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In November 2001, Australia joined the United States-led coalition in the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. There was no indication that this would be Australia's longest war. For the Australian Army, Afghanistan was a proving ground and a monumental achievement. For the Australian soldier, it was a time to put into the practice the skills for which they had been trained. To commemorate the Australian Army soldiers' role in Afghanistan, an interactive website will soon be launched. 'The …

The increased availability of information collected by space based sensors is changing our battlespace by creating new threats and opportunities. Recent advancements in commercial satellite technology have resulted in widespread public access to information that was previously only obtainable through classified intelligence programs. This post examines some of the recent trends and capabilities of commercial satellite systems and their use to inform future Army thinking. That a picture paints a thousand …

Major Leon Young’s recent article  galvanised me to consider his question  if we wished to avoid the dystopian future for the preferred utopia, how should we design the force to operate in crowded, connected, lethal, collective and constrained environments ? I decided to go back to first principles. In Hew Strachan’s recent book  Direction of War , he highlights that if war is an instrument of policy, strategy is the tool that enables us to understand war and gives us the best chance of managing and …

In an earlier  blog post for this forum , I discussed some of the government’s latest policy, its relationship to the Joint Archipelagic Manoeuvre concept and a shopping list of new and enhanced  means . These  means  included: New long-range rocket system New deployable short-range, ground-based air defence weapons New medium-range, ground-based air defence weapons New deployable, land-based anti-ship missiles. Tempted as I was to open  Janes  and look at hardware, there are robust procedures in the …

Introduction The ‘greater uncertainty’ in Australia’s strategic environment identified in the  2016 Defence White Paper  is now perhaps  deterioration , with increasing concerns that we rely on an alliance partner that may become  decreasingly willing or able to underwrite our defence . Hugh White has questioned the ADF’s  capacity to defend Australia , Concurrently, it is the Chief of Army’s assessment that history’s continuous shift in the character of future warfare is now  accelerating .  As the …

As the integration of cyber networks reaches full saturation within the deployed environment, the time that cyber defenders and a cyber network defence framework should have been put in place has already passed. This leaves our networks and the missions reliant on those networks for command, control and communications vulnerable to exploitation by any number of adversaries within the battlespace. With  governments around the world  spending billions of dollars on the implementation of cyber defence …

"Our subordinates are from the digital and “sharing economy” generation where disruptive technologies and practices routinely replace traditional services. When our subordinates comfortably use the largest transport company in the world which has no cars and the largest accommodation provider which has no property we need to do more to harness the agility embodied in our workforce and their comfort with technology and change."   - Commander Forces Command, Major General McLachlan, 2017 As the proportion of …

A Submission to the Chief of Army’s ‘Contest of Ideas’ The basis of this submission is this cover note and the enclosed short paper authored by Dr Albert Palazzo and myself in 2016 titled  Coming to Terms with the Modern Way of War: Precision Missiles and the Land Component of Australia’s Joint Force . Much of the Western military’s attention has focussed on developments in particular technological fields such as cyber, space, artificial intelligence and hypersonics; but, by focussing on the parts we may …

How can a large organisation, deeply rooted in tradition, order, and control, purposefully embrace change? Add to this eternal test the complexity of rapidly evolving technology and the challenges compound. The ability of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to master the technologies associated with network-centric warfare (NCW) will largely shape its destiny. The implementation of NCW cuts deep, right to the organisational, social and cultural roots that underpin the entire Defence organisation. NCW …

Like other Western military forces, the ADF has used deployments since Vietnam to develop appropriate mechanisms to support media access to its operations. The ADF’s advances in this regard, like those of the US and UK, are almost solely linked to political and strategic direction issued on the cusp of operational deployments requiring last-minute adjustments to policy, procedures and processes. The nature of the ADF’s recent commitments to larger, long-term coalition operations has allowed commanders and …