Land Power Forum

In the recently published Occasional Paper ‘From Tools to Teammates: Human-Machine Teaming and the Future of Command and Control in the Australian Army’, the authors explore the compatibility of emerging concepts of human-machine teaming with existing Australian Army culture and practices, drawing on interviews with serving officers and focusing specifically on the implications for military command and control. The paper assesses the risks and opportunities arising from automation for future concepts, doctrine development and organisational change.

Army must continue to prepare for the significant implications of climate change on the future ADF operations. This includes the likely increase in HADR and stability operations in the South Pacific. Riley Bradford discusses why.

Levon Lambert explores why Australian military operations in Guadalcanal provide enduring lessons about the ongoing challenge of joint warfare in the near region.

In this book, Neal Dando seeks to prove the 'significant impact of the physical terrain' on British operations during the North African campaigns from 1940 to 1943, and 'the subsidiary effect this had on tactical doctrine.' The principal purpose behind this study is his concern that historians have not paid sufficient attention to terrain on the fighting in North Africa. Hence his attempt to elevate the importance of the landscape on the planning and conduct of these campaigns.

In Part 1 of this series, Dan Kealy drew attention to one of the great themes of urban warfare literature - that city fighting is uniquely, excessively bloody. This article charts the development of this theme from World War II to the present and argues that it manifests a core challenge to the achievement of successful urban operations – specifically, force protection.

Hugh Manson reflects on his recent involvement with the Australian Army Land Warfare Laboratory (AALW) and the opportunites that exist to use operational research methodologies to enhance leadership decision-making within Army.

In this paper, Associate Professor Kevin Foster of Monash University examines how the Australian Army’s engagement with, and use of, social media compares to that of allied and comparator militaries. Drawing on historical examples drawn from the First Gulf War, Somalia and Kosovo as well as Afghanistan and the Second Gulf War, the paper examines how militaries in the US, Britain, Israel and Australia have met (or have yet to meet) the challenges posed by the changed nature of conflict and the increasingly central role that social media plays in it. 

The content in this article is an extract of Spotlight Brief 5/21.

This article reaffirms that constructive thought must lead action. Particularly, as our contest of ideas is important in an era of accelerated warfare and the applied value of our collective brainpower will continue to be the decisive difference tomorrow.

The 2020 Defence Strategic Update normalised ‘grey-zone activities’ in the lexicon, introducing them as a strategic driver shaping Australia’s strategic environment and noting that Defence will expand its capability to respond to such threats. This task will prove difficult without a clear understanding of what is meant by the term ‘grey zone’.