Introduction This paper explores concepts being developed by the United States Marine Corps, UK Royal Marines and Royal Navy (including the US Concept for Stand-In Forces, and the British Commando Forces concept), in order to inform an Australian approach to stand-in manoeuvre in contested littoral environments. The paper first examines the challenges and implications of a contested littoral environment, identifying the need to operate in a distributed, low-profile, mobile, modular and sustained manner …

Introduction The global distribution of power is shifting to Asia, and Australia’s strategic risks are rising. With reduced warning time, emerging great power competition, and expanding regional navies, Australia’s risks are growing within the maritime domain of its immediate region. Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update (DSU) and 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) marked significant changes in its strategic approach, identifying the growing potential threat from China and shifting from multiple …

Introduction In the National Defence Statement that forms Part A of the public version of the Defence Strategic Review (DSR), the Minister for Defence, Richard Marles, states that ‘Army must be optimised for littoral operations in our northern land and maritime spaces and provided a long-range strike capability’. Elsewhere in the document, one of the key priorities for the Army is stated to be ‘land-based maritime strike’. [1] The concept of maritime force projection from land has been developing for some …

Introduction Since the Second World War, Australian naval, land and air forces have rarely had the opportunity to undertake amphibious operations on active deployments. On the evening of 24 May 2006, with firefights taking place around the Timorese capital of Dili and the government losing control of its own security services, the country’s political leaders requested assistance from Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Portugal ‘in sending defence as well as security forces from their countries to …

Introduction At 0630 on the morning of 17 November 1943, a tremendous screeching sound cut through the air of the slopes of Sattelberg, a peak that reached some 900 metres above sea level and dominated the southern coast of the Huon Peninsula, on the north coast of New Guinea. The sounds were produced by a salvo of 4.5 inch rockets fired from a makeshift mount on a ¾ ton weapons carrier; another salvo was quickly fired, and then another. [1] It was unclear how much damage the rockets did to the Japanese …

Introduction Writing in The Lifeblood of War: Logistics in Armed Conflict, distinguished Royal Marine Major General Julian Thompson (retd), noted that for all its importance logistics usually takes a ‘back seat to the more glamorous tactics and strategy’. [1] He was not claiming that militaries do not understand logistics. Rather, he was saying that they often show a reluctance to acknowledge its importance—or devote enough time to its detailed study—vis-à-vis operational matters. As someone with active …

Introduction The intersection of land and sea both defines Australia’s borders and characterises the Australian military’s primary operating environment. With 90 per cent of the global population living within 1,000 km of a coastline (including 40 per cent living within 100 km), 90 per cent of international trade traveling between ports, and 95 per cent of global communication transmitted through submarine cables, littoral environments hold significant strategic importance. [1] Nevertheless, the conduct of …

Geography, History, and the Ongoing Utility of Land Power in Australia’s Littoral Arc — A Primer Introduction The platform for the current direction in Australia’s Defence policy was set down with the release of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update (DSU). With this document, the then Morrison Government made it clear that Australia’s strategic environment was rapidly changing, and along with it, the risks that the nation’s defence policy must manage. The DSU noted the key drivers of this revision of the …

Elite Souls: Portraits of Valor in Iraq and Afghanistan   Written by: Raymond James Yamond Naval Institute Press , 2022, 384 pp Hardcover ISBN: 9781682477137   Reviewed by: Garth Pratten In many respects Elite Souls: Portraits of Valor in Iraq and Afghanistan is a straightforward book. Raymond James Raymond, a former British diplomat and more recently historian and social scientist, delivers exactly what he promises in the title: five stories of young United States Army officers in action during the most …

  Written by: Tom Gilling Allen and Unwin Book Publisher , 2022, 320 pp Paperback ISBN: 9781760879273   Reviewed by: James Bryant Two thousand four hundred Allied servicemen died as prisoners of the Japanese at Sandakan in Borneo, many on the so-called ‘death march’ that took place along a 260 kilometre long jungle track between Sandakan and Ranau. Exhausted, malnourished and wracked by illnesses like malaria and beri-beri, all who fell out on that track were kicked or bludgeoned to death, or shot. …