Pat Griffiths is a Communications Officer with the International Committee of the Red Cross Australia Mission. … Pat Griffiths …

Cities can be as vulnerable to the effects of conflict as the communities that live within them. After critical infrastructure serving the residents of Aden city in Yemen was damaged by fighting in August 2019, nearly 200,000 people were left without clean drinking water. It took only 72 hours of fighting with heavy weapons to disrupt this critical service that had endured since the start of the Yemeni conflict in 2015. And Aden is only one example within Yemen. Between January and September 2019, the …

Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) RAS can be viewed as the application of software, artificial intelligence and advanced robotics to perform tasks as directed by humans. Simply “ autonomy is the ability of a machine to perform a task without human input. Thus an autonomous system is a machine, whether hardware or software, once activated performs some task or function on its own ”. The term autonomy can be a barrier to understanding as it is, generally, specific to a system or sub-system. Therefore, …

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Major Rebecca J Lacey is the 2021 Chief of Defence Force Fellow. She is a Royal Australian Signals Officer who holds a Bachelor of Economic and a Bachelor of Science from the Australian National University and a Master of Business from the University of New South Wales. She is currently pursuing a Professional Doctorate in Public Management through the University of New South Wales that she hopes will provide a significant contribution to Defence through the effective design, implementation and activation …

  Introduction This publication has an express purpose. It is to provide soldiers with an understanding of their trade. Waging war is a complex and dangerous business, but it is also an essential one for the Australian state and people. The maxim that ‘if you want peace you must prepare for war’ remains as true as ever. The converse also remains true. If you want war, disarm. Australia needs soldiers who are physically and mentally prepared to do what is needed in times of danger, and to do it better than …

Foreword Based on almost any metric, Australia’s strategic circumstances are deteriorating. Not since the darkest days of the Second World War has it faced threats to sovereignty and interests that could be described as both truly strategic and potentially existential. The return of great power competition amongst states competing for global hegemony, along with global pandemics, natural and man-made disasters, the possibility of nuclear war in Europe, global inflation, the hyper-transformation and …

Report on Applied Research Directions and Future Opportunities for Swarm Systems in Defence The Australian Government’s 2020 Force Structure Plan outlined a total package of capability investment of approximately $200 billion over the next decade (2020). This expenditure will equip Defence to meet challenges in the future with new investments in strike platforms, littoral assets, helicopters, information effects, logistics resilience, and emerging robotics and autonomous systems. The 2018 Army Robotics and …

Leadership and Ethics in 2040 Introduction The Australian Defence Force (ADF) ethos is derived from that of our broader society. And in turn, Australians define something at the core of national identity through the ADF. Australians are proud of the ADF and the ADF’s history. They need and want the ADF to represent the best of Australian values. And Australians will be direct in telling the ADF if we have let them down. [i] The year is 2040 and Australia is again at war. Corporal or Lieutenant Smith, an …

Case studies of German offensive and defensive operations on the Western Front 1914-17   By Captain G.C. Wynne Helion , Solihull, 2011, 216pp, Images : c 40 b/w photos, 19 maps 9781906033767 - Paperback 9781909384033 - Hardback 9781907677915 - ebook Reviewed by Chris Roberts Within the English-speaking historiography of the Great War, the emphasis is largely from the British perspective, with only brief mention of the enemy’s action. In this admirable series of battle narratives, Wynne counters this trend …