supported population, while simultaneously engaging in offensive, protective and information operations to deprive the adversary of this support base. This requires extensive employment of civil-military cooperation, humanitarian assistance and other non-warlike roles, as well as the synchronisation of physical manoeuvre and fires within a joint—and often inter-agency—construct. Such warfare requires small teams of soldiers to have the flexibility to transition rapidly from a non-aggressive posture to one of controlled aggression with superior firepower in order to defeat the threat when it presents itself and then back again.

As if these demands are not enough, the individual soldier is affected by the increasing importance of political priorities, the law of armed conflict, humanitarian issues, international law, and a reduced tolerance for collateral damage. Combine this with the growing pervasiveness of domestic and international media (both traditional and new media) and it leads us to an environment that demands we prepare our people for levels of contextual awareness, flexibility, expertise, sensitivity, and precision which have rarely been required of the soldier in past conflicts.

But training and equipping for operations is not enough. The Army’s adaptability and capacity to out-think an adversary is critical for operational success. We have recognised this through the development of our core philosophy—Adaptive Campaigning. Additionally, the development of Army’s doctrine for counterinsurgency operations is now at an advanced level. This is the product of much of what our Army has learned in the past decade. It builds upon the hard learned lessons of our forebears, from places such as Vietnam, Korea, New Guinea, North Africa and Europe, to ensure our operations achieve the appropriate balance of land combat, population support, protection and indigenous capacity building, regardless of the scenario. Combined with the training and equipping of our soldiers, the intellectual foundation for contemporary operations that doctrine provides helps to ensure Australian soldiers are among the best prepared troops in the world.

Therefore, initiatives that will generate and prepare soldiers—physically and intellectually—for this environment are key to the ongoing development of the Army. The Army’s contemporary, and likely future, operations are about influencing and rebuilding (and often building for the first time) civil societies. Some of our operations are less about killing the enemy than about making the enemy irrelevant to the population. The role of kinetic operations in this context is to keep the enemy at arms-length while others (not always military) undertake the capacity building so essential to restarting societies. That is not to say that the capabilities for high-end warfighting are not essential; they are. However, the Army must maintain an appropriate balance of robust kinetic and non-kinetic options if it is to achieve the aspirations of Adaptive Campaigning. 

ADAPTING ARMY’S FORCE GENERATION AND PREPARATION

Given the changes in the environment over the past decade, there is a compelling need for the Army to review its procedures for force generation and preparation for operations. The Army’s current approach, with multiple levels of command in a strict hierarchical structure, reflects the pre-HQJOC command and control arrangements. It would be fair to state that Army’s higher level command and control has not evolved significantly at a time when we have seen huge changes in how ADF command and control is undertaken.

The last time that the Army undertook a wide ranging re-examination of its higher level command and control arrangements was in the early 1970s. Then, General Hassett introduced the Army’s extant Functional Command structure. While there have been some changes since that time, the structure—which differentiated the commands based on individual and collective training—has remained essentially intact for the last thirty-five years.

Adaptive organisations continually review themselves. Army needs to reassess periodically the appropriateness of its structures, processes and priorities to ensure an ongoing level of fitness for the changing environment it operates in now, and in the future. This also means the Army must possess a clear view of what it means to be fit for purpose. I believe it is:

• An Army that is ready, and able, to deploy at short notice with our joint and inter-agency partners to undertake a range of missions anywhere in the world our government requires.
   
• It is an Army that is physically and mentally hardened against the rigours of close combat and the austere physical environments into which it deploys.
   
• It is an Army that supports the families of our soldiers, in good times and bad.
   
• It is an Army that first and foremost recruits, trains and retains the finest Australian men and women, and gives them the physical and intellectual wherewithal to complete the missions we assign them.
   
• It is an Army that never forgets the ideals and aspirations of the nation we serve, and acts in a manner which brings credit upon it.
   
• Finally, it is an Army that thinks that the status quo is never good enough and is continually seeking to adapt and improve its performance—at all levels—while also retaining important lessons from the past. And that leads us to the situation in which we currently find ourselves.

The rapid improvement in the ability of soldiers, units and headquarters to share information in the last decade has challenged our traditional comprehension of command and control. The hierarchical and stove-piped approaches of the 1970s and 1980s are no longer appropriate in an age where our people are highly proficient operators of BlackBerries and contributors to—if not the authors of—weblogs.

The duplication of functions at different headquarters, and the multiple layers of headquarters, often retards the passage of information within Army. This has affected the Army’s capacity to adapt and respond to changes in the security environment, and will continue to do so unless some fundamental issues within Army are addressed.

As the Army has transitioned to one that is constantly deploying force elements, it has forced a greater focus on supporting mechanisms. In particular, Army has learned much in the last decade about the strengths and weakness of our current structures and processes for generating and preparing personnel and organisations for operations. Rapidly evolving operational and contingency requirements for joint operations demands an equally flexible force generation and preparation process. We believe an optimum level of support for operations can be achieved through a more systemic approach to adaptation within the force generation and preparation of Army force elements.

AN ADAPTIVE ARMY

At the start of 2008, a team of planners from across the Army assembled to develop and wargame options to ensure that Army’s force generation and preparation is conducted more effectively and efficiently, and in better alignment with the new joint command framework. Based on the work of this team, the Adaptive Army initiative was developed and subsequently launched in August 2008.

Under this initiative, the Australian Army will restructure its higher command and control arrangements. The principal aims of this restructuring are to:

• Improve Army’s alignment with, and capacity to inform, ADF’s strategic and operational joint planning.
   
• Better execute force generation and preparation, in a manner that balances operational commitments and contingency planning.
   
• Increase the effectiveness and efficiency of training within Army.
   
• Improve the linkage between resource inputs and collective training outputs within Army’s force generation and preparation continuum.
   
• Improve the quality and timeliness of information flows throughout Army in order to enhance Army’s adaptation mechanisms at all levels.

Adaptive Army contains several key measures that will improve Army’s ability to achieve these goals.

The restructuring of Army will be executed concurrently with the force preparation of force elements for operational commitments and contingencies. Headquarters 1st Division will focus on the force preparation of Army force elements for current operations and contingencies. To support the Commander of the 1st Division in this role, a Land Combat Readiness Centre will be raised, which will incorporate the Army’s current Combat Training Centre as well as much of 39 PSB. The establishment of this organisation is a significant evolution in how Army conducts its higher level training, mounting, assessment and certification of different force elements for their operational missions.

In many respects, our formation headquarters have become ‘moored’ to the barracks in the last few years because of their responsibilities for mounting operations. With the new Land Combat Readiness Centre, much of the mounting, assessment and certification of force elements will be standardised to free up our brigade commanders to focus on training their own headquarters for operational missions.

In July 2009, Army will raise a Forces Command which will have as its primary function the force generation of Army individual and collective organisations. The standard of individual training provided to Australian soldiers has been a key determinant in our successes on operations. However, Army’s systems for collective training does require improvement. To improve our training continuum, collective training standards are being developed. These will be linked to individual training and will be implemented across all Functional Commands as the Army Training Continuum. This will ensure a common approach to assessing the capabilities of our various force elements, and will allow us to gain better transparency on the true cost of building and sustaining our land warfare capability.

Because the transition to the new structures is to be manpower neutral, the existing Land Headquarters will be disestablished. The functions of this headquarters will, in the main, be absorbed into the new Forces Command. Personnel made available because of this measure will be reassigned to the headquarters of Forces Command and other high priority units. This means that Army, from 2009, will have three Functional Commands of equal stature (Forces Command, Headquarters 1st Division and Special Operations Command).

Another important consideration in this restructure has been to ensure that our new structures align with Army’s learning loops. As such, Headquarters 1st Division’s primary focus will be the short learning loop to ensure those about to deploy receive the benefits of the lessons learnt by preceding force elements on current operations. Forces Command will focus on the medium learning loop, ensuring Army is well postured, and prepared, for contingencies and able to respond to strategic shock. Of course, each command will also be expected to contribute to Army long learning loop where required.

Underpinning this restructure will be several important elements. First, Army will place a greater emphasis on preparedness management. A key enabler for Adaptive Army is a review of Army’s procedures for the management of preparedness. A range of enhanced processes will be implemented to enhance the conduct of preparedness management, including better direction (through a redeveloped Chief of Army’s Capability Directive) and more effective and transparent readiness reporting mechanisms. These will support the conduct of preparation for extant operations and contingencies, and will form the basis of the preparedness model for our Army After Next.

Second, Army will be soon commencing a program to examine its fleet management processes more closely. We have a significant fleet of equipment which includes many types of vehicles, trailers, aircraft, weapons and electronic equipment. Flowing from our implementation of better command and control structures and processes must be a review of how our fleets are used and maintained within the new Army organisation. In many respects, our purchase, use, management and eventual replacement of equipment is based on procedures developed in the ‘long peace’ that followed the Vietnam War. However, as we have found in the last few years, we are using up the life of some of our equipment more quickly in a high operational tempo. Ironically, at the same time some of our equipment is not being utilised as much, or as effectively, as it could be. So we are going to seek ways to better employ and administer our vast equipment fleet.

Third, we need to take a good look at which Army capabilities are a high priority for retention and further development. As the security environment has changed over the last decade, and the manner in which Army operates transforms, we have come to appreciate that our force structure may not be entirely appropriate—for current operations or for the future. Therefore, Army will be re-examining the capabilities it maintains to ensure we retain a relevant and responsive set of land warfare skills into the future. This may demand that some hard choices be made, but it would be irresponsible not to continually look at ourselves to ensure our structures and capabilities give our soldiers the best possible chance of success on operations. An Adaptive Army cannot allow itself to rest on its laurels or be restrained from innovation by traditions and capabilities that are no longer relevant in a twenty-first century force.

Finally, a set of explicit measures of success and failure for the implementation of Adaptive Army are being developed. To ensure we realise the goals of this restructure, the implementation of Adaptive Army will be guided by measures that determine where we are being successful and where we are failing to meet our goals. For example, one measure of success for the restructure may be that Army Headquarters would have access to very high quality information on the readiness of land force elements in near real-time. While there is some way to go in the development of these measures, they will be vital to ensure that Army gains maximum value from the resources expended in the transition to the new Functional Command structure.

CONCLUSION

The success of the operations that have involved Army in the past decade indicates that the soldiers of the Australian Army are of the very highest quality. Our soldiers perform at exceptional levels of individual and collective performance despite often being placed under significant pressure. But operational excellence requires constant re-evaluation of how we think and how we operate. To ensure the Army’s soldiers continue to excel on operations, the challenge is to ask: ‘how can we improve?’ The Adaptive Army initiative aims to address this challenge.

The measures outlined in this article will ensure Army is better postured to contribute to joint operations in a manner that balances extant commitments with preparations for future contingencies. The Adaptive Army initiative will result in a more effective Army, and one that is well positioned to continue its adaptation to changes in the security environment in the coming decades.

The implementation of Adaptive Army will not always be easy. It will demand the courage to make the hard decisions related to our capability priorities. It will require initiative, by our soldiers and leaders at all levels, to identify further opportunities within our adaptive culture to improve our Army. But most of all it will demand absolute teamwork, in a ‘whole of Army’ approach, to ensure we realise the worthy aspirations of Adaptive Army.