This blog is the first in a series of articles benchmarking the armée de Terre—an external, equivalent and contemporary exemplar for the Australian Army. The author currently serves as a Liasion Officer in France. Leading organisations of all types and sizes, including armies, benchmark. And with good reason. Benchmarking—comparing one organisation against another—is extolled by management professionals and commended in countless books, articles, blogs and business degrees. To paraphrase management guru …

Lessons   From the latest edition of  PRISM , and building upon earlier examination in this forum on the ethics involved in the employment of explosive weapons in urban areas, an article exploring the ethics of acquiring disruptive technologies. Disruptive technology is defined in this paper as AI, Autonomous Weapons and Decision Support Systems, and its importance lies in the paper's recognition that Western militaries may have little choice in proceeding with the acquisition of such capability. The …

Emerging Threats and Opportunities (ETOs) is a regular blog series on the Land Power Forum that collects together blogs, podcasts and articles of interest with the goal of creating discussion on the topic of land power.  Lessons   From  the ICRC , an article examining the impact of explosive weapons in an urban environment, in terms of second-order effects against infrastructure, health and the overall impact to the civilian population. This paper complements a shorter piece published on the  Land Power …

There is an  accelerating rate of change in warfare . Over the past two hundred years, an accelerating trend can be identified of ever increasing lethality, fires range and surveillance distances, coupled with devolved authorities to ever decreasing levels of rank and experience. This trend will see Battle-Groups, currently O5-led (Lieutenant Colonels), that are inherently joint and interagency in nature. Combat-teams, currently O4-led (Majors), will be empowered with significant capabilities—such as Joint …

This edition was prompted by the uncertainty inherent in the rapidly evolving crisis that is the Coronavirus pandemic. The rapidly changing environment alludes to the drivers behind Accelerated Warfare – our new normal of accelerating change – as indeed, has been identified by  Rod Lyon at APSI . This edition thereby aims to complement formal guidance, with consideration of second- and third-order effects of the pandemic. It is inspired by this long-form piece by the  International Crisis Group . Crisis …

Recently the Land Power Forum published an article titled “Grapeshot and Grenadiers: Winning the Counter Robot Battle.” That article rightly raised the prospect of future combat involving a mix of human and humanoid robotic combatants. However, while the sentiment of that piece was topical and timely its main argument was highly speculative, resting on multiple untested assumptions. This response seeks to explore some of the design considerations facing any engineer tasked with designing the type of …

Emerging Threats and Opportunities (ETOs) is a regular blog series on the Land Power Forum that collects together blogs, podcasts and articles of interest with the goal of creating discussion on the topic of land power. Lessons From Defense News , discussion of Israel’s plans for reform to its armed forces. Termed ‘Plan Momentum’, Israeli modernisation vectors were reportedly driven by Iranian military threat considerations (directly, and also indirectly through proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas). The …

Chris Bulow is an Australian Army officer who holds a Bachelor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and a Masters of Project Management. Chris is currently completing a Masters of Science in Explosive Ordnance Engineering. … Chris Bulow …

In this final addition to the series we will be examining how the growth of the precision strike regime might dramatically transform the role of artillery within the Australian Army. This piece will look at how novel technologies and operating concepts might dramatically change the traditional role of Artillery. As noted earlier in this series, combined arms is the ‘core competency’ of the Army. [1] It is both an operating concept and a state of mind. By using maneuver to break the balance, initiative and …

This blog is Part Three of a four-part series on Precision Strike, written by the author during his completion of a research internship at the Australian Army Research Centre. So far, this series has examined the growth of the precision strike regime and how it will likely render military advantages for those that field it now and in the future. We have explored why precision strike is and will be of relevance. Now we shall examine how the Australian Army can respond. One possible and obvious approach to …