{"id":23132,"date":"2015-10-30T10:51:52","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T23:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=23132"},"modified":"2015-10-30T10:51:52","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T23:51:52","slug":"joint-warfighting-an-australian-imperative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/joint-warfighting-an-australian-imperative\/","title":{"rendered":"Joint warfighting\u2014an Australian imperative"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Task<\/a>I enjoyed the opportunity to attend the Joint Warfare Conference last week, and appreciate Andrew Davies’ inspiration<\/a>\u00a0to write about\u00a0‘jointness’ and its relevance to 21st century warfighting. Andrew’s case rests on some pertinent examples in recent Australian military history, showing the importance of various current Australian military contributions to wider coalition actions including in the air over Iraq and Syria, at sea around the Horn of Africa, and recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in challenging land environments. However, the proposition that interoperability between cooperating military forces is mostly a binary choice between multilateral interoperability with a coalition partner\u2014perhaps the US\u2014or joint interoperability within the ADF is a false dilemma, and it perhaps needs more consideration.<\/p>\n

Military operations, for many years, have required a far more nuanced approach\u2014not only to understanding where one side may draw its strengths, but also where it acknowledges its interdependencies. And while superficially our current operations may appear as simple Service-based contributions to\u00a0a wider coalition effort, each relies deeply on a less-evident suite of sophisticated joint enabling efforts provided by the wider\u00a0ADF, such as intelligence, resupply and sustainment, command,\u00a0control and communications, and protection of that visible\u00a0deployed force involving both passive and active measures.<\/p>\n

However, it would be fair to say that this current crop of selected military operations isn\u2019t fully representative\u2014either in historical terms, or perhaps more importantly\u2014in terms of what Australia may expect of its Defence Force into the near and foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

Seventy-five years ago, Australia entered into global conflict with an approach that produced components to a larger Allied force\u2014led initially by the UK. The 2nd AIF\u2019s design was based on\u00a0service-level compatibility with British armed forces of the day. The design basis for this force quickly came apart with tragic, almost irrevocable consequences as the\u00a0war came to the Pacific. Australia was initially unable to coherently mount joint responses to the Japanese land, sea and air onslaught, particularly in relation to joint littoral manoeuvre\u2014a favourite topic du jour. The salutary lesson is that there are times when a nation will\u00a0effectively operate alone against adversaries and must maintain a certain level of joint cohesion\u00a0and capability to\u00a0safeguard its intrinsic national interests.<\/p>\n

Could such events occur again? Australia was able to generate a credible core joint force around which INTERFET was built. This was a force that could operate competently across the joint functions of command, situational understanding and generation and sustainment of large, complex and modern force.\u00a0At the same time, it was\u00a0able to project itself, protect itself and apply its effects\u00a0in a careful and sophisticated manner that respected Indonesia’s sovereign interests while safeguarding Timorese human rights in a degenerating security situation. Searching for examples further afield, we may consider\u00a0the UK and its defence of the Falkland Islands in 1982 as a still-relevant example of the reliance placed on joint warfighting to underwrite the prosecution\u00a0of sovereign national interests.<\/p>\n

Beyond such historical examples, as exponents of\u00a0warfare we must equally consider the vital contribution that other national agencies contribute to the overall strategic effect. Here we\u00a0should\u00a0acknowledge the importance\u00a0of interoperability and concert of effort between ADF elements and our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, among others too\u00a0numerous to list. Few would dispute the absolute necessity for interoperability across the agencies involved in\u00a0recent\u00a0Australian border\u00a0protection\u00a0operations.<\/p>\n

None of this refutes the importance\u00a0of being able to operate effectively with a range of international partners. Those include our allies\u00a0like New Zealand and the US in particular, but equally our regional partners across the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the ADF is more than alive to this complex conundrum of striking the balance of investment between, among and across the competing factors of multilateral, multiagency and joint interoperability. This interoperability is described both as common conceptual approaches as well as in terms of levels of integration of systems necessary. Under the\u00a0aegis of the Vice Chief of the Defence Force, Defence is well under way in considering and articulating its vision of a\u00a0joint\u00a0force by\u00a0design\u2014that is, a force that is designed from the outset to deliver effects that operate across the traditional physical domains.<\/p>\n

Gone is the design approach of each\u00a0Service ‘come as you\u00a0are’ to a conflict, and ‘joint’ is simply a purple glue\u00a0with which\u00a0we hurriedly\u00a0connect our force together. The ADF’s view of the future is one involving close cooperation with many partners in many contexts for many purposes\u2014and at the centre of all of these will be the ADF as a cogently designed entity.<\/p>\n

Are we there yet? No. Is our future vision clear? Perhaps we can leave that\u00a0to the CDF’s intent expressed\u00a0at the same Joint Warfare Conference, of a Joint Force that is: fully integrated across all domains; composed of\u00a0both uniformed and APS Defence elements;\u00a0connected across all entities and all domains; agile enough to adapt to the unforeseen; rapidly deployable; scalable to suit the task; and flexible in its capacity to either lead or support coalition operations.<\/p>\n

For the CDF\u00a0and all his senior leadership team the vision for the\u00a0joint\u00a0force is:\u00a0tri-service (in\u00a0qualitative, not merely quantitative terms);\u00a0multi-agency; whole-of-Government; and multinational.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I enjoyed the opportunity to attend the Joint Warfare Conference last week, and appreciate Andrew Davies’ inspiration\u00a0to write about\u00a0‘jointness’ and its relevance to 21st century warfighting. Andrew’s case rests on some pertinent examples in recent …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":23134,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[64,1521,349,239],"class_list":["post-23132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-civil-military-relations","tag-interagency","tag-joint-operations","tag-warfare"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJoint warfighting\u2014an Australian imperative | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/joint-warfighting-an-australian-imperative\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Joint warfighting\u2014an Australian imperative | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I enjoyed the opportunity to attend the Joint Warfare Conference last week, and appreciate Andrew Davies’ inspiration\u00a0to write about\u00a0‘jointness’ and its relevance to 21st century warfighting. 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