The content in this article is an extract of Spotlight Brief 6/21

The content in this article is an extract of Spotlight Brief 6/21

The 2021 Chief of Army History Conference will be held via Zoom from 0830-1630 10 November 2021. The theme for the Conference is 'Contingencies and Compromises: Mobilising the Australian Army'. It will focus on the Australian Army’s history of mobilising to meet challenges across the globe.

If you're a quantum company, researcher or defence company, now is the opportunity to respond to the Call for Submissions to invent a solution to the Quantum Technology Challenge (QTC) 22. On 11 Aug 22, the QTC 22 Demonstration Day will be held in conjunction with the Army Innovation Day and the Chief of Army’s Symposium at the Adelaide Convention Centre. Read on to learn more about the QTC22 themes and their respective challenges.

The proliferation of information technologies, the rapid pace of military modernisation and the return to Great Power competition are challenging traditional notions of national security as it applies to Australia and its coalition partners.
The impact of information in modern warfighting is unhinging the asymmetries traditionally afforded to Australian and allied Special Operations Forces (SOF), calling for new ideas, concepts and capabilities.
In this AARC Occasional Paper, Benjamin Johanson proposes Special Information Warfare as a new capability for SOF to fight and win in the chaos.

Brigadier Chris Roberts (Retd) discusses why 'Lost Opportunity: The Battle of the Ardennes, 22 August 1914' by Simon House is an outstanding model of a campaign study.

Cassandra Brooker demonstrates how systems thinking offers an effective approach to understanding complex social systems in the iWar. She also discusses the importance of influencing strategies and psychological cognitive theories to the successful analysis of system behaviours.

This is not a military history per se; only four of the book's thirteen chapters are devoted to the French naval and military operations at the Dardanelles.

The rest cover in much more detail the political maneuverings, obfuscation, distrust, duplicity, post-war aims, and attempts to salvage careers amongst the British and the French, and to a lesser extent the post-war desires of the Russians.

Philip Bradley's new book, 'The Battle for Shaggy Ridge', re-examines Australian and Japanese military operations in Papua New Guinea's Finisterre Range during a four month period from October 1943 to January 1944.

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.