Present Deficiencies in the Australian Army’s Combat Engineering Equipment
Abstract
The Australian Army is a fighting force that depends upon the combined arms approach to generate operational effectiveness. This approach works only when each part of the team can contribute appropriate effects in the face of opposition. The author argues that the Australian Army’s combat engineers are incapable of providing mobility assurance in the face of opposition because of shortcomings with their equipment. The author demonstrates the negative effect this will have on future operational effectiveness and makes several suggestions for improvement.
Introduction
‘Conventional war fighting skills provide the essential foundation for all other types of operations we may undertake.’1 So said the Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, when he publicly launched the Adaptive Army initiative in August of 2008. The Chief of Army’s (CA) statement makes it clear that the Army’s direction into the future will be based on doing whatever is required to develop and retain the people, skills and equipment necessary to fight the armies of other states. Critical to this, and any other, type of warfighting is the combined arms approach. This theoretically simple but practically complex concept represents one of the few ways that a numerically inferior army—such as Australia’s—can prevail over an opponent with as much firepower, mass and depth as another state-based land force. Indeed, combined arms warfare against another state opponent arguably represents one of the most formidable challenges that the Australian Army can expect to face.
Every corps has its part to play in this proven approach to military operations. However, as the institutional memories of conventional battlefield operations fade, the Australian Army has allowed the delicate balance of its combined arms forces to deteriorate. While the Infantry, Armour, Artillery and Aviation Corps have all received new capabilities, the Army has neglected one corps—the Corps of the Royal Australian Engineers (RAE). Cognisant of the CA’s stated focus, and the renewed focus on conventional warfighting within the new Defence White Paper, it is certainly timely to examine the lamentable state of the RAE’s major equipment. Without the appropriate kit, the RAE cannot carry out its critical roles of providing mobility and countermobility support to Army and thereby enabling combined arms operations. In fact, it can be argued that the RAE’s equipment today is so deficient that its members are now incapable of performing the battlefield tasks expected of them. This shortage of suitable equipment is a fundamental flaw in the Army’s force structure, and must be quickly addressed if the Army is to achieve the CA’s vision of conducting effective combined arms operations against conventional enemies.
This article will be divided into several sections, each of which will provide evidence to establish the RAE’s inability to effectively contribute to combined arms warfare. First, the necessity of engineers to the conduct of manoeuvre operations will be demonstrated. Having thus identified where the work of engineers is critical to manoeuvre operations, the specific tasks that engineers must carry out to meet these essential requirements will be explained. The demands of these specific tasks will be examined against the capability provided by the available equipment; this comparison will prove the inadequacy of the RAE’s current equipment. Several broad recommendations will then be made as to how the Army may improve the situation. To conclude, the ongoing relevance of combat engineering will be defended to establish the need to redress the proven capability shortfall.
Combat Engineering and Manoeuvre Operations
The RAE exists to provide, among other things, mobility and countermobility support to the Australian Army. This section will explain where these tasks sit in the Australian ‘philosophy’ of land warfare and thereby explain how they are critical to Australia’s conduct of land warfare. This will be achieved by first identifying the importance of physical terrain within Army doctrine, and establishing the importance of physically moving across this terrain to manoeuvre theory. Thus proven, it logically follows that the corps designed to assure friendly movement (and deny enemy movement) is equally critical.
The Australian Army’s capstone doctrinal publication, The Fundamentals of Land Warfare (LWD-1), describes the nature of conflict as ‘dynamic, unpredictable, difficult to control and, therefore, chaotic’. It stresses that war ‘is strongly influenced by ... physical terrain’ and that ‘Success requires comprehension and exploitation of these enduring and variable features.’2 From the very beginning of this foundational exposition of the Australian approach to land warfare, it is clear that the physical terrain on which land forces operate is central to the Australian conduct of land warfare.
Building out of this characterisation of land warfare, LWD-1 goes on to define the Australian approach to operations in such an environment, proclaiming the Australian Army’s guiding philosophy as being ‘manoeuvre theory’.3 According to LWD-1, manoeuvre theory’s
essence lies in defeating the enemy’s will to fight by ‘destroying’ the enemy’s plan rather than destroying tactical forces. Manoeuvre theory seeks to shatter the enemy’s moral and physical cohesion ... creating a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope. ... It relies on changing physical and non-physical circumstances more rapidly than the enemy’s ability to adapt.4
Similar to Australia’s characterisation of the nature of land warfare, physical terrain is similarly central to manoeuvre theory: the Army’s approach to land warfare. While the theory is applicable at all levels of military effort—the strategic, operational and tactical—it is manoeuvre at the tactical level which underpins the success of manoeuvre-based operations as a whole. This is because it is at the tactical level that close combat—‘the core business of the Army’5—is conducted.
The object of such tactical manoeuvre is explained within LWD-1:
Tactical manoeuvre aims to win engagements and battles by placing forces in a position of relative advantage to the enemy, thereby contributing to the achievement of campaign objectives.6
It is apparent from the phrase ‘placing forces in a position of relative advantage’ that the physical movement of forces across the terrain is central to the successful application of manoeuvre theory at the tactical level, and thus to the successful application of the theory as a whole.
Accordingly, it is reasonable to conclude that it is the physical actions that a manoeuvre force takes that are the most important. It is, therefore, equally reasonable to conclude that the physical movement of a force into a position of advantage relative to the enemy from which it successfully engages in close combat—otherwise known as tactical manoeuvre—is the key to a successful manoeuvre operation, as these physical actions are what generate the moral and intellectual effects that manoeuvre theory ultimately seeks to impose on the enemy.
‘Positions of relative advantage’ are also largely defined in terms of physical terrain. This point is most clearly illustrated by briefly revisiting the Australian conception of the nature of war.
Despite the influence of technology, terrain will continue to dominate the battlespace. It will be exploited by both sides for offensive and defensive purposes and will largely define the effectiveness of organisations, weapons and tactics.7
It is clear that the manoeuvre force’s ‘positions of relative advantage’ from which successful close combat will be joined will largely be defined by the terrain.
Engineers do not provide the physical mobility necessary to move over and exploit terrain—that is of course the responsibility of each unit, sub-unit and, ultimately, each soldier. What the RAE does is assure that the force’s mobility can be put to effect when it seeks to move through the physical battlespace into advantageous terrain. In a ‘dynamic, unpredictable, difficult to control and, therefore, chaotic’ environment, the RAE is thus critical to the conduct of land warfare because it ensures a commander that, when physical mobility is sought, it is delivered, regardless of the difficulties that such a chaotic situation will inevitably generate. Given the central importance of mobility to manoeuvre operations, it stands to reason that the RAE is equally critical to manoeuvre operations and the Army as a whole. Precisely how the RAE makes this vital contribution is the focus of the next section.
The Primary Tasks of the RAE
The RAE ensures the mobility of friendly forces through two main tasks, which this article will refer to as ‘combat breaching’ and ‘combat bridging’.
Combat breaching encompasses a great variety of different activities—clearing mines and booby traps, cutting wire and demolishing berms are but a few examples. These all involve reducing some form of obstacle by its destruction.
Combat bridging, on the other hand, generally requires some form of construction, usually of a bridge, to overcome the obstacle. However, while the nature of the obstacles may differ, the one threat to the engineers attempting to clear them is constant—the enemy.
Obstacles only pose a difficulty when they are covered by enemy fire or when there is limited time to breach them. If the obstacles are not covered with fire and there is ample time to breach them, then they may be breached at leisure and are therefore not a serious hindrance to the commander’s freedom of manoeuvre. Accordingly, they are not considered to be obstacles for the purposes of this article. However, when covered by fire, the RAE will find that even simple obstacles quickly become difficult or impossible to breach without suffering heavy casualties.
Combat Breaching
Of the many obstacles that the Australian Army could face in the future, the most difficult single obstacle to breach is a minefield, as it poses a lethal hazard itself in addition to the enemy fire covering it.
Consider then modest minefields positioned on the avenues of approach to an objective that an Australian force has been tasked with clearing. The minefields have been designed to ‘canalise’ the manoeuvre forces into an engagement area in which the entirety of the enemy’s firepower can be brought to bear. In order for the manoeuvre forces to reach their objective without being forced into this engagement area, the minefields must be breached at multiple points. Current breaching doctrine calls for the RAE to apply the five fundamentals of breaching—suppress, obscure, secure, reduce and assault (SOSRA)—in order to clear lanes through an enemy minefield.
The engineer’s task is to advance and clear a lane through the minefield. To assist, the manoeuvre and offensive support forces provide suppressive fire and obscuration while the engineers move into position using cover and concealment. However, when they reach the obstacle, the sappers face a dilemma: they must either remain in cover and therefore fail to breach the minefield, or they must break cover and expose themselves to enemy direct (and possibly indirect) fire for the time it takes them to breach the enemy minefield. If a breaching site can be found that is not covered by enemy fire, then the minefield would not constitute an obstacle as defined above. Apart from accepting mission failure, the engineers therefore have but one choice: to expose themselves to enemy fire.
While exposure to lethal danger is the lot of the soldier, an infantryman for example does so only fleetingly in order to move from cover to cover, and only while the enemy is being engaged with suppressive fire. Upon reaching their position, they can then engage the enemy with their own fire. The sappers, however, must expose themselves to enemy fire for lengthy periods with little scope to return fire as they locate and disable mines. This is because the only tools for breaching a minefield that the RAE currently possesses are non-metallic mine prodders, bangalore torpedoes and the recently acquired Small Projected Line Charge (SAPLIC). All of these require dismounted personnel to enter or approach close to the edge of a minefield to be effective.
While the bangalore torpedo may be able to destroy or detonate simple pressure-activated anti-personnel mines, these simple weapons are not effective against many other types of APMs and anti-tank mines. The SAPLIC, on the other hand, is effective against more types of mines than a bangalore torpedo, but is only capable of destroying anti-personnel mines, and is easily defeated by simple obstructions like bushes and fences which suspend the line-charge above the ground. Accordingly, the sappers must still advance into the minefield and use their mine-prods if they are to clear minefields containing such obstacles or any type of anti-tank mine. Once found, the sappers must either place explosives on these mines which, when detonated, destroy them, or they must fix them for ‘pulling’—activation of the mines from a safe location. This must all be done exposed, in the open and under fire.
At present, RAE officers planning to manually clear a lane one hundred metres long and eight metres wide through a minefield are advised to allow a standard breaching party of seventeen personnel approximately twenty hours of daylight or thirty hours of moonlight to accomplish the task—assuming the enemy does not interfere. Even the feeblest enemy, under heavy suppressive fire and targeting an obscured engineer party, will eventually cause enough casualties to render the engineer party ineffective if that party must be exposed for at least twenty hours. Even if one assumes the minefield is particularly shallow, the party must still be exposed for an unacceptable length of time. Even if the engineer party is exposed for only one hour, it is still far too long a time for dismounted personnel to be exposed to enemy fire. It is clear from even this simple analysis that manually reducing a minefield covered by enemy fire is an absurd proposition. Indeed, the defence commentator Ian Curtis writes, ‘Trying to work on foot in a pre-registered fire zone is fairly suicidal’.8
The Australian Army’s historical experience proves this point, with the experiences of the 2/13th Field Company being particularly illustrative. RAE actions at Tobruk in 1941 demonstrate the difficulty of breaching a minefield by hand. General Erwin Rommel’s initial attack on 30 April 1941 succeeded in creating a salient in Allied lines that provided observation of most of the Tobruk defences. Accordingly, Australian forces were directed to conduct a hasty counterattack on the night of 3–4 May to dislodge Axis forces and deny them the high ground. Australian engineers were detailed to conduct hand-breaches of the minefields in front of the Axis salient. Among the exposed engineers of the 2/13th Field Company, McNicoll writes, ‘There were many casualties’.9 The counterattack failed. After several more unsuccessful attacks, the Australians settled on gradually clearing the Axis positions through limited night attacks. During the months of June and July, the 2/13th Field Company assisted these efforts by attempting to clear lanes through Axis minefields, suffering further heavy casualties while exposed to German fire.10 During operations the following year, the 2/13th Field Company again suffered heavy casualties while manually breaching minefields. On one particular breaching operation, while trying to open gaps through a minefield for the 2/15th Battalion, one mine-clearing party suffered 100 per cent casualties, while another was substantially delayed in clearing its lane because of similarly heavy casualties.11
Even when minefields are not covered by heavy direct fire, the laboriousness of hand clearing means that minefields denser or larger than expected can cause significant delays that can adversely affect a commander’s plan. Again, the 2/13th Field Company’s experience is illustrative. On the night of 23–24 October 1942, the sappers of the 2/13th Field Company advanced into enemy defences to clear mines for Allied tanks and infantry at the beginning of the Battle of El Alamein. However, despite a two-month engineer reconnaissance, the engineers were surprised to encounter mixed fields of indefinite type and composition forming an almost continuous field 1600 yards deep.12 This differed substantially from the 250-yard deep field they had expected. Consequently,
The lanes could not be made ready for the tanks despite Herculean efforts by Major Gehrmann’s 2/13th Field Company, so the [2/13th] battalion attacked on time but without the tanks... Without tanks the infantry were unable to reach their final objective, so that in this sector the first night’s hard fighting was not completely successful.
This delay ensued despite the commitment of engineer reserves equivalent to the entire force already assigned to clear the field. The 20th Brigade eventually secured all of its objectives, but it was delayed by an entire day.13
In today’s operational environment, the speed and tempo of operations has increased considerably due to advances in information and communications technology and mechanisation. Yet today’s engineers are being called upon to breach increasingly lethal minefields with essentially the same tools and TTPs they used over sixty years ago. The historical experiences of the 20th Brigade and the 2/13th Field Company show that manual breaching is costly in both time and lives. While the losses suffered by the 2/13th Field Company may have been acceptable in the Second World War, having units suffer such heavy casualties today would be considered disastrous. Moreover, casualties would almost certainly be higher in the contemporary operational environment given the increased accuracy and lethality of modern weapons, the widespread availability of night-vision devices, and the increasing sophistication of anti-handling devices and mine fuses. Few commanders would be prepared to place any of their dismounted soldiers in exposed positions covered by enemy direct fire for hours on end.
If called upon to breach even a small minefield, it is clear that the RAE would most likely fail—and lose many sappers in the attempt. Even if faced with a minefield not vigorously covered by the enemy’s fire, the RAE is unlikely to be able to accommodate even modest changes to their plans without incurring significant delays.
Of course, minefields do not represent the only obstacles that the RAE are likely to be called on to breach in combat—wire, berms, abatis or even rubble that obstructs vehicle manoeuvre all represent obstacles likely to be faced in future. While not lethal to the RAE in and of themselves like mines, they still represent obstacles which are time consuming to clear and which will require the prolonged exposure of sappers to enemy fire. Accordingly, the minefield example used here represents only an illustration of a broader RAE problem—the inability to breach almost any obstacles quickly and safely.
Combat Bridging
Building a bridge is difficult in even the calmest circumstances; however, when an enemy force is actively trying to kill the construction team, building a bridge becomes a particularly problematic task. Indeed, as Frederick the Great once said, ‘The passage of great rivers in the presence of the enemy is one of the most delicate operations in war.’14
Combat bridging can be conducted over dry gaps, such as ravines or large anti-tank ditches, or over wet gaps, such as large streams and rivers. Similar to a minefield, crossing a river poses one of the more demanding obstacle for engineers to negotiate because the obstacle itself is dangerous—soldiers with heavy burdens are liable to drowning, fast-flowing currents can flood or even overturn armoured vehicles, and muddy river beds can exhaust troops and bog vehicles. In particularly extreme climes, cold waters can induce hypothermia. In all, a river poses a considerable environmental hazard that can quickly become a major impediment to Australian commanders if covered by even desultory enemy fire.
RAE doctrine for river-crossing is similar to that for breaching minefields. Here again the RAE is called upon to apply the SOSRA fundamentals.15 Here again the RAE’s chances for success are poor. Here again, the problem is with the Corps’ equipment. To establish this argument, and prove the unsuitability of the RAE’s bridging equipment, several criteria must be defined against which the equipment’s capabilities can be compared.
First, the matter of what a bridge should carry must be settled. LWP-CA (ENGRS) 2-1-2 River Crossing—the RAE’s doctrine for combat bridging—states that any successful river crossing is heavily dependent on crossing as many tanks and AFVs to the far bank of the river as quickly as possible.16 Accordingly, any useful bridge must be capable of carrying Australia’s current MBT, the M1A1 AIM Abrams. This would require a bridge with a Military Load Classification (MLC) of at least 70.
Second, the distance the bridge must extend should also be considered. This is a more difficult question to answer. Many bridges can be constructed in varying lengths, so there is no single figure identifying their length. Accordingly, for the purposes of this article, bridges will be considered based on the time taken to construct a span of a given length—for this article, twenty metres.
Of the five bridges currently available to Australia’s engineers, three are ‘line of communications’ bridges which are not intended for use in opposed crossing operations because of the time and effort required to erect them.17 The remaining two bridges are designated for use in potentially opposed crossings. These are the Floating Support Bridge (FSB) and the Medium Girder Bridge (MGB). However, as will soon become evident, both the FSB and MGB are largely unsuited for use in opposed river crossing operations.
In an opposed river crossing operation, the FSB is the ‘preferred initial bridge since it is faster to assemble and easier to move than other types’.18 It consists of two ramp bays placed on the banks of the obstacle and a number of interior bays floating between.19 To manoeuvre the interior bays into position, the engineers are equipped with the Bridge Erection Propulsion Boat, or BEPB.20 This small, snub-nosed, waterjet-powered boat can manoeuvre effectively in constricted and shallow waters. The BEPB is made of aluminium, and provides protection only from the weather for its crew.21 The vulnerability of the engineers building the FSB is considerable—it would be trivial for an enemy to damage one of these boats (of which each combat engineer regiment possesses only five)22 or to kill their crew. Considering that approximately ten minutes is required to construct a span of twenty metres,23 it is reasonable to conclude that an enemy would be able to muster enough firepower in this time to damage or destroy these boats, or to suppress or kill their crews. This is all the more likely when one considers that the engineers and boats operating on the water have no cover, are vulnerable to even light indirect weapons like mortars, and must operate in these exposed positions to construct the bridge. This illustration does not take into account the time necessary to launch the boats and modules from the soft-skinned vehicles that transport them overland, which adds yet more risk and delay to the operation.
Where construction of a bridge is deemed inappropriate, any two of the interior modules of the FSB can be connected to a BEPB to form a ferry.24 This would serve to improve the survivability of this crossing method given that a moving target (the ferry) would arguably be harder to hit. However, considering that each CER could field only five such ferries, this would limit the commander to a painfully slow build-up of forces on the enemy bank. The Australian Army only possesses twenty-four BEPBs in total.25 As such, and combined with the vulnerability of the BEPB to enemy fire, the application of the FSB elements as a ferry is not appropriate when crossing a river in the presence of the enemy.
The MGB is equally unsuited for use during opposed river crossing operations for similar reasons. It requires dismounted engineers to operate in view of the enemy and in exposed positions during construction. During the critical launching phase, engineers must routinely expose themselves to enemy fire while close to the river bank. To construct twenty metres of bridge capable of crossing an Abrams MBT, twenty-five engineers are required to work in exposed positions for at least thirty minutes.26 This also does not include the time necessary to deliver components to the river bank, nor prepare the site (where necessary)—tasks that require the positioning of vulnerable soft-skinned vehicles close to or on the river bank. Again, even when facing an enemy subject to obscuration and suppressive fire, it is highly likely that engineers will suffer casualties as they operate dismounted and in exposed positions.
Clearly, the risk to engineers while constructing one of these bridges is too high. Engineers must operate dismounted while in full view of the enemy for extended periods with little or no cover. Furthermore, the Army’s preferred bridge for river crossing—the FSB—requires engineers to operate in unarmoured boats on the river, thereby denying them any semblance of cover or concealment if called upon to build a bridge. Heavy casualties are likely to ensue. Indeed, the US Army VII Corps’ experience during the famous Roer River crossing operations amply demonstrates the risks inherent to operating light boats on a river covered by enemy fire. Of the 190 boats employed by the US 9th Division, 70 per cent became casualties—some 136 boats destroyed or damaged with roughly commensurate losses in personnel. The US 8th Division suffered even greater losses in troops and boats.27 These appalling losses were suffered despite the fact that almost every weapon in the entire VII Corps larger than a .30 calibre machine gun was employed for suppressive fire.28
No contemporary commander would be willing to countenance such heavy losses. To lose almost all of one’s engineer capacity in a single operation would entail the surrender of the initiative in any subsequent manoeuvres and thus almost guarantee defeat. Given the limitations of current RAE bridging equipment, it is clear that the likelihood of a bridging or ferrying operation succeeding before prohibitive casualties are suffered is minimal.
Again, this is only a single example which illustrates a larger point—that the RAE is unlikely to be able to cross any ‘wet’ obstacles present on the battlefield. This does not have to mean crossing a mighty river opposed by some later-day Red Army—it can mean crossing an irrigation channel in rural areas to outsmart insurgent IED-planters, or rapidly pushing across monsoon-affected terrain to surprise a guerrilla band hiding in the hills. The common requirement in these situations is wet-gap crossing, and the common result, if attempted today, is likely to be failure.
Possible Improvements
If the engineers fail to breach an obstacle or cross a river when and where necessary, the commander’s only alternative is to adhere to the enemy’s obstacle plan, brave their killing grounds and thus cede the initiative. For any force practising the manoeuvre philosophy, this would spell disaster. Without the ability to move at will into positions of advantage from which to engage the enemy in close combat, manoeuvre operations quickly become impossible. Without the ability to achieve physical effects at the time and place of the commander’s choosing, the resultant psychological and moral effects critical to the manoeuvre philosophy become extremely difficult to achieve. In these circumstances, attrition by firepower is one of the few feasible options remaining, and for a small force like the Australian Army, this approach is not likely to succeed. The result of engineer mission failure is therefore heavy losses and defeat. Accordingly, some improvement to the RAE’s current equipment must be made.
The main risk inherent to the RAE’s current equipment is that it must be operated in exposed positions for extended periods by dismounted personnel while close to the enemy. It has been shown that this is highly likely to result in unacceptably heavy casualties among the engineers. Home-front casualty sensitivity aside, this will result in mission failure due to attrition of irreplaceable personnel and a commensurate degradation of battlefield mobility. Accordingly, any equipment that is to improve the RAE’s capabilities must reduce the likelihood of heavy engineer casualties. The easiest way to achieve this goal is by providing the sappers with extra protection while simultaneously reducing the time they are exposed to fire.
Any useful equipment for combat breaching or bridging must therefore be armoured to survive the enemy’s direct and indirect fire, and it must reduce obstacles rapidly. Moreover, it must be capable of operation from under armour at all times. Plans are in place for the RAE to acquire a new ‘Protected Hazard Reduction Capability’ under Project Land 144. This system will provide engineers with ‘Mechanical mine clearance vehicles capable of reducing the threat of landmines whilst reducing an operator’s exposure to the risk of mine detonation.’29 While this is a step in the right direction, this new platform will not protect engineers from enemy fire. Indeed, the Defence Materiel Organisation is quick to point out that ‘This capability is not a combat capability.’30 Accordingly, other equipment is necessary in light of the deficiencies of this (and current) equipment. Fortunately, several types of equipment exist which meet these criteria and which are currently available ‘off-the-shelf’.
For combat breaching, there are a wide variety of armoured engineering vehicles that protect engineers by allowing rapid minefield reduction while under armour. For the Australian Army, the most suitable vehicle would be the US Marine Corps’ Assault Breacher Vehicle (ABV). This vehicle, which is built on the chassis of the M1A1 Abrams, possesses explosive line charges for destroying mines, as well as a plough, roller and other equipment for proofing lanes through minefields.31 While still vulnerable to some sophisticated mine fuses, and subject to the inherent weaknesses of explosive line charges, the heavy passive armour and extensive sensor suite of the ABV ensures that the engineers will have a far greater chance of breaching fire-swept minefields and other obstacles successfully and with minimal casualties.
This type of vehicle is also applicable to many other engineering tasks, further enhancing the effect it can achieve on the battlefield:
The armoured engineering vehicle serves as a work room, bunker, power tool and fighting platform for the combat engineer as part of [a] combined arms team ... They can rapidly be converted from a mine-clearing vehicle into a dozer, assist in the reduction of obstacles or be used to support detection and neutralisation of IEDs ... Armoured engineering vehicles provide battlefield flexibility.32
For combat bridging, US and UK armoured vehicle launched bridges (AVLBs) would also be suitable for the RAE. Based on an Abrams chassis, the US Army’s M104 Wolverine can erect an MLC 70 bridge with a span of twenty-four metres in less than five minutes. The crew remains under armour the entire time, ensuring a high probability of success and low probability of excessive casualties.33
These platforms are only suggestions—they are mentioned purely to illustrate the fact that suitable equipment does already exist. What is important to note is that, if battlefield success is to be achieved, it is vital that the RAE soon acquire new equipment similar to that mentioned which meets the critical requirement of rapid operation while under armour.
The British Army for one has identified that this need remains critical and despite a drive towards lighter forces, it is still procuring Titan, Trojan and Terrier vehicles to give their engineers the protection they require.
The Ongoing Relevance of Combat Engineering
To many, pointing out the importance and relevance of combat engineering would seem to be an easy and self-evident task. However, the author has learned that Australian sappers believe they are ‘treated as second-class citizens’ within the Army as, while there is broad understanding within Army of the importance of the RAE, little is being done to properly equip them for their tasks.34 A lack of centralised corps advocacy further hampers the RAE’s ability to ‘make the case’ for suitable equipment.35 One officer in the RAE has argued that ‘significant risk has been taken over an extended period of time in ... engineer ... major systems’ and that, as a result of the lack of suitable major equipment, ‘The situation is approaching where force engineer-elements can become an impediment to decisive manoeuvre and as such border on irrelevance.’36 For a force that espouses combined-arms and manoeuvre warfare, the approaching irrelevance of its mobility assurance element should be troubling. However, for whatever reason, this situation has been allowed to arise and engineer forces cannot today achieve their primary roles in the face of the enemy without excessive risk. Accordingly, defending the ongoing relevance of combat engineering is perhaps a more important task than many would first think.
From the preceding analysis, it is obvious that combat engineering remains relevant for commanders who wish to conduct manoeuvre-based operations. However, sappers continue to express concern that their colleagues in the Infantry, Armour, and Artillery Corps believe that such tasks are a relic of the Cold War:
‘These aren’t the plains of Europe’ and ‘we are never going to fight that kind of conventional battle’ are admonishments commonly heard by officers of the RAE.37
But mechanised mine-clearance, bridging and other tasks normally associated with high-intensity conventional warfighting are present on the modern counterinsurgency battlefield. The Canadian experience in Afghanistan is particularly illustrative of this point. Here they have deployed armoured engineering assets to provide their forces with the mobility necessary for profitable manoeuvre operations. The commander of the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment (1RCR) Battlegroup (BG), Lieutenant-Colonel Lavoie, stated that:
If you’d asked me five months ago, ‘do you need tanks to fight insurgents?’ I would have said, ‘No, you’re nuts.’ ... Because [the Taliban] are acting conventionally, then conventional assets like tanks, armoured engineering vehicles, and armoured bridgelaying vehicles certainly have their place here.38
Colonel Lavoie initially made use of civilian bulldozers equipped with improvised armour to clear many improvised and/or locally prevalent obstacles. However, after the arrival of a troop of armoured engineers from the Canadian 1st Combat Engineer Regiment, 1RCR BG’s capability for manoeuvre increased exponentially. Convoys could move much faster along more unpredictable routes as tank-mounted mine rollers and ploughs could quickly and safely clear routes of IEDs. This kept the Taliban off balance, allowed for greater operational tempo and increased friendly security. In one instance, an armoured advance stalled as it stumbled into an old Soviet minefield. Armoured engineering equipment was put to work and Canadian forces were extracted quickly and safely from the hazardous field.39 The OC of one tank squadron that deployed, Major Trevor Cadieu, noted that, given the ‘mine/IED threat in Afghanistan is extremely high, ... the ploughs are life savers’. He also noted that the Canadian’s Badger Armoured Engineering Vehicle often led the way in armoured operations due to the unpredictable nature of the mine/IED threat, the complexity of enemy obstacles and the difficulty of the terrain.40 The Canadian experience proves that Rapid bridging systems such as AVLB, and earth-moving equipment that can keep up with the manoeuvre force allows commanders to select more varied and unpredictable routes. This ability to be unpredictable is a key factor in countering IEDs, and allowed the 1RCR BG commander to defeat the Taliban with minimal risk by achieving surprise.
Indeed, it is likely that minefields such as these will pose a more prominent threat to future operations than they did in the past. The United Nations Mine Action Service’s 2007 Annual Report shows that countries that are often described as ‘failed states’ are the focus of its de-mining activities—countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and, of course, Afghanistan.41 Given that failed states are likely to be the venues for future Australian deployments, as well as featuring prominently in current deployments, it stands to reason that it is highly likely that Australian forces will again encounter minefields.
It is also probable that Australian forces will need to breach—and not just clear—these minefields, too. Complex Warfighting and Adaptive Campaigning, read together, paint a picture of the future where the battlespace is ‘empty’ and disaggregated, requiring the wide deployment of small units and their rapid concentration to achieve tactical and strategic effects.42 In order for such small units to succeed in combat against an increasingly lethal opponent, the doctrine calls for units to ‘swarm’, converging on the enemy from multiple directions.43 This approach to operations will place an even greater demand on the RAE than it currently faces today, as it will fall to the sappers to provide the many bridges and breaches necessary for swarming units to converge on the one location from multiple avenues. Furthermore, due to the increasing lethality of the enemy, the need for the RAE to perform these breaching and bridging tasks while under armour will also rise commensurately.
The Canadian experience in Afghanistan confirms this reasoning, and demonstrates that the ADF’s current operational environment can and does demand armoured engineering capability. As the situation presently stands, the Australian Army would not be able to rise to such a challenge; it would need to ask coalition allies to do the job for them.
Conclusion
Lieutenant General Gillespie has stated that he intends to create ‘an Army that thinks that the status quo is never, ever good enough and is continually seeking to adapt and improve its performance—at all levels, on operations and in the force generation and preparation realms—while at the same time retaining important lessons from the past’.44 If the Army is to live up to this worthy goal, then it must soon acquire new equipment for the RAE. Without such augmentation, it is clear that the RAE will not be able to provide commanders with mobility assurance, battlefield mobility will break down, and the commander’s options will quickly be diminished. Casualties and failure are likely to follow.
Endnotes
1 Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, ‘Chief of Army Speech ASPI 27 August 2008’, Speech given to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra, 27 August 2008.
2 LWD 1: The Fundamentals of Land Warfare, Department of Defence, Canberra, 2008, p. 10.
3 Ibid, p. 45.
4 Ibid, pp. 45–46.
5 Ibid, p. 45.
6 Ibid, p. 48.
7 Ibid, pp. 12–13 (author’s emphasis).
8 Ian Curtis, ‘Clearing the Way’, Defense & Foreign Affairs, July 1988, p. 15.
9 Ronald McNicoll, The Royal Australian Engineers 1919 to 1945 Teeth and Tail, Griffin Press, Netley, 1982, p. 84.
10 Ibid, p. 86.
11 Ibid, p. 108.
12 Ibid, pp. 112–14.
13 Ibid, p. 114.
14 Frederick the Great quoted in US Navy Naval Historical Division, Riverine Warfare, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1969, <http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/riverine.htm> accessed 23 January 2009.
15 LWP-CA (ENGRS) 2-1-2, River Crossing, Land Warfare Development Centre, Puckapunyal, 2006, pp. 1-2–1-3.
16 Ibid, pp. 3-4–3-11.
17 Ibid, pp. 2E-1–2E-10.
18 Ibid, p. 6-29.
19 Ibid, p. 2E-1.
20 Ibid.
21 Jane’s Information Group, ‘Bridge Erection Propulsion Boat (BEPB)’, Jane’s Military Vehicles and Logistics, 14 August 2008, <http://www4.janes.com/subscribe/jmvl/doc_view.jsp?K2DocKey=/content1/ja…; accessed 23 January 2009.
22 ‘Bridge Erection Propulsion Boat (BEPB)’
23 ‘Improved Ribbon Bridge’, Jane’s Military Vehicles and Logistics, 14 August 2008, <http://www4.janes.com/subscribe/jmvl/doc_view.jsp?K2DocKey=/content1/ja…; accessed 23 January 2009.
24 LWP-CA (ENGRS) 2-1-2, p. 2E-1.
25 ‘Bridge Erection Propulsion Boat (BEPB)’.
26 ‘Medium Girder Bridge’, Janes Military Vehicles and Logistics, 14 August 2008, <http://www4.janes.com/subscribe/jmvl/doc_view.jsp?K2DocKey=/content1/ja… > accessed 23 January 2009.
27 John B Wong, Battle Bridges: Combat River Crossings, Trafford Publishing, Victoria BC, 2004, p. 233.
28 Wong, Battle Bridges, p. 239.
29 ‘Land 144 – Countermine Capability’, Projects, Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO), 29 April 2008, <http://www.defence.gov.au/dmo/lsd/land144/land144.cfm> accessed 30 January 2009.
30 ‘Land 144 – Countermine Capability’.
31 ‘Assault Breacher Vehicle’, Janes Military Vehicles and Logistics, 9 January 2009, <http://www4.janes.com/subscribe/jmvl/doc_view.jsp?K2DocKey=/content1/ja…; accessed 23 January 2009.
32 J N Carey, ‘We need armoured engineer vehicles’, Army: The Soldier’s Newspaper, Iss. 1125, 28 July 2005, <http://www.defence.gov.au/news/armynews/editions/1125/letters.htm> accessed 30 January 2009.
33 ‘Wolverine Heavy Assault Bridge’, Jane’s Military Vehicles and Logistics, 23 December 2008, <http://www4.janes.com/subscribe/jmvl/doc_view.jsp?K2DocKey=/content1/ja…; accessed 23 January 2009.
34 RAE Officer, Interview with the author, 30 January 2009.
35 Ibid.
36 Craig Jolly, ‘The Modular Engineer Force’, Australian Sapper, 2008 Edition, 2008, p. 12.
37 RAE Officer, Interview.
38 Trevor Cadieu, ‘Canadian Armour in Afghanistan’, Canadian Army Journal, Vol. 10, No. 4, Winter 2008, p. 7.
39 Ibid, pp. 7–9.
40 Trevor Cadieu, ‘Tanks in Counter Insurgency Operations (COIN) Initial Lessons Learned’, PowerPoint Presentation in possession of the author, Canberra, 2007.
41 United Nations Mine Action Service, Annual Report 2007, United Nations, New York, 2008.
42 See: Complex Warfighting, Department of Defence, Canberra, 2006; and Adaptive Campaigning: The Land Force Response to Complex Warfighting, Department of Defence, Canberra, December 2007.
43 Adaptive Campaigning, p. 14.
44 Gillespie, ‘Chief of Army Speech ASPI 27 August 2008’.
