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In June 2019 at the École Militaire, Paris, a gathering of senior officers from 17 western nations, think tanks and industry representatives, pondered the need to change the Principles of War to ensure their relevance to 2035 and beyond. The conclusion of this esteemed symposium? Our enshrined, extant Principles of War will remain relevant to 2035 and beyond. Notwithstanding slight, esoteric variations in each representative military’s Principles of War, this conclusion was founded on a long-held, perhaps …

Discussing the implications of Marawi: Part 1 - Hard Power The battle for Marawi in the southern Philippines highlights an emerging strategic option for asymmetric coercive action: seize dense urban terrain to hold it and its population hostage; defy the government to regain control, exploiting the acute difficulties of doing so; discredit that government by forcing it to either capitulate or destroy the city to eject you. This approach was first applied by ISIL in the Mesopotamian cities of Mosul and …

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means… Should one then turn around the formula and say that politics is war pursued by other means? “ MICHEL FOUCAULT, 1976 ‘SOCIETY MUST BE DEFENDED’  [1] In a recent  special report for ASPI , Charles Knight and I drew out lessons from the 2017 Marawi crisis—the seizure of the Southern Philippine city by militants linked to Islamic State and the response by Philippine authorities. Taking a dual approach, the report focuses both on the capability aspects of …

Explosive Ordnance (EO) and Improvised Threats (collectively Explosive Hazards) caused 7,239 civilian casualties in 2017, and 15 of the ADF casualties on operations in Afghanistan. The threat of Explosive Hazards is high risk and continually evolving. We only have to look at the examples of Mosul and Marawi to see that, as the pace of war increases, this threat will continue to proliferate. While my pitch focuses on Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), my proposed solution has application across the entire …

Bottom line up front Cyber warfare is growing as a domain of warfare but requires a different approach than the environmental domains. The individual services are not large enough to effectively generate cyber warfare capability and therefore Australian Defence Force (ADF) cyber operations must be a truly Joint enterprise. This will involve a raise, train, sustain and deliver model more similar to Special Forces than conventional capabilities, with Joint funding and direction, and the human capability …

As Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems proliferate, we must be prepared for what is to come. “I’m certainly questioning my original premise that the fundamental nature of war will not change. You’ve got to question that now. I just don’t have the answers yet,” US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, on the impact of intelligent machines The Chief of Army’s Futures Statement,  Accelerated Warfare , discusses the link between technology and the rapidly changing character of war. Specifically, …

In 2015, the  First Principles Review Report observed that Defence was lacking in its ability to manage and use its data. Duplication, fragmentation and inconsistency were cited as key shortfalls that were likely to impact the delivery of anticipated outcomes for a range of complex, information dependent capability investments. Confirming this, the Defence Enterprise Information Management Strategy 2015 – 2025 noted a proliferation of information and communication applications, siloed solutions, inadequate …

In August 2018 the Australian Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Rick Burr, issued his futures statement titled  Accelerated Warfare .  The statement sought to stimulate thinking, engagement and debate about how the Australian Army prepares for future conflict. The Chief of Army’s statement focuses on how the Army should prepare for war. While Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) is not warfare,  HADR responses contribute to Army’s strategic task of shaping Australia’s strategic environment . …

In  part one  of this two-part series, I argued that the Australian Army must make Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations part of the strategic plan for how the Australian Army prepares for the future.  Here I will show how Army can use its health assets to prepare a capable and well-equipped force that is both  ready now  and  future-ready  within the concept of  Accelerated Warfare . The Australian Army needs to consider how it will prepare a  future-ready  force that is capable of …

Our current conflicts require action across all domains: the physical, information and cognitive. However, one must ask if the idea of ‘messaging and narrative’ has been over-emphasised to the detriment of real actions. Is Information Operations (IO)  the new black ? Clausewitz called war a clash of wills. Mao saw it as a people's struggle. Jomini, whose theory drives much of our planning process, highlighted the importance of will to fighting. These, and many other, theorists understood that actions and …