Lieutenant Colonel Adam J Hepworth, PhD leads the Australian Army’s emerging technology program as Director of the Robotic and Autonomous Systems Implementation and Coordination Office (RICO). Adam is an Expert Member on the Global Commission for Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain (GC REAIM) through The Hague Center for Strategic Studies and a Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales, resident in the School of Systems and Computing. Adam holds a Bachelor of Science in …

  Crumps and Camouflets: Australian Tunnelling Companies on the Western Front ,  Written by: Damien Finlayson,  Big Sky Publishing, Newport, 2010, ISBN 9780980658255, 480 pp   Reviewed by: Michael Molkentin In Australia during the two decades following the Great War, publication of ‘unit’ or ‘regimental’ histories was prolific. Typically written by battalion associations or ex-unit members possessing a literary flair, the genre was encouraged by funding from the Australian National Defence League and the …

  Anzac Fury: The Bloody Battle of Crete 1941 , Written by: Peter Thompson,  William Heinemann, Sydney, 2010, ISBN 9781741669206, 506 pp   Reviewed by: Eleanor Hancock, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales@ADFA The battle of Crete remains contested in historical studies of the Second World War. Was the German decision to wrest the island off the Allies a mistake? Was the German victory a pyrrhic victory as many have claimed? Did mistakes by the Allied defenders lose the …

  The Road to Singapore: The Myth of British Betrayal , Written by: Augustine Meaher IV, Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010, ISBN 9781921509957, 243 pp, RRP AU$39.95   Reviewed by: John Connor Sometimes it takes an outsider to provide a clear-eyed interpretation of a controversial event in a nation’s history. In this book, Augustine Meaher IV—who, as his name suggests, is a larger-than-life military historian from Mobile, Alabama in America’s Deep South—provides a compelling analysis of why …

  The Media at War , Written by: Susan L Carruthers, Second Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, ISBN 9780230244573, 329 pp   Reviewed by: Cynthia Banham Susan Carruthers wrote the first edition of The Media at War in 2000—before 11 September 2001, the war on terrorism, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and before the advent of ‘new media’. Yet if one thing is clear from reading the updated version of her book, published eleven years later, it is that when it comes to the reporting of war, little if anything …

  When God Made Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq 1914–1921 ,  Written by: Charles Townshend,  Faber and Faber Ltd, London, 2010, ISBN: 9780571237197, 320 pp   Reviewed by: David Goyne, Strategic Policy Division, Department of Defence The British campaign in Mesopotamia in the First World War, climaxing with the siege and surrender of the British Imperial force at Kut, is generally held to be the nadir of generalship and the military art. The British commander at Kut, Major …

  Afgantsy: the Russians in Afghanistan 1979–89 , Written by: Rodric Braithwaite,  Profile Books, London, 2011,  ISBN 9781846680540, 448 pp   Reviewed by: Brigadier Richard Iron, British Army On 15 February 1989, General Gromov, the commander of the 40th Army, in his BTR command vehicle and carrying his Army’s banner, was the last man in the 40th Army to cross the Termez bridge back into the Soviet Union; thus ending the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan that had lasted a little over nine years. Afgantsy is …

  The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice ,  Written by: Colin S Gray,  Oxford University Press, 2010,  ISBN 9780199579662, 308 pp Reviewed by: Antulio J Echevarria II, US Army War College The purpose of this book, as its author states, is to propose a general theory of strategy. Scholars and military professionals may well ask why another book on strategic theory is necessary or even desirable, given the already vast number and range of works on strategy, both as theory and as practice. The bookshelves …

  Australia and the ‘New World Order’: From peacekeeping to peace-enforcement, 1988–1991 ,  Written by: David Horner,  Cambridge University Press, 2011, ISBN 9780521765879, 696 pp   Reviewed by: Kim Beazley David Horner has a clear-eyed view of the task of an official historian. In his preface to this volume, Australia and the New World Order: From peace-keeping to peace-enforcement: 1988–1991 , he argues, ‘an official history is a record of a government’s activities’. It is not military history, …

  The Last Knight: A biography of General Sir Phillip Bennett AC, KBE, DSO ,  Written by: Robert Lowry,  Big Sky Publishing, Sydney, 2011,  ISBN 9780980814040, 416 pp Reviewed by: Nick Jans Every decade since Federation has thrown up a distinctive challenge for the Australian military institution. The main challenges in the first half of the twentieth century concerned the mobilisation of the services for conventional warfare operations overseas, and in the last decade or so the ADF again finds itself …