Future Land Warfare Division’s MakerSpace program is quietly creating the foundations for a new generation of creative Army thinkers, ready to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex and uncertain security environment.  In this Land Power Forum (LPF) update, we review the program’s objectives and progress over its first 12 months. A recurring theme in commentary submitted to the LPF is the necessity to break the shackles of conventional military thinking.  Whether we are capability specialists, …

In our two previous blogs on MakerSpaces ( Part One  and  Part Two ) we have taken our readers through a look at the Maker philosophy and a review of its potential utility to the Australian Army. It has always been the intention of our project to examine models for implementation in Army and to conduct a pilot MakerSpace as a practical application of our work. From speaking to universities, a variety of academics and military personnel from around the world—alongside reviewing literature—we developed a …

The beginning of this journey could be characterised as an unorthodox approach to solving a problem Army did not know it had. This work was originally designed for Dr Thompson to explore a non-traditional learning methodology but as interest grew, the scope expanded beyond her role as a researcher at the Australian Army Research Centre. This interest and subsequent support allowed her to access people and ideas that would eventually evolve into a yearlong joint research project and a practical activity …

Accelerated Warfare, as the futures statement for Army, outlines the challenges faced in a rapidly changing environment. [1]   How we respond to these challenges will be in part governed by how we ‘think, equip, train, educate, organise and prepare for war’. Enhancing the way we think, train and educate is therefore a critical component of preparing our people—individually and collectively—to face future threats in an environment categorised by a multitude of technological innovations arising from …

Introduction Army Headquarters – Future Land Warfare Branch, through the Australian Army Research Centre (AARC), have recently supported the establishment of innovative, practical prototyping spaces that are essential for imbuing the modern Army with the Creative Thinking culture necessary to succeed in a world increasingly reliant on technology. One such Makerspace will soon be inaugurated at Holsworthy Barracks, where it will serve as an opportunity for soldiers to physically express solutions to the …