Foreword The Australian soldier has a well-earned reputation for expertise in counter-insurgency. Perhaps this reputation is born from Australia’s experience of the Malayan Emergency, the Borneo Confrontation or the Vietnam War; and it was probably sustained through United Nations deployments as peacekeepers within generally fractured societies. A Framework for Irregular Warfare (the Irregular Warfare Essay Collection), published by the Australian Army Research Centre, responds to this tradition. By …

2(AS) Division PME Program ‘Information Warfare: recent history and irregular futures’ Information Warfare: recent history and irregular futures. What the Australian Army can learn from Russia and Violent Extremists During February and March of 2014, Ukraine’s Crimea region was annexed by Russian ‘Little Green Men’. [1] The internet and news media were awash with images and reports of these Russian speaking soldiers who carried Russian arms and equipment driven in Russian plated vehicles. Russian state …

  Introduction The Ukraine war has thrust small drones into the spotlight as an integral component of contemporary combined arms warfare. Cheap, plentiful, and attritable commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) drones (sometimes referred to as ‘wedding drones’ with equal parts respect and derision) [i] have proven their utility for military roles such as dropping explosive ordnance onto targets and performing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) activities. [ii] Both of these capability effects …

  Biological Swarms The concept of swarms originates in nature, often referred to as biological systems or natural swarms. [1] Swarm intelligence (SI) research originally pertained to studying the self-organised behaviours of social insects. [2] An example of the SI demonstrated by social insects is provided in a 2004 study on ant colonies building networks of galleries which demonstrate path system efficiency. [3] The intelligence that emerges from collective behaviour has been harnessed in robotics …

Enhancing Capability to Secure Urban Points of Entry Context Gaining and retaining a secure Air or Sea Point of Entry (POE), with existing capabilities is likely to be a personnel intensive task of greater than battle group size. This is because suitable POE will be urban and the consequent challenges of maintaining observation along a secure perimeter there, especially where there are surrounding dominating structures. Securing a POE is a critical Army enabling function for the Integrated Force to execute …

The Question of Urban Perimeter Observation Post Numbers Context Gaining and retaining a secure Air or Sea Point of Entry (APOE/SPOE) is a critical Army enabling function for the Integrated Force to execute ‘anti-access/area denial’ (A2/AD) in the littoral as directed by the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) .  As explained by Dayton McCarthy in part two of this LPF series on littoral manoeuvre, projecting A2/AD systems and their logistics will almost invariably use a POE among urban terrain,.  Securing an …

The Question of Urban Position Minimum Strength Context Deploying a perimeter of detection, backed up by an appropriate response capability, is a key personnel-intensive requirement for gaining and retaining a secure Air or Sea Point of Entry (POE). As such, it is a critical Army enabling function for the Integrated Force to execute ‘anti-access/area denial’ (A2/AD) in the littoral as directed by the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) . Furthermore, almost invariably the POE will be urban, which means that any …

A Wargame Experiment Arguably the biggest challenge for law-and-ethics-abiding military forces engaged in urban warfare is their current reliance on standoff firepower to reduce their own casualties while allowing progress against adversaries who are concealed and protected. As is the case in operations conducted on rural terrain, this tactic is essential to overcome defensive urban advantages . However, it is less palatable or even counterproductive in cities because of the associated civilian suffering . …

The use of Special Operations Forces (SOF) in recent conflicts has entrenched the perception of these elements as a direct-action tool capable of providing decisive effects. Concomitantly, there has been an increasing reliance on technological solutions to generate asymmetry against existing threats. This Occasional Paper suggests that as the war-peace paradigm is replaced by a more fluid competition-conflict spectrum, SOF must adjust to a campaign approach that seeks to leverage the poles of low and high …

An incomplete understanding of the nature of the conflict in Ukraine still plagues Australian strategic discourse. In what has been termed, the ‘ first TikTok war ,’ Ukraine’s strategy of resistance indicates an intent to democratise warfare. In this context, the purpose of this Post is to explore the strategy of resistance, Ukraine’s employment of this strategy, and the issues that emerge as lessons for national security professionals. Using the ASPI Strategist as an indicator of the breadth of the …