The great failing in the US war effort since September 2001 has been the reluctance to comprehend the enemy that America confronts. As long as the anodyne, euphemistic and inaccurate term ‘the war on terror’ remains the official nomenclature, the struggle will not be won. The genesis of the term war on terror goes back to 11 September 2001 when, twelve hours after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President George W. Bush addressed the American nation and launched a war against …

The al-Qa’ida terrorist attacks on the United States of 11 September 2001 acted as a catalyst in revealing the new dynamics of a global security environment in which radical Islamism has emerged as a violent and dangerous opponent to liberal democracy. These attacks were symptomatic of how, in the latter half of the 20th century a cycle of Islamic radicalism had swept through the Middle East, fuelled by the works of powerful ideologues. One of the most influential of these Islamist ideologues was the …

Among the most significant factors in conducting coalition operations are the national legal considerations that govern the deployment of military forces and the way in which they are employed. Legal factors have a bearing on everything in alliance and coalition operations—from determining basic ‘troop-to-task’ considerations to decisions regarding the targets to be engaged—and the types of ordinance that may be used. It is often believed that, in the heat of battle or in the pressure cooker of operations, …

Since President Suharto’s fall from power in May 1998, the Indonesian armed forces have continued their participation in politics. However, while the military has remained a strong political force for much of the post-Suharto era, a program of reform is now under way in Indonesia that may see the armed forces withdraw entirely from the political process. The central issues in Indonesian civil-military relations can be clearly understood by analysis of the careers of former Generals Wiranto and Yudhoyono, …

‘The era of the strategic corporal is here. The soldier of today must possess professional mastery of warfare, but match this with political and media sensitivity’. - Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, Chief of Army, 18 October 2002 In most modern Western armies, soldiers are expected to be not only technically proficient in warfighting, but also capable of supervising civil affairs, providing humanitarian aid and performing a range of activities relating to order and stability. As networked technologies …

* This article is based on an edited transcript of a presentation delivered by the author to the Australian Chief of Army’s Exercise in Canberra in October 2004. The next six years are likely to be extremely difficult for the US Army both operationally and on the organisational front. This article will concentrate on the organisational changes that the Army is attempting to make in order to meet its many operational commitments. It is important to understand the challenges of the environment that the US …

Over the past decade, the combined impact of change in the strategic environment and the development of network-enabling technologies have propelled proponents of network-centric warfare (NCW) into the mainstream of military thought. Although defining NCW remains problematic, advocates such as John Gartska, the Assistant Director for Concepts and Operations in the US Defense Department’s Office of Force Transformation, have argued that the term describes how a networked force fights. Gartska defines NCW …

Everything that can be invented has been invented. - Charles H. Duell, Office of Patents, 1899 The Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) interest in networked operations is hardly recent, although it may seem so at times. Since the 1991 Gulf War, Australian military professionals have understood that better networked forces would be one of the key aspects of the future battlespace. Since that time, in various guises, we have been developing a range of networking capabilities in all three Australian services but …

This article discusses US Marine Corps combined-arms tactics in Operation Iraqi Freedom in March and April 2003 by examining the way in which live force-experimentation was converted into actual combat effectiveness. Live force-experimentation conducted by Project Metropolis at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory proved to be a useful indication of real combat conditions. As a result, an analysis of Marine experimentation and its relationship with operational experience holds valuable lessons for the …

This article seeks to review the relationship between suppression and manoeuvre in infantry platoon tactics. It is argued that current Australian Army doctrine has not paid sufficient attention to the advent of precision munitions, the development of all-arms combat teams, and the introduction of information technologies such as intra-section communications. Nor has Australian military doctrine fully appreciated how these new developments have ‘force multiplied’ the combat power of an infantry platoon. In …