Australia is in the midst of what some have described as an Amphibious Renaissance. Not since the Second World War has the Royal Australian Navy had an amphibious capability of the scale provided by the new Canberra class Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) vessels: HMA Ships  Canberra and Adelaide. The Australian Army too is improving its amphibious clout, most evidently by its re-roling of 2nd Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment (2 RAR) from a line infantry unit to a specialist pre-landing force. …

With respect to their cities, later on, at an era of increased facilities of navigation and a greater supply of capital, we find the shores becoming the site of walled cities, and the isthmuses being occupied for the purposes of commerce and defence against a neighbour. [i] Thus wrote the Athenian, Thucydides, some two thousand years ago. Describing the geography, the demography and military status quo before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, he noted the particular situation of urbanisation along …

The Applied History of Domestic Operations Abstract How the military is employed domestically is shaped by anxiety: anxiety that fuels growth, and anxiety that constrains it. It is an area of war studies that uniquely impacts the citizens of a country, in a way that external military operations often do not. It is a particularly emotive area where policy and operations fail to apply historical lessons. This occasional paper seeks to provide the first definitive study of domestic operations in Australia …

This paper argues that, despite being the world’s largest island, the greatest paradox of Australia’s existence is that the country lacks a maritime consciousness to guide defence policy. National development has been marked by several historical characteristics which have created an ingrained culture of sea-blindness. These include a long tradition of maritime dependence on great powers; the growth of a martial cult centred on Anzac; a schism between continental and expeditionary approaches in strategic …

This paper argues that, despite being the world’s largest island, the greatest paradox of Australia’s existence is that the country lacks a maritime consciousness to guide defence policy. National development has been marked by several historical characteristics which have created an ingrained culture of sea-blindness. This paper argues that, despite being the world’s largest island, the greatest paradox of Australia’s existence is that the country lacks a maritime consciousness to guide defence policy. …

This paper examines the development of Australian Army doctrine from the end of the Vietnam War in 1972 to the publication of Land Warfare Doctrine 1,  The Fundamentals of Land Warfare  in March 1999. It analyses the rise of Army doctrine for continental defence operations in the 1970s and dissects the trend towards low-level conflict in the 1980s. The paper looks closely at the logic behind the Army in the 21st Century (A21) Review and the Restructuring of the Army (RTA) initiative in the 1990s. The …

This paper uses a historical case study of the Ambon disaster of 1942 to try to determine lessons for the development of Australia's maritime concept of strategy in the early 21st century. The paper examines how, in 1941–42, Australia embarked on the strategy of a forward observation-line, using troops to secure bases for air forces in the northern archipelagos. The failure of this strategy is viewed through the lens of the Ambon disaster of February 1942. The study examines how, with respect to defending …

This monograph analyses modern land power through examining the continental school of strategy that emerged in early 19th-century Europe at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The continental school of strategy is important because it has provided the essential knowledge for the theory and practice of land power over the past two centuries. Many of the continental school's principles continue to remain fundamental to an understanding of the use of ground forces in the early 21st century. The argument advanced …

This monograph examines Australia's strategic culture and way of war over the course of a century. It seeks to analyse the relationship between ideas and practice and between geography and history in the evolution of Australian strategic behaviour. The study argues that, since Federation in 1901, there has been, and continues to be, a ‘tyranny of dissonance' between Australian strategic theory and its warfighting practice. While peacetime Australian strategic theory has frequently upheld the defence of …

This paper examines the role of the Australian Army in a maritime concept of strategy. It does so against the background of new trends in post-Cold War international security and, in light of the publication in 1997 of  Australia's Strategic Policy  (ASP 97) and  Restructuring the Australian Army  (RTA). It argues that ASP 97 and the 1997 RTA plan are not optimising the Army's capabilities, force structure and doctrine for tasks which a close reading of the strategic guidance contained in ASP 97 might …