Welfare Warfighters and Adaptive Campaigning

Journal Edition

Abstract

This article examines the role that chaplains could possibly play in the future Army. The author argues that, if properly resourced, tomorrow’s chaplains could be employed as interagency leaders of the ‘Welfare Warfighter’ community on operations. This arrangement could provide commanders with a valuable capability applicable across Adaptive Campaigning’s five lines of operations.

How can Army enhance the contribution that chaplains make to our warfighting capabilities, and how do Australia’s ‘Welfare Warfighters’ play a role within an army that must fight in accordance with the five Adaptive Campaigning lines of operation?

Definitions

The following definitions are required prior to examining the two issues germane to this article:

Army Chaplain: The designated role of the Royal Australian Army Chaplaincy Department is to:

provide religious and pastoral support to commanders at all levels in accordance with established policy and guidance
collectively provide a religious ministry and character development program to all elements of the Army
provide religious ministry to denominational members.¹

Welfare Warfighter: This is not an official Australian Army or Australian Defence Force (ADF) term. For the purpose of this article, the author has grouped many of the welfare agencies that are available to assist Army’s people under the banner of Welfare Warfighter. These may include chaplains, medical staff, psychologists, physical training specialists, philanthropic services, Defence Community Organisation, Defence National Welfare Coordination Centre, Vietnam Veterans Counselling Service, Department of Veterans Affairs, community based organisations such as the Returned Services League and Legacy, and unit, regimental and corps associations.²

Examining the above eclectic description of welfare organisations in the ADF and the wider Australian community, it is apparent that Australia is fortunate to be associated with diverse organisations that nominate ‘welfare’ as either their main or at least a key responsibility. This diversity in Australian and ADF welfare capabilities is an advantage that Army can develop, nurture and enhance under the Welfare Warfighter concept, especially when combined with Adaptive Campaigning’s five interdependent and mutually reinforcing lines of operation.

This article teams Army’s traditional view of welfare with the seemingly contradictory concept of the ‘warfighter’. In common usage, ‘warfighter’ is narrowly defined as an ‘armed forces member: a soldier, sailor, Marine, or airman who is engaged in combat against an enemy force’.³

The requirement to orchestrate Australia’s welfare agencies to support Army’s people results in the expression: Welfare Warfighters. A Welfare Warfighter ‘nurtures and supports ADF people, and where possible non-ADF people, so that the ADF may successfully engage in combat against an enemy force’.

In the ADF’s current deployments the complex, competitive environment generated by agile and adaptive adversaries denies any opportunity for the ADF to continue to narrowly define its warfighters.⁴ In fact, Adaptive Campaigning, the Army’s response to Complex Warfighting, identifies the requirement for Army to consider ‘actions taken by the Land Force as part of the military contribution to a Whole of Government approach to resolving conflicts’.⁵ In terms of soldier welfare, a whole-of-government approach insufficiently energises the resources available for, and needed by, our people. Many key welfare agencies are community based non-government organisations.⁶ When it comes to caring for Army’s people, we cannot afford to rely solely on a whole-of-government approach; our people come from the community, and our community must be engaged in a manner that is orchestrated with all welfare agencies to look after our people.

Adaptive Campaigning's Five Lines of Operation

Combat operations can no longer be seen as the decisive phase of conflict and as a result an alternative approach to land force operations is required—Adaptive Campaigning.⁷

Adaptive Campaigning comprises five interdependent and mutually reinforcing lines of operation:

Joint land combat
Population support
Indigenous capacity building
Population protection
Public information.⁸

This article will argue that Army’s Welfare Warfighters, given a broad and flexible role, have significant capabilities available to support an army that is to fight in accordance with Adaptive Campaigning’s five lines of operation.

Enhancing the contribution chaplains make to Army’s warfighting capabilities requires the Army chaplaincy to modernise. This modernisation may involve two areas of reform: a) a revised role for the Royal Australian Army Chaplaincy Department, and b) the introduction of chaplain’s assistants into the Army.

Revised Role for the Royal Australian Army Chaplaincy

Department

A recommended revised role for Army chaplains would be to:

support commanders at all levels by providing expert religious and pastoral advice relevant to mission success;
lead religious ministry, character development, and pastoral and welfare support to all Australian Defence Force personnel and when necessary, other government agencies and coalition partners;
innovate using denominational and non-denominational frameworks, and synchronise the effects of Defence and non-Defence welfare support agencies to enhance Army’s operational effectiveness.

This revised role aims to ensure that chaplains not only support commanders, but are also involved in Army’s mission success. In particular, under this modernised role, chaplains would be required to lead other Welfare Warfighters from government, non-government agencies and coalition partners. Army chaplains, as leaders under this proposed new role, would be well positioned to be responsible for orchestrating Australia’s welfare agencies in support of Army’s people.

Why should Army chaplains be singled out as leaders of the Welfare Warfighters? What makes chaplains so special that they may, in increasingly secular Western democracies such as Australia, be the leaders of welfare support for Army’s people? Arguably, other Welfare Warfighters could assume leadership positions in orchestrating welfare support.

The above questions are valid and, in many circumstances, chaplains may not be the ideal source of leadership to orchestrate the efforts required from Welfare Warfighters. Indeed, there is an opposing view to appointing chaplains as the ‘default welfare man [or woman]’⁹ in a unit, noting that while chaplains play a key role in assisting to provide welfare effects, the lead Welfare Warfighter should be determined by a commander, just as a commander in accordance with the premise of mission command may organise tasks for any mission. In addition, a chaplain’s specific religious affiliation may potentially inhibit a chaplain’s selection for the role of lead welfare effects officer, especially when operating in a foreign culture that is not amenable to a particular religion.

Notwithstanding the above perspectives, the advantage held by uniformed chaplains, ahead of many other traditional welfare agencies, is that they are generally assigned permanently to one or more Army units. Through this arrangement, a good chaplain who demonstrates strong leadership can share burdens, develop a strong rapport, and gain trust from unit personnel.

The twenty-first century has proven to be a time of high operational tempo for the Australian Army. Units and commanders are becoming increasingly reliant on unit chaplains as a key component of operational capability dealing with unit welfare, morale, counselling, mental health and wellbeing of unit personnel.

Champlain's Assistants

Leading Welfare Warfighters will, if implemented, place further burdens on already overworked Army chaplains, and in many cases the chaplains’ families. It is perhaps time for Army unit establishments to modernise by including positions for chaplain’s assistants. Chaplain’s assistants are employed in the United States military, and provide many services, including:¹⁰

support to chaplains during missions and everyday activities
maintain physical security of the chaplain
driving duties
arrange religious events and ceremonies
assist the chaplain in maintaining readiness
maintain chaplain vestments, religious items
general administration.

Chaplain’s assistants could be soldiers or junior non-commissioned officers who show an aptitude for religious issues and an interest in the welfare of fellow soldiers and their families. For the cost of a single additional person on a unit establishment, a chaplain’s assistant could assist the unit chaplain to improve support exponentially to unit personnel and their families, and further free chaplains to comprehensively lead and orchestrate other Welfare Warfighters while continuing to innovate and perform the tough work of Army chaplaincy.

Welfare Warfighters' Roles within Adaptive Campaigning's Five Lines of Operation

Line of Operation 1: Joint Land Combat

Joint land combat describes close combat under contemporary conditions in complex, and particularly urban, terrain. The purpose of joint land combat is to remove organised resistance in order to enable effective interaction with the population.¹¹

Welfare Warfighters, as members of a military, government or non-government organisation, who nurture and support ADF and non-ADF people so that the ADF may successfully engage in combat against an enemy force, have a background role in supporting joint land combat.

This line of operation may result in casualties, which will place more demands on Welfare Warfighters from soldiers and their families who require and seek support in an environment complicated by transparency to the media, the general public and our adversaries. Joint land combat requires well orchestrated welfare plans in order to provide Army’s people and their families robust, agile and timely support.

Importantly, Welfare Warfighters who find the capacity to support non-ADF people provide an additional dimension to this and the other four Adaptive Campaigning lines of operation. This welfare dimension, when integrated and orchestrated with joint land combat and with Welfare Warfighters acting as additional joint land combat sensors, presents an almost unique capability, especially if the ADF seeks to develop and enhance the already strong base Australia enjoys regarding Welfare Warfighters, assisted by a wide range of organisations that nominate ‘welfare’ as a key responsibility.

Joint land combat in urban terrain is demanding for ADF personnel, and particularly disruptive for the residents of those same urban environments. Welfare Warfighters’ ability to deliver almost simultaneous welfare support to areas of greatest need represents a significant tactical advantage for ADF warfighters. Welfare Warfighters can ease the ‘three-block war’ demands on ADF personnel, especially in environments of intense close combat among significant populations, which will allow ADF personnel to concentrate on their joint land combat core business of ‘removing organised resistance in order to enable effective interaction with the population’.¹²

Line of Operation 2: Population Support

Population support includes actions to provide essential services to effected communities. The purpose of these actions is to relieve immediate suffering and positively influence the population and their perceptions.¹³

Arguably, Welfare Warfighters are tailor-made to operate in conjunction with Army, ADF, government, non-government and, on occasion, coalition capabilities in support of the population support line of operation. The first priority for Welfare Warfighters should always be Army’s people, with excess welfare capacity and expertise being applied to population support.

Put simply, Welfare Warfighters are capable of orchestrating welfare effects in support of the ADF’s people, and are also capable, when capacity allows, of orchestrating welfare effects for non-ADF populations. Commanders should consider including Welfare Warfighters early in their planning processes, so that these welfare specialists can lend their expertise to assist in the development of population support. By gaining the early input, trust and support of Welfare Warfighters, commanders should be able to develop plans that are appropriately wargamed against multiple contingencies involving population support, and are therefore more likely to be balanced for operations in rapidly changing complex operational environments.

Line of Operation 3: Indigenous Capacity Building

Indigenous capacity building includes actions taken by the Land Force to assist in the development of effective indigenous government, security, and police, legal, financial and administrative systems. It sets the conditions for transition to indigenous governance and as such is fundamental to shaping the Land Force exit strategy.¹⁴

Many Welfare Warfighters possess unique skills that will significantly assist commanders in achieving this line of operation. Consider uniformed and nonuniformed Catholic priests working in predominantly Catholic Timor Leste; nongovernment workers permanently resident in a war or disaster ravaged region; consular staff, with language and cultural skills, posted to world trouble spots; charitable organisations, such as the Salvation Army, with worldwide organisational support; and even medical staff practicing the universally accepted Hippocratic oath.

Armies can build indigenous capacity. The Reconstruction Task Force in Afghanistan is currently passing important trade skills to Afghani people, and the Australian Army Training Team in Iraq is passing important warfighting skills to the Iraqi people. Welfare Warfighters bring another dimension to Army’s indigenous capacity building abilities.

Admittedly, the standard of Welfare Warfighters will vary greatly between operations and theatres. This variation is partly unavoidable, especially for Welfare Warfighters who just happen to live in the area of operation. However, a comprehensive operational level approach to develop Australian, and perhaps coalition, Welfare Warfighters could reduce the risk of wild variations in Welfare Warfighter standards.

If the ADF is to be successful in undertaking Adaptive Campaigning, then Army needs to take the lead to ensure that the non-Army elements who are Welfare Warfighters possess the appropriate skills, standards and ethos to ensure their successful integration into the indigenous capacity building and other lines of operation.

Line of Operation 4: Population Protection

Population protection operations include actions to provide immediate security to threatened populations in order to control residence, identity, movement, assembly and the distribution of commodities, therefore setting the conditions for the re-establishment of law and order.¹⁵

Welfare Warfighters who actively support the ADF in population protection may also find themselves in situations where their knowledge, insights and experience can assist in creating environments that independently enhance the security of local populations.

Examples may include the information that Welfare Warfighters gain during their daily course of business at the local church, orphanage, market, government offices, or media outlet; or community projects commenced or supported; or food aid distributed to needy people. If Welfare Warfighters are effectively integrated into the Army’s planning cycle then they may act to provide information, opportunities or situations that may be inserted into the unit’s adaptation cycle, and enable forces to rapidly sense changing situations, decide on new courses of action, and effectively adapt tactics, techniques and procedures.¹⁶

Line of Operation 5: Public Information

Public information is a collection of capabilities brought together and focused to inform and shape the perceptions, attitudes, behaviour and understanding of targeted population groups in order to reinforce actions within the other lines of operation. Public information underpins every element of Adaptive Campaigning and is an essential prerequisite for success.¹⁷

Welfare Warfighters are commonly associated with organisations that need to self-promote to ensure their very survival. Examples include the various annual campaigns conducted by welfare organisations to secure financial support or membership from the community. Even ADF-based Welfare Warfighters are organisations that frequently experience reductions in resources. Medical, philanthropic, religious and community service personnel in the ADF are frequently below authorised numbers, which reflects not only the lack of those same personnel in Australian society as a whole, but the ADF’s inability to generate enough resources to recruit, train and retain appropriate numbers of Welfare Warfighters.

Adaptive Campaigning emphasises that public information ‘reinforces actions within the other [four] lines of operation’.¹⁸ Welfare Warfighters can provide natural mediums through which the public information and the other four lines of operation are developed. In many cases the main contribution a Welfare Warfighter makes to any line of operation is information. Examples may include the chaplain who provides pastoral care, the psychologist who provides counsel, the doctor who provides advice, and the non-government charity that provides school books.

Especially early in a military operation, Welfare Warfighters may not have access to humanitarian stores, vehicles or even their tools of trade. They will therefore be solely reliant on their ability to enhance public information. Army commanders who plan and work closely with Welfare Warfighters to ensure that all public information is synchronised with key messages that support the military operation will gain two advantages.

First, Welfare Warfighters will be aligned with the operational aims and not work against, or at cross purposes to, the commander’s intent. Second, the message from the Australian or coalition force will be consistent, thus giving our forces a better opportunity to act, sense, decide and adapt against an enemy who may be executing their own public information operation. Failure to synchronise the messages presented by Welfare Warfighters with the messages of the fighting force will only serve to slow down our force’s ability to deal with complexity and a rapidly evolving operational environment.

Conclusion

This article has aimed to address two issues: first, how can Army enhance the contribution chaplains make to our warfighting capabilities? Second, what roles do Australia’s Welfare Warfighters have within an army that is to fight in accordance with Adaptive Campaigning’s five lines of operation?

The answers are as complex as the environments in which the ADF fights.

Chaplains are a significant asset to Army, and by modernising their roles and introducing chaplain’s assistants, a real opportunity exists to ensure that chaplains predominate as lead Welfare Warfighters. Further, chaplains are uniquely positioned to orchestrate other Welfare Warfighters and hence exponentially enhance their influence in the modern battlespace.

Adaptive Campaigning’s five interdependent and mutually reinforcing lines of operation—joint land combat, population support, indigenous capacity building, population protection and public information—are areas within a campaign where Welfare Warfighters can make a significant contribution.

The key is for commanders to ensure that Welfare Warfighters, whether Army, government, non-government or coalition elements, are integrated into planning early and often to ensure that the aims of Welfare Warfighters are aligned with those of the fighting force. This integration will at times be a challenge. Fortunately, Adaptive Campaigning provides a framework for commanders to consider, across all five lines of operation, how this integration can be achieved. This article has given examples where the integration may be successful, and there are certain to be situations where integration is not successful.

Adaptive Campaigning’s five lines of operation will, to a certain extent, compensate for some unsuccessful options selected by Army in this long and complex war. In other words, we will make misjudgments and mistakes. It is the intent of this article to raise awareness so that lack of success is not caused by poor synchronisation between our warfighters and our Welfare Warfighters.

Endnotes

1 Defence Jobs website, <http://www.defencejobs.gov.au/> accessed 4 September 2007.

2 A ‘unit’ in the Australian Army is defined as an organisation commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel (Equivalent), and may be designated as a battalion or regiment.

3 <http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_701711493/warfighter.html>, accessed 10 January 2008.

4 Bradley Graham and Josh White, ‘Abizaid Credited With Popularizing the Term “Long War”‘, Washington Post, 3 February 2006.

5 Future Land Operational Concept, Adaptive Campaigning – The Land Force Response to Complex Warfighting, Department of Defence, Canberra, 24 November 2006.

6 Lieutenant Colonel Pat Sowry, 5 February 2008, noted to the author that attempting to include community based organisations under the rubric ‘warfighter’ may ‘ultimately compromise the integrity of those organisations and their ability to deploy their resources in an independent manner’. This is probably correct, which serves to emphasise that the management of community based welfare organisations will need to be carefully, and continuously, managed by commanders at all levels.

7 Adaptive Campaigning, p. 1.

8 Ibid.

9 Quote from Lieutenant Colonel Trent Scott, 5 February 2008.

10 US Army Website, <http://www.goarmy.com/JobDetail.do?id=3> accessed 11 October 2007.

11 Adaptive Campaigning, p. 11.

12 Ibid; ‘The [Marine] Corps has described amorphous conflicts [military operations-other-than-war] as—the three block war—contingencies in which Marines may be confronted by the entire spectrum of tactical challenges in the span of a few hours and within the space of three contiguous city blocks’: General Charles C Krulak, quoted in ‘The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War’, Marine Corps Gazette, January 1999.

13 Adaptive Campaigning, p. 16.

14 Ibid., p. 18.

15 Ibid., p. 20.

16 Ibid., p. 7.

17 Ibid., p. 23.

18 Ibid.