The Australian Army did not begin with the First AIF. On the contrary, the original force lived and died from March 1901 to December 1909. As responsibility for defence transferred from colonial to federal authorities, many problems of structure, administration and training came to the fore. The task of forging a these disparate structures into a national military organisation confronted a Federal Government already constrained by limited finances. This monograph shows how Australia's first army was …

For contemporary, Western military organisations doctrine serves as the basis of their members' intellectual unity and underpins their ability to identify and incorporate change. Doctrine is held in such high regard by military professionals that one senior officer termed it 'the heart of the army.' While widely accepted now, doctrine did not appear until the mid-nineteenth century. Its origins lie in the Prussian Army, whose brilliant theorist Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke employed it with devastating …

With the release of Force 2030, the 2009 Defence White Paper, the Australian Government has clearly set the ADF onto the path of a maritime strategy. With this development, Australia has joined many great states—from the Athenians to the Americans—who have pursued maritime strategies to their benefit. While the ADF does have a history of pursuing maritime strategy that arguably dates back to the landings at Gallipoli, most of its recent strategic thought has dealt with the requirements of Continental …

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 …