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Malaya   Written by: Brian Farrell and Garth Pratten,  Army History Unit, Canberra, 2009. ISBN: 9781921941689, 254pp   Reviewed by: Mark Johnston The Second AIF was a magnificent force, but it was on the receiving end of several heavy defeats. Inevitably, these defeats raise some questions about its performance. One of these controversial campaigns, Malaya, is the subject of the latest instalment of the ‘Australian Army Campaigns Series’. Brian Farrell and Garth Pratten have written a penetrating and …

Managing Civil-Military Cooperation   Written by: Sebastiaan J H Rietjens and Myriame T I B Bollen (eds),  Ashgate Publishing Limited, Surrey, 2008, ISBN: 9781315593470, 280pp   Reviewed: by Major Richard Peace Civil-military cooperation is now a feature of nearly all Australian current operational deployments. While seen by some as a black art, this book attempts to dispel some of the misconceptions that arise on what is civil- military cooperation. This book is a collection of essays based on the Dutch …

Abstract This article argues that Improvised Explosive Devices are robots. In declining to make this connection, Western militaries have been blind to their adversaries’ use of robot-enabled warfare. The effect has been to render Western soldiers tactically and operationally reactive, and on the wrong end of attrition warfare. The resolution lies in understanding how robots are supervised, and how a robot-enabled force can enable its personnel to out-adapt their human foes. Introduction The rapid fielding …

The advent of widely available Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Meta AI, represents the most significant advance in AI to date. This new technology presents new risks too. Well-known examples include bias, hallucination, theft of intellectual property (IP), and lack of transparency. [1] These dangers certainly raise questions over the suitability of using LLMs in the military.  To date, security experts have mainly focused on the risks of this new AI technology through the lens of …

Dr Josh Healy is an Associate Professor at the Business School, University of Sydney and an expert in the future of work. His research spans employee wellbeing, labour market dynamics, and the workplace impacts of new technologies. Collaborating with a diverse range of industry partners, Dr Healy has examined enduring and emerging issues including job quality, workforce participation, gig work, workforce ageing, workplace leadership, and organisational performance, showing how these factors intersect in …

Dr Jamie Freestone is a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Engineering at the Australian National University. He currently works on the philosophy of autonomous systems. He is also an Australian Army Research Centre (AARC) Fellow investigating the viability of LLMs in military contexts. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, where he also completed his PhD. … Jamie …

Mud & Dust – Australian Army Vehicles and Artillery in Vietnam   Written by: Michael K Cecil,  New Holland Publishers, 2009, ISBN 9781741107678, 272pp   Reviewed by: Ian Kuring, Australian Army Mud & Dust by Michael Cecil is the third book of a series sponsored by the Australian War Memorial. It is a well researched, interesting and easy to read reference book covering the armoured fighting vehicles, artillery, logistic vehicles and engineer equipment used by the Australian Defence Force in Vietnam. Also …

Embedded: A Marine Corps Adviser Inside the Iraqi Army   Written by: Wesley R Gray, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2009, ISBN 9781591143406, 272pp   Reviewed by: Graeme Sligo, Australian Army Second Lieutenant Wesley Gray was a young Marine at Okinawa in 2006 when told he was being posted—at short notice—to Anbar Province to advise and train members of the Iraqi Army. It was a seven month tour. When Gray arrived, in July 2006, the insurgency was at a critical stage. The Golden Mosque bombing that year …

Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century   Written by: William Philpott,  Little, Brown, London, 2009, ISBN 9781408701089, 736pp   Reviewed by: Albert Palazzo, Land Warfare Studies Centre For most readers the mention of the Somme brings forth the image of a futile and tragic campaign in which a generation of fine British and Imperial soldiery was wilfully slaughtered by an incompetent and distant command. William Philpott, in his breakthrough book Bloody Victory: …

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the Twenty- first Century   Written by: Peter Singer,  The Penguin Press, New York, 2009, ISBN 9781594201981, 512pp   Reviewed by: Richard S Bowyer, Defence Science and Technology Organisation Peter Singer’s Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the Twenty-first Century takes the reader on a twenty-two chapter journey through the space occupied by the mechanical, electronic and software world of real robots doing real stuff. Situated …