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*This article was originally published inVolume 12 of the AAJ in May, 1950113 In time of peace no nation, with the possible exception of Russia, can afford to maintain at full strength the armed services required for the conduct of a war of the first magnitude. The most that can be done is to maintain an organization which does not impose an unsupportable strain on the national economy and which, at the same time can be expanded rapidly when war becomes imminent. So far as the Army is concerned the …

NB: This article originally appeared on The Forge on 29 January 2021. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission. Slowly and progressively over the last decade, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has become less religious. Although religion, particularly Christianity, is a part of many military customs and traditions and was once a routine part of ship and barracks life, the connection that Defence members have to any faith has decreased to a level where the majority of officers, sailors, soldiers …

Introduction To take the King’s hard bargain is a ‘traditional description for the rendering of military service to the Crown, made inaccurate in modern times only by the gender of the current Sovereign’. 1 This bargain’s hardness is multifaceted. It denotes that military service involves a unilateral agreement—that the member gives everything and expects nothing. It further represents that one takes an oath to serve within the profession of arms, whose raison d’être of warfighting is best highlighted …

Abstract Australia is a middle power that must find ways to ‘deter without escalation’; however, we are not yet able to offer military options in pursuit of this objective. How does Army tie into the joint force and our regional geography, remaining grounded in formation tactics while becoming an integral part of a ‘joint federated targeting system’? More simply: how can we become as dangerous and survivable as possible? This article suggests a force design that offers a radically different set of …

Introduction The use of nuclear weapons during the Second World War heralded a new era in warfare. The battlefield of the future was envisaged by military planners to be one that included tactical nuclear weapons and thus required a new type of infantry structure. To accommodate these tactical changes, and the desire of the federal administration to reduce troop numbers, the US Army developed the five-sided pentomic divisional structure. The new structure, introduced in the early 1950s, was to have …

Abstract This article describes our approach to developing and employing concepts to guide innovation efforts and investment for future dismounted combat teams, including a discussion of two possible future concepts. Our approach is underpinned by the philosophy that innovation should be guided by clear, conceptual aiming points in order to achieve step change in combined arms capability. We suggest this requires concepts to provide sufficient detail for a tactical setting, link to strategic guidance, and …

Abstract The informal, part-time military formations of the Australian Militia between 1930 and 1945 are an understudied aspect of military history. Part of the Australian Military Forces (AMF) (the predecessor to the Australian Army), the Militia never achieved its key founding objective: to be a sufficient force for defending territorial Australia. Official and academic accounts of the organisation are largely critical, depicting it as a victim of poor government planning and cost-cutting. However, these …

There is a difference between requiring an individual or a team to think creatively about a problem and allowing an individual or team to use creativity to solve a problem. The former is as useful as telling someone to innovate without providing them with a licence to fail; the latter enables them to apply the resources available in novel ways to achieve the mission. Creativity is a process, not an output. The recent reforms in joint professional military education (JPME), begun under the Ryan Review in …

If you were to ask any soldier if the Australian Army should lower its standards in order to allow more women to join, you would receive a resounding ‘no’. From recruit to RSM, although diplomacy may vary, no soldier would be willing to argue that the standards developed to reflect job requirements within the Army should be reduced. As biscuit company Arnott’s says, ‘there is no substitute for quality’. However, in 2012, Defence senior leadership made a unified statement of cultural change through the …

Abstract In November 2020, Rifle Company Butterworth (RCB) will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first infantry company deployment to Royal Malaysian Air Force Base Butterworth. This longstanding deployment has contributed to the training and development of nearly 25,000 soldiers who have gained the essential skills required to operate in complex jungle environments. While RCB’s 50th anniversary is a conspicuous achievement, it is part of a larger story of the Army’s involvement in Malaya and then …