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Twenty-nineteen has been another big year for The Central Blue. A total of 41 articles have been published from a wide range of authors – 31 to be exact. About half of the articles published in 2019 were written by Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) personnel with the other half being made up of Army and Defence civilians. We were pleased to welcome multiple new contributors. The Central Blue team further supported two Williams Foundation Seminars – #selfsustain and #5thgenmanoeuvre – and contributed to the excellent Why We Write series over at The Forge. The #5thgenmanoeuvre seminar was held on 24 October and was a natural progression in the Williams Foundation’s seminar series, which looked to decipher how to build an integrated fifth-generation force. We had some fantastic contributions on #5thgenmanoeuvre featured on The Central Blue, so it only seemed fitting to use the final post of the year for summarising the insights we gained on that topic from seminar speakers, learned colleagues from the Scherger Group, and a great selection of posted articles. The seminar intended to examine the differences and potential gaps in how the Australian Defence Force (ADF) must equip and organise for multi-domain operations, and as such, determine the requirements for fifth-generation manoeuvre. On first hearing about this topic, I, like many others, turned to Wikipedia to better understand what the term ‘manoeuvre’ meant in the context of air power. I had a rudimentary understanding of manoeuvre, and a general idea of what is organisationally meant by fifth-generation; but it was much harder to define the combination of terms concisely. Manoeuvre – best understood by reading works by preeminent authors such as Basil Liddell Hart, William Lind, Robert Leonhard or John Boyd – is the art of recognising and creating an advantage. It could also be posited that it is the ability to ensure freedom of manoeuvre in order to create the space required to achieve an advantage. Said advantage could be in physical geography, the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) or the less tangible cyber and information domains. When thought of in this context, the manoeuvrist approach has little to do with fifth-generation, it merely is a way of thinking. To break it down, #5thgenmanouevre can be considered from the following contexts. Understanding the environment Underpinning any attempt to exploit a weakness or move to a position of advantage is the ability to identify where said advantage is. Speaking at the seminar, both Brendan Sargeant and Michael Shoebridge spoke about the requirement to understand the environment. Their presentations looked specifically at the Australian context. Sargeant stated that policy development had failed to reflect the rapid rate of change in the region. He argued that Australian policy outside of its access to a major power or ally was underdeveloped, especially in the context of a world where the global system and rules-based order was disregarded. Without adequate knowledge (and acceptance) of a rapidly changing strategic environment, and an understanding of adversaries, there is no way for Australia to determine what advantages might present, or how to disrupt and dislocate adversaries to create freedom of manoeuvre. Below the policy level, the ability to understand the environment was discussed by Dougal Roberton in his post on The swarming mind in which he considers the critical question of what the people orchestrating #5thgenmanoeuvre will look like. We look forward to his follow-on post on this topic, to be published in the new year! Mission Command and agile control Air Commodore Phil Gordon, currently Commander of the RAAF’s Air Warfare Centre, gave an enlightening presentation that touched on the changing character of manoeuvre. He defined fifth-generation manoeuvre as the: ability of our forces to dynamically adapt and respond in a contested environment to achieve the desired effect through multiple redundant paths. Remove one vector of attack and we rapidly manoeuvre to bring other capabilities to bear through agile control. In support of this definition, he stated that the ADF needed to prepare for disruption and be better able to fight through ambiguity, to accept surprise and have tools available to assist in decision making. In achieving this end state – successfully operating in a denied and degraded EMS – the RAAF must enable ‘agile control’ whereby the control and decision authority resides with the person who has the best access to the information available. To do this, however, he affirmed that the chain of command must become comfortable with trusting mission commanders to make the right decision at the right time. That they must ‘walk the talk of ‘mission command’. Subsequently, we must also habitually train to fight in degraded modes and develop agile, empowered thinking warfighters. Training If we delve a little deeper into this idea, it would be safe to say we need to more consciously invest in the training of the ADF workforce, both at the mission command and strategic levels, including future commanders and national strategists. The first step in this process is to identify what exactly the ADF is training for? Is the ADF training for the right environment? Is it training for an existential threat that no one can imagine? A scenario that may never eventuate or should the ADF be training for the more likely contingencies such as the ‘grey zone’ competition. In either context, we must step back to conceptual basics, but also take on board what we know to be true already in that we will operate in a denied and degraded EMS regardless. Understanding the rigours of appropriate training at the tactical level was explored by Melissa Houston in her post The Power of Poseidon. Here she highlighted that hyper-connectivity could lead to poor prioritisation and breakdowns in situational awareness and that the ADF must understand the limitations of our autonomous systems, but also that of our people. Fifth-generation operators must have more discipline and self-awareness than ever before. Decision superiority In command in warfare, either high intensity or grey zone, there remains an element of both art and science. The human element can never be removed completely from the decision making process, whether that be directly or indirectly through algorithm development for instance. Through exploring this seminar topic, it became clear that there is an acceptance that we must use technology wisely to deal with the vast amount of data that will be presented to the human in order to decide. We must, therefore, train our forces to integrate humans and technology so that technology can assist the human in making the right decision quicker. In better understanding the environment through the strength of good data and thus orientating the military decision-maker, the leader is provided with the best chance of decision superiority. Interagency relationships Along with data ingestion and decision superiority, comes the requirement for strong interagency relationships. Data must come from multiple valid, verified sources to produce a strong, collaborative product. Rear Admiral Lee Goddard, currently Commander of Australia’s Maritime Border Command, spoke at the seminar about harnessing the progress made to date in achieving interagency situational understanding. This is especially pertinent when we consider that fifth-generation manoeuvre is not and cannot merely be a military endeavour. Manoeuvering to a position of strength and advantage requires a whole of government approach. Warfare remains a human endeavour that requires investment in human relationships. The systems in place which support multiple government agencies need to enable both information flow and dissemination, and a collective understanding of what that picture means. Language. Having a collective understanding of what the picture means leads to my last point. Underpinning any manoeuvrist approach is a common lexicon. This was a common theme that presented time and time again during the seminar and conversations with colleagues. Forming effective relationships and gaining decision superiority can only occur if all players on the team are playing the same sport and using the same rules. Situational domain awareness is dependent on words meaning the same thing to different people. A common lexicon of terms is vital to the success of fifth-generation manoeuvre and achieving a commander’s intent. In closing, as was expected and as is usually the case, the seminar and conversations surrounding the day presented more questions than answers. The summary here provides common themes and issues identified; however, does not necessarily provide the answers. If you think you have a different way to think about one of the topics outlined above, contact us at thecentralblue@gmail.com to float your idea for an article. This year has also increasingly demonstrated to us that no conversation is complete without including our sister services, defence industry or wider government agencies. This is a trend we would like to continue into 2020. Squadron Leader Jenna Higgins is an Air Combat Officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, and a co-editor at The Central Blue. The views expressed are hers alone and do not reflect the opinion of the Royal Australian Air Force, the Department of Defence, or the Australian Government. #TheWilliamsFoundation #AustralianDefencePolicy #RoyalAustralianAirForce #5thGenerationWarfare #5thGenerationAirPower #TheCentralBlue #AustralianDefenceForce #ManeouvreWarfare

Reading is a key to professional development; our belief in that idea is why we, the editors, at The Central Blue do what we do. Nevertheless, too often we overlook that reading is not necessarily a solitary activity.  In his first post with The Central Blue, Mark Bell encourages our readership to engage more, and encourage reading and reflection by merely asking: “What are you reading?” Reading is an honour and a gift from a warrior or historian who – a decade or a thousand decades ago – set aside time to write. He distilled a lifetime of campaigning in order to have a “conversation” with you […] If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you […] History teaches that we face nothing new under the sun. James Mattis and Bing West – Callsign Chaos (2019) Life in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) is chock full of detailed work, be it flying, planning, maintenance, writing reports, training, or personnel administration. Our workplaces are busy, and there is always a looming deadline. Historically, the performance of the RAAF proves we thrive in this environment. However, this collective busyness is not conducive to reading, reflection, and the development of new ideas. There is just too much going on. Our home lives are similarly hectic with children, commuting, sport, social media, etc. As a result, the lack of reading and reflection will inhibit individuals and the institution from reaching their potential. Despite this chaos, the RAAF acknowledges the importance of reading and self-development. The promulgation of Chiefs of Air Force’s (CAF) carefully curated reading lists (CAF Reading List: 2017, 2015, 2014, and further back) demonstrates this. Recently, multiple RAAF leaders (Flight Lieutenants to Group Captains from a diversity of specialisations; Lewis, Hallen, Higgins, Jovanovich, Brick, Yildirim, McInnes, Begley) wrote about the importance of writing and, incidentally, reading as a mechanism to the maintenance of the profession of arms. Other authors in this same series considered writing and intellectual development to be a core professional responsibility of military professionals (Langford, O’Neill). The recent launch of fifth-generation behaviours prioritises command commitment to the intellectual development of the RAAF’s people. These fifth-generation behaviours focus personnel development towards the requirement for informed, collaborative, resilient, integrated, and agile people. The RAAF developed these behaviours to ensure that airmen have the capacity to operate successfully in a complex environment, work with large quantities of data, understand and embrace new technologies, and operate as part of the joint force. Fifth-generation behaviours are a suite of individual and collective attributes that are to be inculcated into RAAF culture. Looking objectively at these behaviours, it could be noted that these attributes are designed to establish and maintain the RAAF’s strategic intellectual advantage. Collectively, these behaviours could also be considered an evolution of the OODA loop, adapted to the hyper-connected environment of the early 21st century. While it is anticipated that computerisation and human augmentation through artificial intelligence will typify the extensively connected and information-rich future, these technologies will not be a substitute for the intellectual competency of our people. Many of the attributes and behaviours noted－resilience, systems thinking, using emerging technology, and the centrality of human relationships－are not unique to the military environment. Consequently, the ability to effectively develop these capacities does not need to rely on conventional military literature. The above discussion establishes that people with strong intellectual capacities is a foundational characteristic of an effective fifth-generation air force. It also identifies that we will develop this intellectual core at a personal level through life-long, self-directed learning. This all leads to the core purpose of this post. RAAF leaders at all levels need to support self-directed learning through the encouragement of reading, reflection, and the discussion of ideas. This site and other resources in the professional military education (PME) eco-system (The Runway, The Forge, The Cove and other privately-run sites) are fostering the discussion of ideas. However, currently, there is a minimal focus on reading. One-way RAAF leaders could encourage reading is through asking this simple question of their subordinates and peers: “What are you currently reading?” This is not management sleight of hand or trickery. There are no predetermined right or wrong answers to this question. This question is posed as a genuine enquiry into the individual and their attitudes towards intellectual development. While the person who posed this question would almost always like to engage in a robust discussion regarding the respondent’s diverse reading habits, a response of ‘nothing’ accompanied by a blank stare is acceptable too. A lack of curiosity or of any self-initiated learning could give a leader insight about their people not otherwise available. Intellectual development is not isolated to the field of traditional military writing. Works of fiction, self-help, magazines, etc. can also have a role in intellectual development. I would suggest that popular non-fiction books such as Grit by Angela Duckworth, which considers goal actuation in the face of adversity, or The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, which considers human understanding of rare and unpredictable events, may be more valuable reading materials to many RAAF members than theories of war that predate the establishment of the RAAF. The principle here is not to judge our peoples’ reading habits; it is to foster an attitude of self-development through reading.[1] This process of self-development is one of the sources of the RAAF’s strategic advantage. Lastly, if you encounter a non-reader, you could set a goal for them to read a particular book, or give a presentation on an idea, which may require some reading. Alternatively, send them a link to your favourite The Central Blue posts and start a conversation. As leaders, we must take collective responsibility for the intellectual development of our people and must give it a priority. Conversations with our people about reading is one way to impress on them the importance of self-development to the actualisation of the fifth-generation air force. I have done this and had some great conversations along the way. All references to books and blog posts above have resulted from such discussions. Proactive intellectual development underpins all fifth-generation air force behaviours, and it needs to be encouraged by leaders at all levels, regardless of specialisation or mustering. So, while grabbing your ‘large flat white, no sugar’ ask your coffee mates what they are reading. The answers may surprise you and inspire you to add the title to your reading list. Squadron Leader Mark Bell is an aeronautical engineering officer in the Royal Australian Air Force who has spent considerable time in aircraft acquisition and sustainment. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Aeronautical), Master of Business, Master of Project Management and is studying for a Juris Doctor. The opinions expressed are his alone and do not reflect those of the Royal Australian Air Force, the Australian Defence Force, or the Australian Government. Header Image: RAAF officer aircrew patients in the library of the Loughborough Rehabilitation Centre, c. 1945. (Source: Australian War Memorial) [1] However, gentle nudges towards materials that you found beneficial would not be out of place. #ProfessionalMilitaryEducation #Reading #RoyalAustralianAirForce

On 24 October 2019, the Sir Richard Williams Foundation held a seminar examining the requirements of #5thgenmanoeuvre. The aim of the seminar, building on previous seminars and series looking at #jointstrike and #highintensitywar, was to examine the differences and potential gaps in how the Australian Defence Force (ADF) must equip and organise for multi-domain operations. Professor Brendan Sargeant was one of the highly acclaimed speakers at the seminar. The following post is a transcript of his presentation; we thank Professor Sargent for his contribution to The Central Blue. I have been asked to talk about Assured Access for the Australian Defence Force (ADF) in the Asia Pacific. This is a large topic. What I want to do is step back and talk about the nature of our strategic environment, and to suggest ways of thinking about how it is changing. This is a preliminary to asking what is the nature of the strategic and defence challenge that it now presents to us. I want to put forward some propositions about what is happening in our strategic environment and how we might from an Australian perspective think about the implications of the changes that we are seeing. I would also like to put on record my appreciation for the help that Robin Laird and Paul Dibb, in our many conversations, have given me in thinking about some of these issues. Of course, any errors I commit belong to me. How we think about strategic challenges and how we describe the world, that is, how we construct the problem set, can help us think about what policy and strategic approaches might be best suited to dealing with it. We are at one of those points in world history when the strategic order is changing. This has been the central topic of discussion in policy and academic circles for the last decade. It was foreshadowed in the 2009 Defence White Paper and elaborated in different ways in the 2013 and 2016 Defence White Papers. It haunts the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper. This sense of change has become more acute over the past two or three years to the point where it seems to be generally agreed in commentary circles that the 2016 Defence White Paper is no longer adequate as a frame for understanding our strategic environment, or as a vehicle to guide future policy development. So, the question is: what now? I have often commented that in our strategic assessments and policy development, we have consistently underestimated the rate of change in our strategic environment. Perhaps this is the equivalent in policy circles of the often discussed ‘Conspiracy of Optimism’ in project management. When people talk about change in the contemporary environment, the first step is usually to point to major structural forces – demographic shifts, economic development, restructuring of national economies, urbanisation, to name some of these forces. More recently there is the rise of China, and particularly the China that has emerged as a result of the assertive policies of the current leadership under President Xi Jinping. We have also seen very significant shifts in US strategic and economic policy with the advent of President Trump. Neither the United States nor China could be now described as status quo powers. In different ways, they are seeking to reposition their role in the strategic order, and this is playing out in many different ways across the world. There are other large forces in play in the Indo-Pacific. These include economic growth, major demographic shifts, the impact of climate change, and a broader movement towards a restructuring of the strategic order. If we look across the world, major trends include a strengthening of nationalist movements within countries; the rise of populism on both the right and the left; a loss of confidence in the traditional institutions of governance at both the national and international level; and the rise of authoritarian powers within a liberal rules-based order who are now seeking to challenge and mould this order to their ends. We are in a period of political experimentation and upheaval and it is hard to see what is on the other side. One proposition we might consider is that we are seeing the breakdown of one model of globalisation, a model we have called the rules-based order. Much energy in contemporary policy work is aimed at preserving this model. Both the 2016 Defence White Paper and the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper highlighted the centrality of the rules-based order as one of the foundations of Australian prosperity. In my view, it was also the foundation of our strategy in relation to the challenge of China. Reading those documents now, one gets an uncanny sense that they repeatedly invoke the rule-based order because they know that it is diminishing. I think a question now is whether this rules-based order can be preserved? And, if not completely, what elements of it will remain as we go into the future? Perhaps there is a further question – if we think it is under serious challenge, does that mean that we are already in a different world? In other words, we talk about the future, but perhaps the future has already arrived, and we cannot see it clearly, or we do not want to see it. I think this question will preoccupy policymakers for some time to come. Regardless, the world will not return to what it was. The question for policy, when all the noise is removed, is: how are we going to adapt? What does this mean for Defence? Another proposition about the strategic system that we call the Indo-Pacific is that the strategic architecture that might establish a framework for understanding and solving the challenge of building and managing a new strategic order is not sufficient for the task. We are seeing what I would describe as experiments. In some ways, it is a period that resembles the post-Second World War environment in that there are many ideas in play, and people are proposing and experimenting with different architectural initiatives and formations or trying to renovate old ones. But we are not yet at a point where it has settled or whether we will know what will work. I put something like the Quad that brings together the United States, India, Japan and Australia in this category. This has profound implications for Australia and how we might think about defence. The debate in Australia about defence has over decades revolved around two poles, both caricatures of complex and nuanced ideas that achieve even greater complexity when you consider their practical application in the context of the times. However, caricatures are useful because they help us delineate trends in thinking – the fashions of the time, if you will. These poles are, of course, Forward Defence and Defence of Australia. Debates in Australia about defence have tended to fall within this broad conceptual framework. There are different ways of understanding the parameters of the conversation, but it boils down to the relative priority you would give to the defence of Australia as a geographical entity as opposed to defence engagement more broadly in the world to support the emergence and maintenance of an international system conducive to our national interests. Where you want to put emphasis in relation to policy will drive decisions about the development of capability and the use of the ADF. In the world of practical policy development and implementation, and operational imperatives, these debates can seem a bit theoretical. But if you look at the trend of Australian policy over decades, you can see that there is a tension and it does have consequences for the development and use of the force. One of the more significant criticisms of the 2016 White Paper is that in identifying strategic goals for defence, it did not distinguish between the relative importance of these goals and therefore provide a framework for thinking about priorities in developing capability. If you take a very broad historical perspective, the debate starts to look a bit like arguments about how many angels might fit on the head of a pin. The overriding strategic reality for Australia since its inception has been that our defence policy has been developed within the framework of our protection by a friendly hegemon – up until the end of the Second World War, the British Empire; and after the Second World War, the United States through the alliance relationship. What this has meant for Australian strategic culture is that we have never had to think about policy outside the framework of hegemonic protection. It also means that some of the heavy lifting in diplomacy and defence policy has been done by the major partner and that we have under-invested in both diplomatic and defence capability. I question whether the combination of these factors has also resulted in a strategic culture that is in many ways derivative, or immature – the culture of a young and relatively inexperienced country accustomed to the protection of a larger power. One manifestation of this is the under-investment in our diplomatic capability and our over-reliance on the US alliance as the foundation of our security. We are now moving into a strategic order where that protection may not necessarily be there on the terms that we have been accustomed to. This is a profound change. It means we have to think very differently about our strategic culture and the defence challenge. What are some features of this change? Often when we talk about the justification for having a defence force, we speak in terms of being able to exercise sovereignty, to be able to support our national interest through the use of the armed forces. My own view about defence is that it is a toolkit that enables the government to do many things in the world, but when all that is peeled away, it exists to ensure national survival against existential threats. It is the final guarantor of the state’s sovereignty. We are in a world where no country is fully sovereign – partial sovereignty is the new normal. I recognise in saying this, that this has always been a reality, but I think the situation is different now because we cannot offset that partial sovereignty with the security that was provided by the rules-based order guaranteed by the United States and the model of globalisation that it supported. From another perspective, globalisation underpinned by the rules-based order allowed us to trade sovereignty for security – or to express it another way, it enabled us to accept levels of strategic risk which are now starting to look unacceptable. So, what does the emerging world look like? Some propositions: We are seeing the emergence of new models of globalisation. Some elements include the rise of authoritarian powers underpinned by capitalist economies who are prepared to develop arrangements of convenience to advance their strategic interests and to weaken the authority and capability of the liberal democracies; We are seeing increasing nationalisms, some with malign impacts; We are seeing a weakening consensus on how the international economic order should be managed and governed; We are seeing a weakening of institutions of global governance, and the de-legitimisation of the underpinning legal frameworks that support them; We are seeing less consensus on what the global problem set is (for example, the climate change wars); We are seeing less appetite for global solutions and a strong emphasis on local, bilateral, or regional based solutions to problems; We are seeing declining capacity to manage major transnational problems – for example, people movements; We are seeing massive disruption through the proliferation of new technologies and social media. This adds up to a world where the global system is less favourable to our national interests and we have less capacity to influence the development of solutions to problems that impinge on our interests. From this perspective, the major feature of the emerging global environment is that it increases, rather than reduces, the risk to our security. And part of that risk is in how the emerging system actually operates. For example, can we assume that in a crisis we will have the same access to we currently enjoy to global supply chains? So the question is: in a world where partial sovereignty is the norm, where we can no longer trade sovereignty for security with the same confidence that we have done so in the past,  where global or transnational institutions and conventions are weakening, and where the rules that guided decision making are either diminishing in authority or being discarded, how do we achieve security? To frame the question in another way is: how do we mitigate the risk that partial sovereignty creates in a world with a global system does not deliver security benefits that it used to? How do we build and manage defence capability in this context? If we look at the defence challenge through this lens, we can see that some of the assumptions that underpinned defence policy and planning are no longer as robust as they might have seemed. Some assumptions have included: Our global supply chains will continue to deliver what we need during a crisis; We can assume privileged access to technology and war stocks through the operation of the alliance system; We do not need to stockpile fuel in Australia because of our confidence that the global system would continue to provide supply during a crisis; We could continue with a boutique defence industry and just in time logistics systems which are an outreach of larger global systems into which they are integrated. The world allowed this – in fact, the way the world worked created positive incentives to maximise efficiency through the development of interdependence with external suppliers confident that the rules-based order would continue as we had known it. It has some other consequences for our strategic culture. Most of our operational commitments have been to some extent discretionary. We have participated in coalition operations and the primary policy justification has been to support the rules-based order and to ensure that we continue to pull our weight within the alliance. The INTERFET operation in East Timor is perhaps the major exception, and I think this has some lessons for the future. We have developed capabilities that assume very high levels of interoperability with the US. This assumes continuing convergent interests, or that the US will give us priority in a crisis. We have underinvested in defence to the extent that we have used the rules-based order to manage strategic risk. Is 2% of GDP really sufficient expenditure in an environment where we are carrying much more risk because of the changes in the strategic order? I believe that this adds up to a very different world for Australia. More importantly, it means a very different way of operating in the world. There are many implications arising from what I have suggested here. I recognise that the future is difficult to discern through the fog of the present. This is another way of saying that there are many possible futures. But, if we accept that the rules-based order as we have known it is undergoing profound change, then we will need to change, and our policy and operational culture will also need to change. We will need to be far more flexible and pragmatic in our understanding and management of the alliance relationship. Alliances exist through the activities that are undertaken in their name. They are only relevant for as long as they are relevant; that is, for as long as the activities that are undertaken in the name of the alliance are meaningful to both parties. In a shifting world, we will have to continue to negotiate our alliance as a continuing and provisional proposition that works when it is expressed in meaningful activity that supports our shared security interests. The alliance as some sort of bank account into which you make investments for the future is not a useful framework in a world that is likely to be as volatile as that which we are entering, and where our interests may at times diverge. Perhaps a more productive way to think about an alliance relationship is that it enables the parties to work together to respond to a crisis at the operational level while building strategic capacity to forestall or manage future crises. This puts more emphasis on crisis response; it puts a focus on capability building; it does not imply an ongoing convergence of strategic interests in every situation. We need to build more resilience and sustainability into our defence industry and logistics systems in the recognition that the global environment carries risk that we may not be able to mitigate in a crisis. We need to strengthen and diversify our engagement across the Indo Pacific to build the capacity to work with others to respond to crises. In doing so, we need to ask the question: what are the likely security challenges and how will they take expression in ways that might require the use of armed force? We then might have a conversation about that with other countries as a framework for building the capacity to respond. We need to strengthen our diplomatic capacity and to establish a much stronger presence in our region, both to understand what is happening and to influence what might happen. Underinvestment in diplomacy reduces our capacity to shape and influence the events and trends that impinge on Australia’s interests. In times of change, presence matters and is a strategic and operational imperative. If I had to sum up the extent to which changes in the world will change us, and the response that we need to build, I would summarise thus: in the past we could handle problems within a strategic framework which was stable and which was generally understood and agreed by all the parties involved. This is what the rules-based order represented, underpinned as it was by American power and the institutions of global governance. In the future, it is likely that we will need to construct both the rules that govern how we think about a crisis in order to respond, as well as responding to the crisis at the same time. This means that every crisis will be different and will perhaps demand a response in its own terms. It means that we will experience crises that we have not had to deal with in the past, so we may not have the historical references to rely on as a vehicle for understanding what we are dealing with and guiding responses. I think this means that we need a strategic policy culture that is more improvisational, pragmatic, with a more ruthless sense of our national interests in a world that will not necessarily want to support those interests. This leads me to my final point. In the future, there will be times when we need to act alone, or where we will need to exercise leadership. We have not often had to do this in the past – The INTERFET operation in Timor, and RAMSI in the Solomon Islands are examples. We are far more comfortable operating as part of a coalition led by others. It is perhaps an uncomfortable truth, but that has been a consistent feature of our strategic culture. So I think our biggest challenge is not a technical or resource or even capability challenge – it is the enormous psychological step of recognising that in the world that we are entering we cannot assume that we have the support of others or that there will be others willing to lead when there is a crisis. We will need to exercise the leadership, and I think that is what we need to prepare for now. To return to the title of this talk: if we want assured access for the ADF in the Asia Pacific, then we need to work towards a world that ensures that that access is useful and relevant to the sorts of crises that are likely to emerge. I will leave one last proposition with you. Our assured access for the ADF in the Asia Pacific will be determined by our capacity to contribute to regional crisis management. That contribution will on some occasions require that we lead. The task now is to understand what this means and build that capacity. Brendan Sargeant is Honorary Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Studies at the Australian National University. He is currently Acting Principal at the Australian Command and Staff Course. He retired from the Department of Defence in October 2017. From September 2013 to October 2017, he was the Associate Secretary of Defence. Prior to that appointment he was the Deputy Secretary Strategy. As Associate Secretary, he was responsible for oversight of the implementation of the First Principles Review, a major reform of Defence organisation and enterprise governance, planning, performance and risk management. He was the principal author of the 2013 Defence White Paper. #AsiaPacificRegion #AssuredAccess #SDSC #Strategy #5thGenerationWarfare #ProfessorBrendanSargeant #ManoeuvreWarfare

On 24 October 2019, the Sir Richard Williams Foundation held a seminar examining the requirements of #5thgenmanoeuvre. The aim of the seminar, building on previous seminars and series looking at #jointstrike and #highintensitywar, was to examine the differences and potential gaps in how the Australian Defence Force must equip and organise for multi-domain operations. We welcome Melissa Houston to The Central Blue to explore the potential of the P-8A Poseidon in maritime warfare. What does fifth-generation manoeuvre mean in the context of airborne anti-submarine warfare? Fifth-generation, a term typically applied to fighters, encompasses highly integrated net-enabled systems within a high-performance stealth airframe. The P-8A Poseidon, the Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF) only maritime patrol aircraft, lacks the stealth and manoeuvrability of a fifth-generation fighter but arguably holds fifth-generation ‘systems equivalence’ due to its advanced avionics, sensors and extensive communications suite. The P-8A is designed to engage in underwater warfare, where submarines are the primary threat. In order for the submarine threat to be defeated, however, the P-8A must successfully integrate with the broader Australian Defence Force (ADF). This post will describe the strategic value the Poseidon brings to the ADF, outline the critical roles of the P-8A, and identify some of the critical challenges faced in realising that potential. The Australian government acknowledges the array of challenges to national security created by a contested maritime environment. The 2016 Defence White Paper sets a requirement to secure Australia’s northern approaches and proximate sea lines of communication, while also securing the near region, encompassing maritime South East Asia and the South Pacific. Understanding the P-8A’s value in meeting these requirements require a dive beneath the surface to analyse subsurface strategic value. A secure Australia depends upon protection from attack or coercion. Submarines play a vital role on both sides of this equation. Uncertainty as to the location and purpose of Australia’s submarines acts as a critical deterrent to a potential adversary. The reverse is true of potential opponents’ submarines. Anti-submarine warfare limits an adversary submarine’s ability to achieve sea denial, conduct intelligence activities, insert land forces or conduct missile strikes. Critically, friendly anti-submarine warfare enhances the effectiveness of friendly submarines by disrupting opposing submarine operations. The maintenance of an effective anti-submarine warfare capability allows the ADF to detect and disrupt a key threat to Australia while enhancing the potency of its undersea deterrent. The P-8A makes a unique contribution to Australia’s joint anti-submarine warfare capability as the ADF’s only fixed-wing aircraft that can find, fix, track, and attack an underwater target. The P-8A’s speed and range – it can operate over 2000 kilometres from its base – complement the persistence and presence of Australia’s surface and sub-surface anti-submarine capabilities. Range and responsiveness are particularly valuable when considering the reach of the world’s leading submarines. The P-8A’s ability to operate at range while maintaining real-time communication with various agencies, combined with its sensor and data feeds, makes it an extremely valuable asset. The P-8A acoustics system has four times the processing capability of the recently retired AP-3C Orion. The P-8A can, therefore, provide four times the coverage or four times the security in an anti-submarine warfare search.  The use of advanced sensors and processing are critical elements of the P-8A’s fifth-generation potential. However, the P-8A’s lack of stealth, low speed, and limited defensive systems leave it vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated threats in the maritime domain. The P-8A has demonstrated performance in congested environments but has yet to be employed in contested environments. Importantly, congestion in 2019 is more than a problem of dense shipping on the ocean’s surface. The P-8A faces emerging challenges in a competitive and cluttered electromagnetic spectrum, resulting in global positioning system interference, radar interference and jamming. As the P-8A’s performance is optimised as part of a highly networked fifth-generation force, disruption in the electromagnetic spectrum has the potential to reduce mission effectiveness significantly. Accordingly, the RAAF must continue to evolve how the P-8A is employed. There are several challenges facing the P-8A fleet in exploiting its potential. Resolving issues in human factors, technical integration, and command and control will help the ADF realise the Poseidon’s potential. There is little benefit in P-8A sensors and communications suites integrating with other platforms if operators are not adequately trained to exploit the data being received and know where it must feed. When it comes to fifth-generation manoeuvre, people often get excited by the high-end warfare integration components, sometimes at the expense of basic concepts. Integration is first and foremost about co-operating safely and becoming fifth-generation does not remove the threat of fratricide or accident. Understanding other platform limitations is key to successful (and safe) operations in a congested and contested environment. We must remain cognizant of the current limitations of our successful integration across ADF platforms. We must continue to develop, test and adjust joint tactics, techniques, and procedures. In an increasingly complex subsurface environment, the safe and successful prosecution P-8A’s missions, especially anti-submarine tasks, must be joint actions. Improved understanding and integration of joint combat and support systems will enable the development of a joint concept of operations. The age of information means that aircrew is more likely to be overwhelmed with the amount of information they are being fed in real-time by various agencies. This hyper-connectivity can lead to poor prioritisation and breakdowns in situational awareness. The ADF must understand the limitations of our autonomous systems – but also that of our people. Fifth-generation operators must have more discipline and self-awareness than ever before. A key component of success in fifth-generation manoeuvre is real-time, net-enabled operations. The ADF’s machines must understand one another’s data language for net-enabled operations to be feasible, just as much as the people on board need to understand each other. An example from recent exercise is the requirement for further development of joint procedures across RAAF and Royal Australian Navy elements ensure that datalink messages are transmitted and received as intended. This is paramount in targeting and employing net-enabled weapons. There is no fifth-generation force if the fifth-generation platforms cannot communicate assuredly across the force. Importantly, with the rise of challenges in the electromagnetic spectrum, ADF systems and people must become adept at operating in analogue or degraded communications modes. Building trust and confidence in systems, in people, and in systems of systems is key to exploiting the Poseidon’s potential. Finally, with the P-8A’s ability to be re-tasked for any number of missions, command and control is more complicated than ever. Assets can be reassigned in real-time, and aircrew must have a clear understanding of their C2 arrangements, particularly where an asset is dually assigned or where it has separate operational and tactical control arrangements. The P-8A will absorb the AP-3C’s legacy tasking, stretched across air power roles while integrating seamlessly with civilian agencies in search and rescue roles and ADF and coalition partners across the maritime and land domains. Real-time intelligence updates also mean that the P-8A can act and react in response to the evolving threat environment. Evolution of tasking processes and authorities must evolve to a fifth-generation way of thinking to exploit, rather than limit, the potential of advanced systems. The P-8A Poseidon brings new potential to the ADF, particularly in its primary underwater warfare role. A fifth-generation maritime patrol aircraft optimises its sensors, communications, and crew as part of an integrated force, and leverages those resources to be more effective and efficient in disrupting adversary submarines and enhancing friendly operations. Australia’s P-8A fleet has already demonstrated performance in congested environments and gained experience in several operational theatres. P-8A operations, as part of a fifth-generation force, must continue to evolve to achieve the Poseidon’s fifth-generation potential. The ADF must work through challenges in human factors, technical integration, and C2 to unlock Poseidon’s potency. Squadron Leader Melissa Houston is a P-8A tactical co-ordinator and flight commander in the Royal Australian Air Force. The opinions expressed are hers alone and do not reflect those of the Royal Australian Air Force, the Australian Defence Force, or the Australian Government. #MaritimeAirPower #RoyalAustralianAirForce #5thGenerationWarfare #BoeingP8Poseidon #5thGenerationAirPower #ManoeuvreWarfare

On 24 October 2019, the Sir Richard Williams Foundation is holding a seminar examining the requirements of #5thgenmanoeuvre. The aim of the seminar, building on previous seminars and series looking at #jointstrike and #highintensitywar, is to examine the differences and potential gaps in how the Australian Defence Force must equip and organise for multi-domain operations. We are delighted to welcome Peter Hunter to The Central Blue to launch our #5thgenmanoeuvre series with his provocative call for us to re-examine the value proposition of air power, and military power more broadly, in a changing and challenging environment. Andrew Davies has argued that the idea of ‘balance’ in the ADF’s force structure is lazy thinking. He is not the only one concerned by outmoded constructs like this, as we have seen from Peter Jennings and Michael Shoebridge. Moreover, at the recent Defence + Industry conference in Canberra, where the defence secretary and senior ADF leaders emphasised the importance of Australia’s Pacific step-up strategy, questions arose about what our military forces can offer to government in an era of constant contest. The answers will not come from more-of-the-same prescriptions for fixing our security challenges by acquiring more of this aircraft or fewer of that ship, as the proponents of platform-centric thinking argue. These linear arguments miss the point. Legacy models that focus on destroying targets and moving arrows on maps are being overtaken by approaches that integrate the elements of national power to produce effects that compel desired political outcomes. My new ASPI report, Projecting national power, takes aim at these questions. What are our defence forces for, in a contemporary environment where rival powers are using political warfare to win strategic objectives below the threshold of military intervention? Like many others in the Indo-Pacific region, Australia is increasingly concerned that some revisionist powers are seeking to rewrite the regional order to their own advantage through political warfare and grey-zone methods. Moreover, since Australia’s first-rate military capabilities do not seem to be deterring this sort of warfare, questions arise about what might be done to make our exquisite military platforms relevant to those challenges. Of course, nobody is suggesting that we should scale back our defence forces unless we want to resemble other mendicant security states. However, while there may be no question of that immutable need for strong, capable defences, there is still merit in a more penetrating analysis of what our investment should be buying us. This is where lazy thinking will not do. Why would spending more money on more platforms be any more effective in countering political warfare and grey-zone action than our current models? So, what is to be done? My suggestion is that we should look for better ways to use what we have, instead of asking for more. We should be figuring out how to combine the elements of national power, including defence, in smarter ways to enhance Australia’s regional influence. Moreover, while my report considers these questions from an air power perspective, the approach should be equally valid across other defence capabilities, and indeed across the whole of government. In a region characterised by increasing competition, it only makes sense for Australia to do what it can to protect and enhance its own interests. We could say that this is simply old-fashioned realist power politics. However, if we are to ensure our defence forces provide a valuable service to government in an environment characterised by winning without fighting, it will be important to encourage disruptive thinking about how our military assets might contribute to the desired strategic effect, whether that be influence, access or counter-coercion. The government’s Pacific step-up quite rightly seeks to enhance Australia’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region. However, without a robust approach to integrating the elements of our national power to achieve that influence, then neither more planes nor more ships or more tanks would seem to offer any better prospect for deterring grey-zone operations than they already do. This might require some disruptive thinking about how we use our defence resources. In addition to their war-fighter roles, how might we use our exquisite assets as tools of influence? Is it possible that complex systems built to collect and exploit electronic information might have a role in operations geared to achieving influence? Of course, this should be on the positive side of the ledger, too, since it is not just about discouraging political warfare. Australia will need to contribute to cooperative relationships in the region if we wish to sustain the access and presence required to enhance our influence. Also, where once enablers like international engagement and electronic warfare (among others) might not have been given the same attention as the acquisition of complex systems, these themes will need to be given prominence if we are to adopt an influence operations mindset. So, while there is little doubt by now that cyber and information operations have become more vital to the wielding of international influence, there remain unexplored questions on how our military assets and people can be similarly influential. My new report does not pretend to solve these problems. However, it does seek to bring the questions to the fore, so that air power, and our defence forces more broadly, can look towards delivering the best value to government. This article first appeared on ASPI’s The Strategist on 07 August 2019 and is republished here with the kind permission of The Strategist’s editors. Peter Hunter is the Director of Air Force Strategy in Air Force headquarters. He has over 25 years’ experience in Australia’s national security community, having worked across a broad range of positions in foreign and strategic policy, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Office of National Assessments. He has also served as adviser to the Minister for Defence and has undertaken diplomatic postings to Papua New Guinea and Kenya. He commenced his career as an officer in the RAAF, where he continues to serve as a wing commander in the Air Force Reserve. He is completing PhD research on Australian air power strategy through the University of NSW. The opinions expressed are his alone and do not reflect the views of the Royal Australian Air Force, the Department of Defence, or the Australian Government. #RoyalAustralianAirForce #AirPower #AustralianDefence #5thGenerationAirPower #AustralianDefenceForce #ManeouvreWarfare

Editorial Note: This article first appeared on The Forge, the website of the Australian Defence College. The Forge exists to build and hone the intellectual edge of member’s operating within the Profession of Arms. We are grateful to The Forge for permission to reproduce this article on The Central Blue. The Scherger Group is a network of individuals motivated to constructively engage with key strategic issues to improve the depth of understanding and quality of advice to senior decision-makers. The Group provides a mechanism, independent of existing organisations, to bring together a diverse array of individuals with the specific expertise, qualities, and motivation to cultivate professional depth in areas of strategic importance and provide alternative perspectives to those developed through existing institutional norms. Author’s Note: I have attempted to group the key points based on the notes I took during the discussion. Any errors are mine. I have also added additional material and references where I have considered that they may contribute to the ideas discussed at the workshop. One constant across all of military history is the critical role of people. Far more than technology, platforms, or luck, human assets have always been the single biggest determinant of military success or failure. As such, attracting, developing, retaining, and empowering skilled personnel is the biggest challenge for the modern military. Furman Daniel III, 21st Century Patton – Strategic Insights for the Modern Era Air forces are generally techno-centric organisations, and often express themselves through technology. The more advanced, the better! Consequently, much of the discussion about the future of the Air Force centres on artificial intelligence – in either an autonomous or human-machine variant; the networked strike fighter with its sophisticated sensors and weapons suites; advances in technology related to intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance; and electronic or cyber warfare. In other words, the focus is on technologies rather than on the humans who will need to lead and fully exploit these capabilities as part of a larger joint force. There is a need for specific work to create a culture where creativity and innovation, balanced against the discipline for military operations, prepares people to prevail in the uncertainty of future warfare, which inevitably involves pushing the boundaries between peace and war. The challenge for Air Force is to create a level of specificity to provide useful guidance in recruitment, training, education, and development of its workforce to maximise the high-end capabilities that are coming into service in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), and to use those capabilities in a joint and integrated context that is ambiguous and dynamic. Under the auspices of the ‘Scherger Group’, a small gathering was held in Canberra to discuss some of the challenges of building a future workforce for the RAAF. The discussion from those gathered was both energetic and insightful. While the discussion was based on developing RAAF personnel, it became clear early in the conversation that the same general considerations for developing the human intellectual edge also apply to the Army and the Navy. This gathering intended to have an open discussion on some broad workforce issues while acknowledging that these problems are going to require significant consideration and framing – to ensure the right questions are being asked, and to look at possible ways ahead. The issues discussed were focused on several key questions: What does future conflict look like? What will the future Air Force workforce need to look like? What skills/knowledge/attitudes do these personnel need? Future conflict? Any forecasts that attempt to predict, in detail, the future of conflict and warfare is bound to be wrong. This is reminiscent of the point made by Sir Michael Howard who said ‘[n]o matter how clearly one thinks, it is impossible to anticipate precisely the nature of future conflict. The key is not to be so far off the mark that it becomes impossible to adjust once that character is revealed’. For this reason, the development of bespoke designs for the future workforce is not likely to be useful. Contemporary literature and discussions about the future of war commonly refer to a taxonomy of warfare and competition that includes multi-domain battle, hybrid war, cyberwar, war in space, the use of artificial intelligence, human-machine teaming, dependency on integrated networks for communication and decision-making; the centrality of time and speed as key features of the future battlespace. This makes prognostication about the future of war incredibly difficult, with any detailed predictions destined to be off the mark. One characteristic of the contemporary security environment that is likely to continue is the need for cooperation and coordination across government. As Rosa Brooks argued, the military cannot be everything, and the military must continue to work with other government departments – like Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, Federal / State / Territory police, and the National Intelligence Community – to create a continuity of security and defence efforts to span the ‘grey zone’. A corollary to coordination is to ensure that advice to the Minister for Defence, the Chief of Defence Force, and other Service Chiefs and Defence principals are cognizant of the limits of the military option, and an appreciation of the nuances of strategic environment. If we can acknowledge these requirements, then we can consider some of the broad characteristics required of personnel in the future workforce. Future workforce considerations Traditional models, traditions, and the profession. Personnel management for the contemporary Air Force, as all military organisations, is based on stability and certainty, which facilitate long term workforce planning – determining the numbers for recruitment, retention, and retirement. Yet the future Air Force will need more flexibility – to obtain access to the required expertise or services to support the delivery of air power, as directed by the Chief of Air Force on behalf of the CDF / Minister. The flexibility required is analogous to modern fighter aircraft which has a level of inherent instability that enables it to be agile and responsive but has a sophisticated flight control system that provides stability and control to correct course and trajectory when needed. The customs and traditions of the profession of arms are important foundations for military forces. The military profession implies rights and obligations to the state, in exchange for the privilege to use of lethal force in times of war. These customs and traditions and the mantle of ‘profession’ are sometimes seen as obstacles to change and the construction of an agile workforce, due largely to the authoritative and hierarchical structures that characterise military organisations. New ways of thinking are required around command and control to establish a culture in which creative/disruptive/heretical thinking is necessary to address novel problems faced in an operational environment. Team of teams. An important question discussed was: Who is in the team? How do we determine who/what is in the team? One suggestion is to consider ‘Team of Teams’ approach, where the membership of the team changes according to who/what is required to add value to the goals of the team? A ‘team of teams’ approach is one involving a network based on trust relationships that have a shared consciousness / a shared mission. The concept was articulated by General Stanley McChrystal, based on his Joint Special Operations Command experience. It is one that can perhaps best accommodate inter-agency/industry partnership/inter-governmental approaches to national security problems in a much better way than traditional hierarchical organisations. To establish this approach, relationships of trust and habits of cooperation and coordination are essential to ensure that the team of teams is agile, adaptable, and responsive. Trust and teaming. ‘Trust’ in teams is essential to creating a culture of agility and adaptability in a human workforce. The introduction of machines to the ‘trust’ proposition also becomes important when considering the future workforce. The issue of human-machine teaming is one that is the subject of considerable contemporary discussion, and one that will only become more important as capabilities with varying levels of artificial intelligence is developed. How will the future workforce interact with these sophisticated capabilities as other team members? What kind of people do we need to develop, maintain, and use these technologies? In a networked team of teams, who is accountable and responsible for decision-making – where does ‘command responsibility’ reside? Buy/build/borrow. Relationships with industry are becoming stronger today, due largely to the increased reliance on highly specialised skills for maintenance, the difficulties of managing ‘commercial-in-confidence’, and foreign military sales restrictions relating to intellectual property and security classifications as part of capability sustainment. This raises the question of the proportion of workforce required in uniform, versus the numbers of contractors from industry partners, for the sustainment of RAAF platforms like the Joint Strike Fighter. It is likely that the JSF experience will become the norm and will likely dictate the need for skilled uniformed workforce required for sustainment of such sophisticated weapon systems. The ‘team of teams’ approach will therefore likely involve these industry partners. An associated issue is ‘supply and demand segmentation’ as a driver for RAAF workforce planning. The questions underlying this issue are: What will contractors do? What will military personnel do? Some people take time to ‘build’ and ‘grow’ because of their specialist skillsets in a military context. However, some skills can be ‘bought’ via industry partnerships or contractor support because there is a significant civilian sector market for these people. What proportion of the RAAF can be ‘bought’, or contracted, and which ones do we need to ‘build’? One example provided related to the doctors and medical staff that were incorporated into the British military from the British National Health Service. This was considered a more efficient and effective means to access highly experienced and skilled doctors, nurses, and other medical specialists in a limited time frame for a particular operation, particularly when considering the significant lead time in ‘growing’ these personnel within the military. The NHS also obtained benefits from this arrangement, as their personnel gained unique experience in handling battlefield injuries and trauma. Considering all the factors discussed above, perhaps the RAAF must be guided by the Lego approach – that ‘people don’t have to work for us to work with us’. However, this ‘open innovation’ approach taken by Lego was the result of declining profits that necessitated change. Military organisations lack the imminence of such signalling to advance reform, with dire security situations leading to conflict manifesting in short time frames when such reforms are too little too late. ‘Open innovation’ requires risk-taking and novel approaches that are underwritten by leadership that recognises that we cannot wait for the dire security circumstances to drive change and that some trial and error of innovative approaches are required now to address the challenges of the future. What skills/knowledge/attributes do future personnel need? As flagged at the start, the future is likely to have similarities to the contemporary context. Addressing future challenges require cooperation and coordination outside the military domain, particularly if a ‘team of teams’ approach is to be taken. This demands personnel who are adaptable, resilient, and innovative networkers who can operate based on intent in a decentralised context. Assuming the organisational structures and cultures are in place (noting the complexities of workforce structure discussed above), what skills/knowledge/attributes does the future Air Force member need? In broad terms, intelligence, creativity, and innovation, as well as strategic thinking and the ability to work in diverse teams (emotional intelligence) were considered to be the foundational skills/knowledge/attributes for future personnel. Ender. In discussions with fellow sci-fi loving military officers, Ender Wiggin – the protagonist in Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, is often heralded as the epitome of the creativity, innovation, and resilience that is desirable in future military personnel. In their National Defense University paper, ‘Finding Ender’, Bryant and Harrison explain that Ender’s Game is ‘also a parable for defense policymakers who are confronting the multifaceted problem set of recruiting, training, educating, and retaining military personnel capable of fighting and winning the Nation’s wars in a time of technological change and international volatility.’ Bryant and Harrison argue that fundamental changes to the military organisation’s process and culture are necessary to find the Enders and propose the development of sophisticated talent management systems to do so. Talent management is in its nascent form in the RAAF, which is founded on the development of officers and airmen in specific specialisations – pilot, mission aircrew, logistician, engineer, aviation technician, clerk, imagery analyst, personnel specialist, legal officer, medical officer, intelligence officer, and so on. The talent management system is intended to find the ‘Enders’ amongst the specialists – perhaps as a way of finding those to develop outside of their ‘stovepipes’ for broader roles including strategic level leadership. The difficulty is the habitual and cultural sentimentality and assumptions attached to certain specialisations – primarily aircrew – that place them at the centre of the organisation. Each of the Services has their own similar type of biases. The problem with this approach, and one that talent management may be able to mitigate is that creativity, innovation, and resilience – the ‘Ender traits’ – are fundamentally human ones that are not exclusively bound to the DNA of certain specialists. To maximise the ‘human’ capital of the current and future Air Force, then the personnel development and talent management systems need to focus on the ‘humans’ rather than the specialists. Education / learning / play and failure. A fundamental aspect of preparing the current and future workforce for the challenges of future competition and conflict is professional military education. This ‘Intellectual Edge’ is considered to be important in maximising the technological advantages that may accrue to a smaller force. Traditionally, education raises the connotations of traditional classroom lectures and discussion. While this is still the case, there is also a place for learning through play/testing and managing failure via wargames and wargaming as being a regular part of individual and collective training and education. Such mechanisms provide for a safe place to push concepts to breaking point, find weaknesses in plans, and to develop ways of thinking and strategic acumen. Culture. Finding Ender is only half the solution. The other half is to create an organisational culture where such individuals can thrive. In traditional, hierarchical, military organisations, uniformity and conformity are prized, and oddities are assimilated or discarded. These traditional ways of thinking about developing personnel naturally come into conflict with the need to grow people who are creative and innovative and are expected to consider and develop novel approaches to the complexity of future competition and conflict. Established norms and status quo policies and practices must either evolve or ‘break’ to allow the novel idea or concept to take hold. This is perhaps the traditional tension between Daedalus and Icarus, which is often discussed in air power circles. In his Air & Space Power Journal article, Trew argues that ‘air mindedness’ for the future Air Force will require holding the characteristics of Daedalus (experience and wisdom) and Icarus (passionate, rebellious artist) together in creative tension. Leadership is necessary for this to be successful – leadership provides the guidance/intent/direction and underwrites the risk of Icarus’ creativity and drive, which are both broadly considered necessary to address future competition and conflict. Next steps? In a recent CAF Directive (10 May 2019), Air Marshal Davies identified several ‘Fifth-Generation Behaviours’ that highlights the attributes of personnel that are necessary to support the Fifth-Generation Air Force. Air Marshal Davies said that these behaviours ‘will ensure Air Force can successfully operate in a complex environment where airmen will need to work with high volumes of data, understand and embrace new technology and easily integrate with Army, Navy and Coalition partners to create a joint effect’. He also mentioned the need for agility to use these behaviours. A ‘People Capability Attributes and Behaviours’ diagram depicted the five core attributes for a Fifth-Generation Workforce – Agile/Informed/Collaborative/Resilient/Integrated. These characteristics form a good foundation on which to build the future workforce – it is an aspirational goal for the Air Force to work towards in dealing with its personnel. However, as discussed in the group, the difficulty will be in the transition – in changing the existing structures, culture, and attitudes within the Air Force and the wider Defence organisation, to get to where CAF needs us to be. As a final thought, we also need to think outside of ourselves if we are to be successful in transitioning to a new structure and culture that cultivates the personnel we need. As renowned educator and advocate for reform of the education system, Ken Robinson, stated in Out of Our Minds ‘Employers say they want people who can think creatively, who can innovate, who can communicate well, work in teams and are adaptable and self-confident.’ The Air Force and the ADF want the same characteristics in people as employers in the civilian sector. There needs to be a recognition that the Air Force, and the other Services / Defence generally, cannot expect to create the people to enable a Fifth-Generation Air Force alone. The ADF and the Defence Department are constituted of people from wider Australian society. This means we are subject to wider societal and demographic factors that impact on how Australians live and work. We are also at the whim of factors we cannot fully control: we are reliant on advances in technology and expertise in the civilian sector, and we need to stay in touch with such developments. Perhaps more importantly, the ADF is reliant upon the broader education system as a feeder for our membership – we cannot build our future workforce on poor foundations. Wing Commander Jo Brick is a Legal Officer in the Royal Australian Air Force and is currently a member of the directing staff at the Australian Command and Staff College. She has served on a number of operational and staff appointments from the tactical to the strategic levels of the Australian Defence Force. Wing Commander Brick is a graduate of the Australian Command and Staff College. She holds a Master of International Security Studies (Deakin University), a Master of Laws (Australian National University) and a Master (Advanced) of Military and Defence Studies (Honours) (Australian National University). She is a Member of the Military Writers Guild, an Associate Editor for The Strategy Bridge, and an Editor for The Central Blue. You can find follower her on Twitter at Carl’s Cantina. #organisationalculture #capabilitydevelopment #futurewarfare #Militaryculture #RoyalAustralianAirForce #SchergerGroup #TheForge #ProfessionalMilitaryEducation

On 28 August 2019, the Air Power Development Centre in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Study of Armed Conflict and Society (ACSACS) hosted the Sir James Rowland Seminar at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). The seminar focused on Australian Aviation Culture and the enduring Air-minded approach to Air Power. Among an impressive line-up of speakers was Dr Alan Stephens, who elected to talk about Air Force Leadership in the 21st Century. The Central Blue is fortunate to be able to share his presentation with our readers today. We thank Dr Stephens for his contribution. The eminent soldier-scholar J.F.C. Fuller believed that ‘the fighting power of a defence force lies in the first instance in its organisation.’[1] Foremost amongst the essential components of a successful organisation is its senior management – that is, its leadership. At a time of extreme technological and social change, epitomised by the notion of a Fourth Industrial Revolution, a fair case can be made that the leadership of Australia’s air power and the organisational model those leaders instinctively favour may be unsuited to the task ahead. Few, if any, organisations are more intensely socialised than Western defence forces. Moreover, within that predetermined cultural environment, no one group is more dominant than air force pilots who, since air power was first applied systematically in the First World War, have led their services. I’d like to explore this point by referencing the celebrated American author, Tom Wolfe. In 1979, Wolfe published a story about America’s first astronauts. Titled The Right Stuff, the book was a best-seller and was subsequently made into a movie. All of those early astronauts were required to be a fast-jet test pilot, a qualification which not only seemed relevant to the assumed nature of space exploration but also suggested that they had the ‘right stuff to succeed in this new domain of aeronautics. Wolfe’s entertaining story at times teased the jet-pilots’ highly developed sense of self-regard. However, having had his fun, Wolfe nevertheless concluded that those space pioneers deserved our admiration and that they did indeed have the ‘right stuff.’ A parallel can be drawn between the requirement for those first astronauts to have been fast-jet pilots, and the tradition that the most senior air force posts must be filled by strike/fighter pilots. Indeed, it is not so much a tradition as an article of faith that that fraternity alone has the right stuff to command air power. Taking the RAAF as an example, since the Australian Air Force was formed in 1921, every one of the 25 men who has held the office of chief has been a pilot; and of that number, 22 can be classified as strike/fighter pilots. Before discussing this organisational phenomenon as it relates to the 21st century, it has to be acknowledged that, in the broader scheme of things, thus far, those men have done an exceptional job. Since mid-1944, when Allied air forces began to assert air supremacy in all theatres of the Second World War, Western air power has represented a military comparative advantage arguably unequalled in any combat domain in the history of warfare. Advanced Western air forces have not merely controlled the air for the past seventy years; they have dominated it. Moreover, they have simultaneously become an essential component of almost any reasonably-sized campaign on land or sea. That is not to say that air dominance has necessarily ensured political victory, whatever that might mean, but it is to say that, in discharging their brief, the West’s air commanders been extraordinarily successful. Many complex and varied factors have contributed to that success, but I am going to suggest that there has been two that have defined the essence of air warfare as we have known it for one hundred years. I am then going to suggest that in the 21st century those factors might no longer obtain. The first factor concerns why air forces exist; and the second concerns how air forces have gone about discharging the ‘why’ of their existence. First, the ‘why.’ Like navies and armies, when you get down to the basics, air forces exist to apply organised violence in the interests of the state. It is true that modern defence forces do much more than that – peacekeeping, disaster relief, border protection, nation-building, research and development, and so on. However, other organisations such as emergency services, NGOs, coast guards, industry, and private security firms can be used for those tasks. However, in democratic societies, only defence forces can legitimately apply violence against another state. As a former chief of the USAF, General Ron Fogleman, memorably put it, a military force’s unique purpose is to ‘kill people and break their stuff.’ Second, the ‘how.’ In discharging their duty to the state, air force commanders have from the earliest days correctly understood that their prime responsibility has resided in mastering two roles; namely, control of the air, and strike. It is again true that air forces do much more than that, but it is those two roles that have been at the heart of air warfare, and that have defined the best air forces. Consequently, it has been the exclusive, first-hand exposure of combat pilots to the associated warfighting concepts, tactics, technologies, and situational awareness that explains why that fraternity has dominated air power, and why its members have had the right stuff. It is noteworthy that the three most significant air power thinkers since the Second World War – John Boyd, John Warden and David Deptula – have all been fighter pilots. The problem for future air power leaders, however, is that the traditional ‘how’ and ‘why’ organisational protocols no longer apply. The model that has served the West so well is in the process of being challenged by non-state actors and the ineluctable march of technology. Taking the rise of non-state actors, the application of offensive air power is no longer the sole province of states, air forces and military pilots. The most devastating airstrike since the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 occurred not in Korea, or Vietnam, or Iraq, or the Balkans, or Afghanistan, but in New York City on 11 September 2001. Al Qaeda’s attack was an astonishing event. For four hours, a non-state organisation that did not have professional pilots, or aircraft, or weapons, let alone an air force, asserted control of the air overhead continental United States by subterfuge; and its destruction of the World Trade Centre changed the world. The specific model may or may not be replicated in the future, but the anarchical thinking behind it certainly will. Moreover, that anarchical thinking will be empowered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. I will elaborate on that proposition shortly. However, first, we need to have a clear understanding of the foundations of traditional advanced air forces. An advanced air force can only be constructed and sustained by countries that possess all of the following resources: a developed economy, a highly educated population, a strong industrial base, and a sophisticated infrastructure. Consequently, by my reckoning, today, no more than about a dozen countries, including Australia, have first-rate air forces. Unfortunately for those countries, again including Australia, the technologies that are empowering the Fourth Industrial Revolution will disrupt the established order and will revolutionise who can apply air power, and how. Those technologies include autonomous swarming unmanned systems, robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cyber systems, 3D printing, high-definition quantum sensors, and hypersonic missiles.[2] By offering alternative means of achieving control of the air and conducting strategic strike, those rapidly evolving and comparatively cheap capabilities will allow previously marginalised players – non-state, third-world, assorted extremists, even individuals – to contest the established order. I want to emphasise the profound implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution by using artificial intelligence as an example. In an article that has not received sufficient attention, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has provided a compelling and disturbing analysis of the power and potential of AI.[3] It is near-impossible to read Kissinger’s analysis, ominously titled ‘[H]ow the Enlightenment Ends,’ without concluding that we are at a defining moment in world history. Kissinger’s judgment is shared by, among others, Australia’s chief scientist, Professor Alan Finkel, who believes that AI is ‘poised to disrupt almost every fabric of Australian society.’[4] Other emerging technologies invite a similar conclusion, albeit less dramatically.[5] The question now becomes: what does this mean for the RAAF? In terms of the quality of its people, platforms, weapons, training, systems, and infrastructure, the RAAF of 2019 is the best it has ever been for its size, there is no better air force in the world. We can reasonably expect that the existing force structure will continue to provide Australia with regional air superiority for the next three to five years. However, what happens, then? If we were tasked with designing an air force with a blank sheet of paper – that is, free from the influence of legacy organisations, capabilities, and thinking – what would it look like? In an era of transformative technologies, in which the pace and nature of change are profound and constantly increasing, is it rational to believe that we would arrive at the same kind of organisational arrangement as exists today – an arrangement that effectively has been the same for 75 years? The F-35 exemplifies this abstraction. While the F-35 is an exceptional weapons system, the RAAF is fortunate that the platform and its support systems are almost in place, rather than being five or ten years away. The issue is, it has taken 27 years to progress the F-35 from design development to operational readiness, and each platform is costing $100 million. Similar numbers can be provided for most combat aircraft. I would suggest that those numbers are unsustainable when autonomous drones and long-range missiles can be developed in less than one-tenth of both the time and cost. There is also the matter of legacy organisational arrangements and cultural beliefs, which leads us back to the fighter pilot syndrome, and to the military-industrial complex within which air forces exist. A recent report from the RAND Corporation suggested that the ‘fighter jock’ culture may be inhibiting the USAF’s development.[6] According to RAND, the USAF is still dominated by fast-jet pilots, even though the ‘more technologically diverse set of missions,’ the service is facing demands a broader leadership base. RAND also found that fighter pilots have been ‘somewhat grudging’ in their acceptance of drones and that the ‘manned versus unmanned aircraft debate continue[s] to permeate internal service insecurities.’ Turning to the military-industrial complex, it was US president Dwight Eisenhower – previously one of the Second World War’s greatest generals – who in 1961 warned us of the dangers of the self-serving relationship between the military leadership and the defence industry.[7] The ‘entire livelihood’ of both groups depends on keeping long-term programs intact and funded, a mentality which in turn fosters an incremental, risk-averse, status-quo approach to force development, and which favours the maintenance of traditional capabilities.[8] Defence companies that make billions from legacy systems ‘are as welcoming of disruptions to their business model as the taxi cab industry has been of Uber and Lyft.’[9] Relating this mindset – this culture – to Australia, Andrew Davies from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has argued that ‘the sunk cost and institutional fondness for the current […] structure, combined with the industrial landscape and its associated politics’ has made the ADF’s culture and configuration ‘for all practical purposes immutable.’[10] Davies sees Australia’s defence conglomerate as having neither ‘the courage [nor the] imagination required to significantly change direction.’ Applying this mentality specifically to air power, we might note the inexorable momentum within advanced air forces to develop manned, so-called ‘sixth-generation’ fighters and bombers, which surely only the greatest optimist could expect to enter service in less than a quarter of a century and at a price tag less than the GDP of a third-world country.[11] To be fair, that same optimist might point to the RAAF’s futuristic Plan Jericho, the purpose of which is to ‘protect Australia from technologically sophisticated and rapidly morphing threats […] to push the boundaries of our fifth-generation force […] [primarily] by exploiting augmented intelligence.’[12] However, a pessimist might respond by referring to real-life rather than to reverie. For example, at the start of the Second World War, on land, British and French generals who had been socialised to believe in the divine right of infantry proved incapable of comprehending the disruptive nature of mechanised warfare and were routed by Germans who had embraced change; while at sea, admirals who had been socialised to believe in the divine right of capital ships proved incapable of comprehending the disruptive nature of air power, and went down with their ships. Plan Jericho is an admirable initiative which implicitly acknowledges that the RAAF, like all of us, is living in a disruptive world. However, it remains to be seen whether the project will generate genuine change or will simply sponsor capabilities that will be absorbed into the existing cultural and organisational mindset. In 1921, the great air power theorist Giulio Douhet wrote that ‘[V]ictory smiles upon those who anticipate the changes in the character of war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes occur.’[13] Coincidentally, 1921 was also the year in which the RAAF was established. Australians can be grateful that in the almost one hundred years since then, the strike/fighter pilots who have dominated their air force have delivered a national defence capability of the highest quality. However, if we believe that we are indeed experiencing a Fourth Industrial Revolution, then, by definition, the culture that has served the RAAF well is unlikely to do so in the near future. The essential question facing today’s Air Force is whether or not leaders who have been socialised within an archaic organisational framework have the right stuff to take their service forward in the 21st century. Dr Alan Stephens is a Fellow of the Sir Richard Williams Foundation. He has been a senior lecturer at UNSW Canberra; a visiting fellow at ANU; a visiting fellow at UNSW Canberra; the RAAF historian; an advisor in federal parliament on foreign affairs and defence; and a pilot in the RAAF, where his experience included the command of an operational squadron and a tour in Vietnam. He has lectured internationally, and his publications have been translated into some twenty languages. He is a graduate of the University of New South Wales, the Australian National University, and the University of New England. Stephens was awarded an OAM in 2008 for his contribution to Australian military history. [1] J.F.C. Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War (London, Hutchinson, 1926). [2] Andrew Davies, ‘A new DWP wouldn’t be worth the white paper it’s written on,’ The Strategist, 19 June 2019. [3] Henry Kissinger, ‘How the Enlightenment Ends,’ The Atlantic, June 2019. On the same theme, cyber might also have been used as a model: see, for example, Sue Halpern, ‘How Cyber Weapons are changing the Landscape of Modern Warfare,’ The New Yorker, 18 July 2019. For an air power-specific commentary on AI, see James Waller and Phillip Morgan, ‘Putting AI into Air: What is Artificial Intelligence and What it Might Mean for the Air Environment,’ RAF Air and Space Power Review, 22:2 (2019). [4] Quoted in Australian Council of Learned Academies, ‘The Effective and Ethical Development of Artificial Intelligence,’ July 2019. [5] See, for example, Christian Brose, ‘The New Revolution in Military Affairs,’ Foreign Affairs, 16 April 2019. [6] S. Rebecca Zimmerman, Kimberly Jackson, Natasha Lander, Colin Roberts, Dan Madden and Rebeca Orrie, Movement and Maneuver: Culture and the Competition for Influence Among the U.S. Military Services (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2019). See also Kyle Rempfer, Fighter jock culture may be holding Air Force back, Rand study says.’ Air Force Times, 26 February 2019. [7] Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation, 17 January 1961. [8] Robert Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York, Vintage Books, 2015). [9] Christian Brose, ‘The New Revolution in Military Affairs,’ Foreign Affairs, May/June 2019. [10] Davies, ‘A new DWP.’ [11] See, for example, Sebastian Roblin, ‘Beyond the F-22 or F-35: What Will the Sixth-Generation Fighter Look Like?,’ The National Interest, 21 July 2018; Kyle Mizokami, ‘Next Stop for Air Force’s New Bomber: First Flight,’ Popular Mechanics, 11 April 2019; and Tony Osborne, ‘Airbus and Dassault Reveal Vision for New-Gen Fighter,’ Aviation Week & Space Technology, 1-14 July 1-14, 2019. [12] RAAF, Plan Jericho – At the Edge. [13] Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, translated by Dino Ferrari (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1983), p. 30. #SirJamesRowlandSeminar #Militaryculture #RoyalAustralianAirForce #AirPower #MilitaryLeadership #5thGenerationAirPower #leadership

We welcome Ulie Yildirim back to The Central Blue to continue his exploration of the military profession and discuss the profession’s status and role in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). In these second of two parts, Ulie explores the RAAF’s traditionally successful approach to jurisdictional competition in the profession of arms but argues a different approach is needed to cope with new challenges. It is paradoxical that air forces willing and able to expend billions of dollars on technical and tactical education typically devote a trivial amount to understanding what they do or might do strategically and why they are asked to do so by their political owners.[1] Colin S. Gray Part 1 analysed the history surrounding the characterisation of the military profession, including the military profession’s characterisation by seminal thinkers Huntington, Janowitz and Moskos. This analysis showed that considering professions through the lens of jurisdictions, defined as ‘the link between a profession and its work’ is a useful means of exploring the RAAF’s adaptation to remain an effective and relevant policy device for the government.[2] Part 2 argues that the RAAF’s adoption of a highly specialised workforce model has been very effective. However, this model may be less effective in a rapidly changing and more challenging Indo-Pacific as the workforce has become disconnected from broader aspects of the profession of arms. Greater investment in professional military education (PME) is, therefore, necessary to reconnect the RAAF’s specialists with the military profession and ensure the Service remains a relevant and effective instrument of government. Multiple initiatives are currently in motion to transform the RAAF into a fifth-generation force able to apply air and space effects as part of an integrated joint force.[3] Several of these initiatives focus on people and promote professional and technical mastery within the RAAF.[4] These initiatives assert the importance of positive leadership, PME and the study of history while promoting the RAAF’s technologically-advanced capabilities and the need for innovation.[5] The RAAF routinely provides courses and seminars to its workforce on both the military profession, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Further education and professional development within specialist trades appear to be enthusiastically pursued. Well established funding and education programs support personnel in gaining specialist training, which is deemed to provide tangible benefits to the RAAF and the individual’s promotion prospects. These programs include overseas opportunities, Australian Defence Force Academy post-graduate courses and professional development programs that allow personnel to access specialist training and education easily. Moreover, multiple specialisations incorporate specialist education and development into career continuums from an early stage, so the link between professional development and individual progression is clear and compelling. In contrast, the workforce as a whole appears indifferent towards more general PME. Since 2009, RAAF PME has been delivered as part of promotion courses with a relatively less clear articulation of the benefits to the broader workforce in enabling the RAAF to conduct its everyday role. PME has been something individuals have to do to be promoted, not something people want to do because it will make them better at their job. This is evidenced by communication from multiple senior leaders that large numbers of personnel remain deficient in meeting their mandatory PME requirements. Accordingly, a policy of ‘no PME, no promotion’ was implemented but has reinforced the perception that PME is a compliance requirement rather than a value-adding activity. The disconnect from PME is an outcome of the RAAF’s use of a small workforce to employ complex hardware in the air domain and to prevail in its jurisdictional competition as an instrument of government. High levels of efficiency are generated through specialist-focused training, education, promotion, and employment continuums. After initial entry training, personnel are employed and managed within their specialist trades, including officers until promoted into the General List as Group Captains. A small number of officers and warrant officers are selected to attend command and staff courses or capability management courses. A still smaller number of Group Captains are also selected to attend the Defence and Strategic Studies Course and gain the necessary knowledge and skills to operate at the strategic level. Before and following these courses, personnel continue to be employed within their specialist categorisations. The value of specialist knowledge is reinforced by individual promotions (up to the rank of group captain) being determined within specialisations, rather than across the RAAF workforce as a whole. Officers promoted into the General List as Group Captains are selected from across the officer corps but continue to be employed in roles associated with their specialisations. This process has considerable strengths but creates inherent weaknesses which will be discussed in the next paragraphs. The RAAF’s emphasis on specialisation has enabled it to reliably and efficiently operate highly complex hardware in the air domain despite numerous challenges. For example, in 1991, when the Australian Government implemented the Commercial Support Program (CSP), the RAAF’s workforce was reduced from approximately 22,000 to below 13,500 personnel by 2001.[6] During the same period, the workforce was undergoing other changes due to a spate of fatal aircraft accidents attributed to operational and technical errors.[7] Despite an almost 40% workforce reduction, the RAAF continued to perform reliably, contributing to domestic and global operations while improving its safety and technical performance to establish a world-class aviation safety management framework. Hence, through the use of a highly-specialised workforce, the RAAF absorbed CSP personnel reductions, implemented an aviation safety management system, and contributed to government-directed activities – preserving and enhancing its reputation as a trusted policy device.[8] When faced with similar workforce reduction pressures, the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force (RAF) adopted an approach with less emphasis on specialisation, which has been cited as contributing to adverse outcomes. The investigation into the loss of an RAF Nimrod aircraft and 14 crew over Afghanistan in 2006 illustrated the apparent costs of a less specialised model. The report judged the principal factors at work included the creation of a larger ‘purple’ and ‘through life’ structures as well as ‘the imposition of unending cuts and change” from 1998-2006 which ‘led to a dilution of its safety and airworthiness regime and culture.’[9] Furthermore, the report identified the RAAF’s airworthiness framework as an exemplar airworthiness management model.[10] Notably, a result of the accident and subsequent report was the establishment of the British Ministry of Defence Military Aviation Authority. This single regulatory authority is headed by a three-star Director-General responsible for the oversight of British Defence aviation activities akin to the role conducted by Australia’s Defence Aviation Safety Authority. The RAF’s experience highlighted the benefits offered by a highly-specialised workforce in technical areas, including maintaining the trust of governments as a safe and reliable operator of complex equipment. While there are strengths associated with a highly-specialised workforce, there are also weaknesses. In a study of the United States Air Force officer corps, Frank Wood argued convincingly that air force personnel associate with their specialisation more than the military profession.[11] Charles Moskos’s work on the military profession in the United States also argued that due to the nature of complex hardware they employ, air forces are becoming more civilianised to attract those with specialised training. Moskos argued that those personnel ‘will be attracted to the service in a civilian rather than a military capacity and will gauge military employment in terms of marketplace standards’ within which factors such as remuneration and location stability play a bigger role.[12] Applying Mosko’s theory, the RAAF’s culture of specialisation attracts personnel inclined towards specialisation and then reinforces linkages to similar civilian specialists throughout a member’s military career, enabling ready disengagement from the military profession. The workforce efficiencies created through specialisation further reinforce this trend as a smaller workforce lacks the depth to address specialisation and broader PME. The perceived low priority afforded to PME by the RAAF personnel appears to be a symptom of their disconnection from the military profession. However, this disconnect arises from the Service’s preference for a highly-specialised workforce as a means of prevailing in its jurisdictional competition. Effects of a highly specialised but disengaged military workforce Australia’s strategic circumstances and choices have become more difficult.[13] Emerging challenges include traditional state on state threats due to the continued rise of China,[14] Sino-Indian power competition[15] and the re-balancing of American priorities within the Indo-Pacific.[16] The rise of non-traditional threats adds another layer of complexity to Australia’s strategic choices. The impacts of globalisation, energy security, minority group extremism, terrorism and the effects of climate change mean that Australia’s national security is no longer bounded simply by the need to defend Australia’s geographical sovereignty but also ‘the security of Australia’s society and its citizens.’[17] As highlighted in the 2016 Defence White Paper, Australia’s technological edge is diminishing.[18] This suggests that the RAAF’s historical preference for a highly-specialised workforce to maximise its technological edge may not be appropriate for future challenges. Of note, the Chief of Air Force’s 2017 commander’s intent and intent for learning explicitly recognised the importance of effective employment of technology by personnel who combine their technical expertise with a good understanding of the profession of arms. This can only be achieved through the marriage of engaging PME and a thorough knowledge of specialist skills. This has been a consistent message from senior leaders for several years and appears to underpin recent PME reform efforts. The RAAF’s highly-specialised approach has performed well during its operations since the Second World War. However, these operations have been relatively limited in scale and intensity, with other partners bearing the burden of higher-levels of strategy and operational planning. As a result, the RAAF’s specialised workforce was able to operate in its comfort zone and was not stretched to the point of being exposed. During these operations, the RAAF’s technological edge over its adversaries enabled its workforce to remain within its specialist stovepipes without needing to consider the impact of tactical decisions in the strategic arena which could be necessary against a possible near-peer enemy. Hence, a need arises to look externally to judge the effects of a highly specialised but professionally disengaged military workforce in other contexts, including high-intensity conflicts. Dima Adamsky’s observations on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are a useful starting point due to the IDF’s size, alliance with the United States, strong focus on workforce specialisation, and ongoing exposure to conflicts.[19] Adamsky observed that following its successes of 1949, 1956, and 1967, the IDF developed ‘a total disinterest in the art of war.’[20] The effects of this were that ‘[p]roblems were resolved in an isolated and sequential manner as if they were not interconnected.’[21] Further, Adamsky observed that the IDF General Staff continually chose to provide pragmatic but technically narrow solutions to problems because ‘[w]ith no formal professional education IDF officers thought and operated in tactical terms concentrating on giving ad hoc piecemeal solutions to immediate problems.’[22] Israel’s Iron Dome defence system is a case in point. RAND Corporation analyst Elizabeth M. Bartels argued that while the Iron Dome achieved tactical success by mitigating the risks from missiles, it was a strategic failure changing ‘strategic and political prosecution of the campaign in ways that may have denied Israel decisive victories.’ Although these observations should be qualified, noting that the IDF uses a conscription model and their conflicts have arguably been against enemies not as professional, a strong focus on specialists within the general staff has demonstrably resulted in a lack of strategic perspective. Adamsky’s observations highlight that a disengaged workforce, such as the RAAF’s, is less able to grasp the complexities of problems at the strategic level and will instead opt to focus on generating tactical solutions to immediate problems. Adamsky’s analysis of the IDF indicates that without greater emphasis on PME, the RAAF’s current focus on specialisation is likely to adversely affect its jurisdictional competitiveness as Australia confronts a more challenging environment. This logic underpins current initiatives such as Plan Wirraway, The Runway professional development portal, and a new PME continuum. There is clear top-down direction to balance technical and professional mastery as part of transforming the RAAF into a fifth-generation force. These PME initiatives must be complemented by adjustments to the RAAF’s promotion and employment continuum in order to emphasise the importance of PME in enabling the Air Force to conduct its roles and missions, with links to everyday duties. Without this immediate and tangible reinforcement of PME’s value, inertia will see RAAF personnel drift towards perfecting their specialisation and remain disinterested in air power and the military profession in broad terms. More importantly, it must be recognised that compliance-centric attempts to change the workforce’s behaviour through methods such as ‘no PME, no promotion’ will not address the root cause. While the organisation can reorient PME incentives, RAAF personnel also have a personal responsibility to seek a philosophical understanding of airpower. Despite the hierarchical nature of military organisations, Elliot Cohen’s analysis of military transformation demonstrated that assuming that change will happen following senior leader direction is false and outdated.[23] Cohen stated ‘[t]hroughout most of military history, to include the current period, change tends to come more from below, from the spontaneous interactions between military people, technology and particular tactical circumstances.’[24] It is naïve to assume that initiatives implemented from the top with sporadic injections of PME throughout RAAF personnel’s careers will enable them to fully exploit the benefits offered by the study of air power. Therefore, unless the workforce positively engages with their profession beyond top-down direction, the changes required are unlikely to succeed during crises. While a great deal of responsibility rests with the implementation of top-down initiatives, without positive engagement by RAAF personnel and an equal focus on PME, they will not be successful. Conclusion Professions, including the military profession, continually evolve and are in constant jurisdictional competitions with others. This forces them to adapt to new contexts to ensure their survival. The RAAF has successfully participated in a jurisdictional competition of protecting the nation’s interests by using a highly-specialised workforce to operate complex hardware in the air domain. The RAAF’s emphasis on training, educating and promoting specialists comes with considerable strengths, including high levels of proficiency and efficiency. However, it has come at the cost of widespread disengagement from the military profession, including disengagement from broad PME. This highly-specialised approach appears to be ill-suited to a world undergoing profound changes and presenting serious challenges to Australia’s security. Accordingly, the RAAF must prioritise PME to maintain its effectiveness and relevance as a policy device. This will require changes to the RAAF’s training, education, promotion and employment continuum to emphasise and value PME. Top-down direction is necessary, but genuine change also requires a cultural shift in the workforce to value PME and professional development. In a rapidly changing world, the RAAF must adapt lest its historically successful methods become its undoing. Squadron Leader Ulas ‘Ulie’ Yildirim is an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force. The opinions expressed are his alone and do not reflect the views of the Royal Australian Air Force, the Australian Defence Force, or the Australian Government. [1] Colin S. Gray, Airpower for Strategic Effect (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 278-9, 303. [2] Andrew D. Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 2, 20. [3] Royal Australian Air Force, ‘Air Force Strategy 2017-2027’ (Canberra. Australia: Air Power Development Centre, 2017), pp. 1-7. [4] These include New Horizon, Air Force Adaptive Culture and active engagement by the Air Power Development Centre [5] Royal Australian Air Force, Australian Air Publication 1000D – The Air Power Manual, Sixth Edition (Canberra: Air Power Development Centre, 2013); Sanu Kainikara, ‘Professional Mastery and Air Power Education,’ Working Paper No. 33 (Canberra: Royal Australian Air Force Air Power Development Centre, 2011); Air Power Development Centre, ‘Domain-Centric Professional Mastery: The Foundation of an Integrated Military Force’ in Pathfinder (Canberra, Air Power Development Centre, 2018); ‘Air Warfare Innovation and Integration’ in Pathfinder (Canberra: Air Power Development Centre, 2016); ‘5th Generation Air Force’ in Pathfinder (Canberra: Air Power Development Centre, 2016); ‘Translating Technology and Innovation into Capability-Some Lessons from between the Wars’ in Pathfinder (Canberra: Air Power Development Centre, 2016); ‘The Future Air Force’ in Pathfinder (Canberra: Air Power Development Centre, 2017); Royal Australian Air Force, ‘Plan Jericho’ (Canberra: Royal Australian Air Force, 2015); ‘Air Force Plan 2019-2024: ‘First Class People for a Fifth-Generation Air Force” (Canberra: Royal Australian Air Force, 2018). [6] Australian National Audit Office, ‘Commercial Support Program. Department of Defence’ (Canberra: Australian National Audit Office, 1998), p. 27; Air Power Development Centre, Australian Air Publication 1000-H – The Australian Experience of Air Power, Second Edition (Canberra: Air Power Development Centre, 2013), p. 183; Kevin G. Barnes, Retention versus Attrition: Does the RAAF have the correct target in its sight? (Canberra: Air Power Development Centre, 2005), p. 2. [7] Air Power Development Centre, ‘Defence Airworthiness,’ (Canberra, Australia: Air Power Development Centre, 2013). [8] Ibid.; Centre, Australian Air Publication 1000-H, pp. 126-78, 83. [9] Charles Haddon-Cave, ‘The Nimrod Review’ (London: Stationery Office Limited, 2009), p. 339. [10] Ibid., p. 485. [11] Frank R. Wood, ‘At the Cutting Edge of Institutional and Occupational Trends: The U.S. Air Force Officer Corps’ in Charles Moskos and Frank Wood (eds.), The Military More Than Just a Job? (Virginia: Pergamon-Brassey, 1988). [12] Charles Moskos, ‘The Emergent Military: Civil, Traditional, or Plural?,’ Pacific Sociological Review, 16:2 (1973), pp. 255–80; Idem., ‘What Ails the All-Volunteer Force: An Institutional Perspective,’ Parameters, 31:2 (2001), p. 23. [13] Paul Kelly, ‘Punching above Our Weight,’ Policy, 20:2 (2004), p. 29; Paul Dibb, ‘Why Australia Needs a Radically New Defence Policy,’ Centre of Gravity Series No. 44 (Canberra: Strategic and Defence Studies Centres, 2018); Brendan Sargeant, ‘Why Australia Needs a Radically New Defence Policy,’ Centre of Gravity Series No. 44 (Canberra: Strategic and Defence Studies Centres, 2018). [14] Shiro Armstrong, ‘A New Deal in Asia,’ Foreign Affairs  (March 17), p. 2; Christopher K Johnson et al., Decoding China’s Emerging “Great Power” Strategy in Asia (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2014), pp. 1-32; Zhang Yunling, ‘China and Its Neighbourhood: Transformation, Challenges and Grand Strategy,’ International Affairs, 92:4 (2016), pp. 835-48. [15] David Brewster, ‘India’s Defense Strategy and the India-Asean Relationship,’ India Review, 12:3 (2013), pp. 151-64; Rory Medcalf, ‘In Defence of the Indo-Pacific: Australia’s New Strategic Map,’ Australian Journal of International Affairs, 68:4 (2014), pp. 470-83; David Brewster, ‘India and China at Sea: A Contest of Status and Legitimacy in the Indian Ocean,’ Asia Policy, 22 (2016), pp. 4-10. [16] Sithara Fernando (ed.), United States-China-India Strategic Triangle in the Indian Ocean Region (New Delhi: KW Publishers Pty Ltd, 2015); David Brewster, ‘Australia and India: The Indian Ocean and the Limits of Strategic Convergence,’ Australian Journal of International Affairs, 64:5 (2010), 549-65; Robert Kaplan, ‘Centre Stage for the 21st Century, Power Plays in the Indian Ocean,’ Foreign Affairs (2009). [17]Andrew O’Neil, ‘Conceptualising Future Threats to Australia’s Security,’ Australian Journal of Political Science, 46:1 (2011), pp. 26-32; Michael Evans, ‘Towards an Australian National Security Strategy a Conceptual Analysis,’ Security Challenges, 3:4 (2007), pp.113-30. [18] Commonwealth of Australia, The Defence White Paper 2016 (Canberra: Australian Government Publication Service, 2016), pp. 49-50. [19] Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the U.S. And Israel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). [20] Ibid., p. 121. [21] Ibid., p. 127. [22] Ibid. [23] Elliot A. Cohen, ‘Change and Transformation in Military Affairs,’ Journal of Strategic Studies, 27:3 (2004), p. 400. [24] Ibid. #ProfessionofArms #PersonnelManagement #RoyalAustralianAirForce #5thGenerationAirPower #ProfessionalMilitaryEducation

On 24 October 2019, the Sir Richard Williams Foundation is holding a seminar examining the requirements of Fifth Generation Manoeuvre. The aim of the seminar, building on previous seminars and series looking at #jointstrike and #highintensitywar, is to examine the differences and potential gaps in how the Australian Defence Force must equip and organise for multi-domain operations. In support of the seminar, The Central Blue will run a #5thgenmanoeuvre series to generate discussion and enable those that cannot attend the ability to gain a perspective on the topic. Do you have thoughts on what #5thgenmanoeuvre means for Australia and its region? We want to hear from you! The term ‘fifth-generation manoeuvre’ conveys the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) nascent ability to orchestrate a new way of fighting, characterised by increased tempo and new ways and means of projecting power. Building on the ADF’s existing manoeuvre capability, there is a need to explore the differences in character and attributes of fifth-generation manoeuvre and identify potential gaps in the way we must think, equip and organise to meet emerging national security outcomes. In doing so, we should consider manoeuvre from a historical perspective and evolve concepts to address emerging requirements of contemporary operations, especially as they relate to power projection and the emergence of the electromagnetic spectrum as a warfighting domain in its own right. We must examine how we sense, make sense, and decide within the emerging operational environment, cognisant of the increasingly sophisticated and integrated relationship between humans, technology, and autonomous systems which will characterise fifth-generation operations. Questions abound regarding how enduring requirements for situational awareness and deeper environment understanding can be met, and command intent communicated through a contested and congested electromagnetic spectrum. Multi-domain command and control will be a critical enabler for fifth-generation manoeuvre with communication and network resilience a fundamental consideration in force design and employment. Finally, we must consider how we shape a fifth-generation mindset for combat support and combat service support functions to better exploit the advantages of greater access and movement of information as well as the traditional physical enablers of manoeuvre. The Central Blue’s #5thgenmanoeuvre series, together with the seminar, will seek to explore these issues. Definitive answers are unlikely – but perhaps a better idea of the critical questions that must be explored will begin to emerge. We welcome contributions leading up to the seminar to help shape the discussion, but we are also keen to read about how the seminar shaped attendees’ thinking after the event. We encourage submissions from students, academics, policymakers, service personnel of all ranks, industry, and from others with an interest in these issues. We encourage potential contributors to engage early in their writing process! To help get you started, we pose the following topic suggestions: What are the differences in character and attributes of fifth-generation manoeuvre when compared to the past? What are potential gaps in the way we must think, equip and organise to meet emerging national security outcomes? How can the ADF orchestrate a rapid increase in tempo and open up new ways and means of projecting power and undertaking an indirect approach to warfare? How does the evolving relationship between the human and technology and the trusted autonomous systems affect fifth-generation operations and manoeuvre? What is the role of critical infrastructure and geography, and the opportunities and risks associated with the Australian operating environment? How can multi-domain command and control be a critical enabler for fifth-generation manoeuvre with communication and network resilience? How can we better operate when the electromagnetic spectrum is both contested and congested? What are some of the logistics and sustainment challenges arising from fifth-generation manoeuvre? What does a fifth-generation manoeuvrist look like? How do we develop them? To submit an article email us at thecentralblue@gmail.com. #RoyalAustralianAirForce #5thGenerationAirPower #MultiDomainOperations #CallforSubmissions #ManoeuvreWarfare

We welcome Ulie Yildirim to The Central Blue to examine concepts of the military profession and discuss the profession’s status and role in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). This first of two parts presents an overview of the historical debates surrounding the characterisation of the military profession. ‘[A]lthough one would clearly want to have superior technology, the most important competition is not in the technological but the intellectual one. The main task is to find the most innovative concept of operations and organisations, and to fully exploit the existing and the emerging technologies’ Dima Adamsky[1] Introduction What is a profession? What does it mean to be in the profession of arms? What is professional mastery? Is professional mastery in the military a concept that is applicable to combat arms only? Within this context, how should the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) as the most technical branch of the military view itself within the profession of arms? More importantly, how should the RAAF develop future air power strategists capable of operating in an integrated and joint force to meet the Australian governments’ needs? Such questions have occupied the minds of scholars and practitioners since at least Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State, published in 1957.[2] While Huntington’s proposed model was aimed at providing a broad framework for civil-military relations, his narrow interpretation of Carl von Clausewitz ignored the dynamic nature of professions in general which are continually competing for jurisdiction. This struggle for the link between a profession and its work requires professions to evolve and find ways to remain relevant.[3] In this light, the RAAF participates in the jurisdictional competition of protecting the nation’s interests through the use of complex air materiel, operated by a specialised workforce in which exposure to combat risks is typically confined to a very small proportion of the force. The RAAF has won its jurisdictional competition of protecting the nation’s interests by training, educating and promoting specialists. This investment in specialists has enabled the RAAF to remain efficient by using a smaller workforce and retain its position as a policy device of choice for the civil executive. However, this approach has seen workforce disengagement from the military profession due to strong connections with their specialisation. A symptom of this is the lack of importance RAAF personnel place on professional military education (PME) outside their specialisation. To articulate this argument requires an overview of the debates surrounding the military profession to show that an analysis of ‘the system of professions as a whole’ through the lens of jurisdictions provides a more accurate interpretation of the military profession, within which the RAAF adapts to remain effective and relevant. Second, a discussion of the RAAF’s training, education, promotion and employment continuum reveals that in its efforts to maintain its jurisdiction through the aerospace domain, the RAAF is developing specialists disconnected from the military profession. Finally, the rapidly changing Indo-Pacific region is shown to mean that the RAAF and its workforce concurrently must re-prioritise PME to remain effective and relevant. The Military Profession: From Characterisation to Jurisdiction Huntington began Part I of The Soldier and the State with the assertion that ‘[t]he professional officer corps is a professional body and the modern military officer is a professional man.’[4] Huntington then compared military officers to physicians and lawyers, while contrasting them from the warriors of the past through his model of professions.[5] In this model, Huntington argued that ‘[t]he distinguishing characteristics of a profession as a special type of vocation are its expertise, responsibility and corporateness’.[6] Huntington argued that officership is fundamentally a profession, despite acknowledging that no vocation meets the ideal, and officership falls shorter than most.[7] Huntington stated that the central expertise of officership is ‘management of violence’ with responsibility beyond gaining personal advantage, and corporateness defined as a sense of unity with its members and distinction from the laymen. [8] Huntington was attempting to frame civil-military relations for a military profession based on his perceptions of an idealised Prussian military and a narrow interpretation of Clausewitz’s principle that war as an extension of policy is the only means to exert one’s will over another.[9] He was responding to the US’s political and military context during the Cold War and arguing for an idealised objective civilian control of the military. [10] In doing so, he used Harold Lasswell’s definition of the role of the military to be the management of violence viewed through the lens of the United States’ military’s experiences during the First and Second World Wars.[11] Christopher Gibson explained that despite the idiosyncrasies and flaws of Huntington’s model, it was widely accepted and shaped the way several militaries saw themselves, even to this day.[12] In 1960, Morris Janowitz published The Professional Soldier as a response to Huntington’s objective civilian control of the military and characterisation of the military professional.[13] In his book, Janowitz argues for a subjective civilian control of the military while describing the military establishment as ‘a struggle between heroic leaders, who embody traditionalism and glory, and military “managers,” who are concerned with scientific and rational conduct of war.’[14] He argued that the increased complexity of military materiel led to the rise of military technologists and engineers. However, ‘[n]either heroic leaders nor military managers perform as military engineers or technologists.’[15] Akin to Huntington, Janowitz provided a characterisation of military professionals based on their expertise, lengthy education, group identity, ethics and standards of performance.[16] However, a stark difference from Huntington is Janowitz’s recognition of the evolving nature of the military profession ‘as a dynamic bureaucratic organisation which changes over time in response to changing conditions’ beyond the management of violence. [17] Extending Janowitz’s observations on the dynamic nature of the military profession, Charles Moskos suggested a pluralistic model to define the military profession encompassing a variety of units that exhibit divergence and convergence from civilian society.[18] Moskos argued that divergence from civil society was apparent in parts of the military that value traditional military roles and emphasised the heroic leader, such as combat units. Conversely, convergence with civil society would be observed in military roles such as education and medicine, where the task is not unique to the military.[19] The observations of Janowitz and Moskos were in response to the effects of the Cold War and the Vietnam War during a time of great upheaval within the American political and military cadre. This led to criticism that their models created two militaries in response to a crisis unique to the US, and potentially diluted the professionalism of the military.[20] In response, Moskos suggested a redefinition of the military profession representative of the current context may be required while recognising that any such definition faced a similar fate as Huntington’s due to the profession’s dynamic nature.[21] Arguably the models developed by Huntington, Janowitz and Moskos represented snapshots of the military’s role and position within society observed through the perceived characteristics of professions. These have led to considerable disagreement and misperceptions due to a lack of a consistent approach in assessing the military profession, further complicating debate. Recognising this problem within the study of professions in general, Andrew Abbott proposed an analysis of ‘the system of professions as a whole’.[22] Abbot provided a more compelling interpretation of an ever-changing nature of the military profession, continually adapting to new contexts and demands to remain effective and relevant, akin to any other profession.[23] Abbott’s analysis focused on the work performed by professions rather than their characteristics and demonstrated that professions evolve in similar fashions for acceptance by society or become obsolete.[24] He argued that by developing an abstract knowledge system, professions could redefine their ‘problems and tasks, defend them from interlopers, and seize new problems’ because professions conducting similar work are in constant competition over what he terms jurisdictions —‘the link between a profession and its work.’[25] Abbott argued that: [p]rofessions develop when jurisdictions become vacant, which may happen because they are newly created or because an earlier tenant has left them altogether or lost its firm grip on them. If an already existing profession takes over a vacant jurisdiction, it may in turn vacate another of its jurisdictions or retain merely supervisory control of it.[26] The creation of the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force (RAF) is a case in point. The RAF partially won its post-First World War jurisdictional competition of defending the nation and its interests by arguing that it was able to conduct various roles including strategic bombing and colonial policing better and cheaper than the British Army and Royal Navy.[27] The RAF’s jurisdictional control and role within the military and society were reinforced at the start of the Second World War when the fear of German bomber aircraft redefined the problem of defending the nation.[28] Post-war debates over the efficacy of air power during the war and the validity of air power theories did not affect the RAF’s jurisdictional control, as its role was redefined again with the introduction of nuclear and precision bombs. The RAAF’s operations since World War Two fit well with Abbott’s observations that it is in continuous jurisdictional competitions. Furthermore, it can be seen that the RAAF has evolved beyond the management of violence to remain relevant due to the military profession’s changing context as identified by Beatrice Heuser, who stated: [c]onflict management is not enough, and it is not sufficient to impose one’s will on the enemy merely temporarily, through a successful military campaign… in order to be effective and lasting, a victory has to be built on military success, but has to contain a very large admixture of politics.[29] For example, the RAAF’s participation in Operations Catalyst and Slipper highlighted the RAAF’s response to this changing context. The RAAF provided two C-130 Hercules aircraft for air mobility support as part of these operations during the period between 2003 and 2008[30] ‘Although these aircraft represented only 3 per cent of the Coalition Hercules fleet, they had carried 16 per cent of the cargo lifted by all Hercules in theatre.’[31] During this period, the RAAF was not engaged in the direct application of violence, indicating that the RAAF has evolved beyond the management of violence. Furthermore, this evidence also highlighted that the RAAF’s efforts during this period ensured it was able to extend its jurisdiction over the air mobility domain. Air mobility support could have been obtained from coalition partners, but at least two RAAF C-130 aircraft was in theatre for an extended period of time. Nevertheless, the RAAF’s small commitment demonstrated its evolution to maintain its jurisdiction and remain a trusted policy device for the government. The Government’s subsequent decisions to expand the RAAF’s air mobility fleet through the acquisition of C-17A Globemaster and C-27J Spartan aircraft highlighted the RAAF’s success. Squadron Leader Ulas ‘Ulie’ Yildirim is an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force. The opinions expressed are his alone and do not reflect the views of the Royal Australian Air Force, the Australian Defence Force, or the Australian Government. [1] Dima Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the U.S. And Israel (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010), p. 68. [2] Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957); Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1960); Gwyn Harries-Jenkins and Charles C. Moskos, ‘The Military Professional and the Military Organization,’ Current Sociology 29:3 (1981). [3] Andrew D. Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 2, 20. [4] Huntington, The Soldier and the State, p. 7. [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid., p. 8. [7] Ibid., p. 11. [8] Ibid., pp. 10-4. [9] Ibid., p. 1, pp. 28-56; Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Translated and Edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976). [10] Nadia Schadlow and Richard A. Lacquement Jr., ‘Winning Wars, Not Just Battles-Expanding the Military Profession to Incorporate Stability Operations’ in Suzanne C. Nielsen and Don M. Snider (eds.),  American Civil-Military Relations-the Soldier and the State in a New Era (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 116; Christopher P. Gibson, ‘Enhancing National Security and Civilian Control of the Military – a Madisonian Approach’ in Ibid., pp. 241-3. [11] Huntington, The Soldier and the State, p. 11. [12] Gibson, ‘Enhancing National Security and Civilian Control of the Military – a Madisonian Approach,’ pp. 241-3; Eliot A Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime (New York: Anchor Books), p. 245. [13] Janowitz, The Professional Soldier. [14] Ibid., p. 21. [15] Ibid. [16] Harries-Jenkins and Moskos, ‘The Military Professional and the Military Organization,’ p. 10. [17] Ibid. [18] Charles Moskos, ‘The Emergent Military: Civil, Traditional, or Plural,’ The Pacific Sociological Review 16:2 (1973), pp. 255-80. [19] Harries-Jenkins and Moskos, ‘The Military Professional and the Military Organization,’ p. 17. [20] Ibid., pp. 17-8; Gibson, ‘Enhancing National Security and Civilian Control of the Military – a Madisonian Approach,’ p. 246. [21] Harries-Jenkins and Moskos, ‘The Military Professional and the Military Organization,’ p. 21. [22] Abbott, The System of Professions.. [23] Ibid., p. 2. [24] Ibid., pp. 2-3,19. [25] Ibid., p. 2, 20. [26] Ibid., p. 3. [27] John Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War (London: UCL Press, 1999), pp. 101-4. [28] Alan Stephens, ‘The True Believers: Air Power between the Wars’ Alan Stephens (ed.), The War in the Air (Tuggeranong: Air Power Development Centre, 2009), pp. 27-39. [29] Beatrice Heuser, ‘Clausewitz’s Ideas of Strategy and Victory’ in Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds.), Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 162. [30] The Governor General, ‘Royal Australian Air Force to Be Awarded the Meritorious Unit Citation Queen’s Birthday 2016 Numbers 36 and 37 Squadrons,’ Australian Honours and Awards (Canberra, Australia, 2016). [31] Australia. Royal Australian Air Force. Air Power Development Centre, Australian Air Publication 1000-H: The Australian Experience of Air Power (Canberra. Australia: Air Power Development Centre, 2013). #ProfessionofArms #Professionalism #RoyalAustralianAirForce #CivilMilitaryRelations #ProfessionalMilitaryEducation

We welcome Rodney Barton back to The Central Blue for his first short story, exploring the potential future of the planned Distributed Ground Station – Australia. It was a good day for a coup. The Vendilion parliament had just returned for a sitting week to discuss the latest mining deal with the great power nation of Keratos. Colonel William Dormand, known affectionately as ‘Wild Bill,’ had deployed his troops around key government sites in Vendilia and deployed his crack special forces contingent to secure the parliament building. The military had secured the telecommunications and media institutions and even deployed phone jammers to prevent word from getting out. It had minimal effect, with social media alight with news that the military had just overthrown the Vendilion government.  Australia’s national intelligence agencies were caught by surprise; perhaps they were too focused on Keratos’s expanding influence. The Australian government hastily convened a national security cabinet meeting to discuss response options. The Australian Defence Force was immediately at work planning for anticipated options. The Air and Space Operations Centre (AOC) located within Headquarters Joint Operations Command contacted critical Air Force units to commence military planning. One of the key units involved was the Distributed Ground Station – Australia (DGS-AUS), located in Adelaide. This intelligence unit was responsible for the analysis of data collected from the various Air Force intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft. It also had access to national intelligence resources and using advanced computer systems, it could rapidly fuse collected information and provide decision-makers with enhanced situational awareness of events – such as a military coup in Vendilia. The DGS-AUS unit had already commenced working the Vendilion crisis, beginning with the use of publicly available information, such as Vendilion social media, to understand the mood of the population. In the past, Air Force intelligence analysts rarely used open source information, and when they did, it was typically haphazard. However, social media now pervaded society to the point where people’s lives were virtually recorded in the public domain. The open source analysts were quick to discover the locations and status of many Australian nationals in Vendilia; this information could support evacuation planning. Moreover, the social media posts provided an understanding of what was occurring around Vendilia, particularly the posture of the coup leaders. SAAB Hololens concept for ISR planning DGS-AUS, other units, and the AOC conducted collaborative planning using augmented reality (AR) Hololens visors. This allowed all the participants to not only view all the remote participants involved in the planning, but also the Vendilia area of interest presented in three dimensions highlighting key terrain and locations. Additional information, such as threat and friendly positions were overlaid on a 3D map, allowing planners to see how aircraft could maximise sensor performance and mitigate threats. This was a significant improvement on planning activities in the past, which typically involved large hard copy maps, spreadsheets with key targets, and significant use of PowerPoint slides to ‘sell’ the plan to leadership. Previously, planning was cumbersome, and process driven. Now, 3D representations allowed planners and decision makers to visualise the dynamics of critical events to improve their understanding. Air Force ISR aircraft were soon flying towards Vendilia. A manned MC-55 Peregrine aircraft and MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft were above Vendilia, collecting vital data around the planned collection targets. This data was transmitted back to Australia and into the network, with DGS-AUS analysts eagerly transforming the 1s and 0s into useable intelligence. In the mid-2020s the ability to fly an aircraft remotely in another part of the globe was a recent concept for the Australian military, but the communications networks had matured enough to allow beyond-line of sight control and analysis. The Air Force could also consolidate its intelligence analysts within a central location in DGS-AUS, and virtually collaborate on missions with Army and Navy intelligence analysts. Not only did this provide flexibility and economy in the Joint Force analytical effort, but it also avoided having to deploy more people forward, potentially into harm’s way. The DGS-AUS analysts were working hard on their workstations.  But rather than just gathering information to transform into intelligence like the industrial processes of the past, they were actively hunting for key pieces of the puzzle to provide answers to decision-makers. To support their efforts, the DGS-AUS system was using multiple artificial intelligence (AI) agents to augment the analytical process. One AI agent was busy scraping relevant data from intelligence databases on Vendilion military activity around the Vendilion capital. Another was classifying objects on the screen for the analysts in real-time and reporting what it was seeing. The AI algorithm had been taught to identify dozens of objects, including weapons.  Previous intelligence reporting had indicated that the Keratos military had provided Vendilion forces with advanced crew-portable surface-to-air missiles (SAM). The AI agent, teamed with the human analyst, was able to detect and classify soldiers who were operating these high-threat missiles near the Vendilia airport. Based on AI cueing, Australian strike aircraft engaged these SAMs on the ground to prevent any threat to the helicopters that were flying in at low-level – allowing Australian special forces to secure the airport and assist in the evacuation of Australian citizens. A USAF Distributed Common Ground System (AF DCGS), also referred to as the AN/GSQ-272 SENTINEL weapon system, is the Air Force’s primary ISR collection, processing, exploitation, analysis and dissemination (CPAD) system. (Source: US Department of Defense) During the noncombatant evacuation operation, DGS-AUS analysts were also monitoring the response from Keratos given their influence in Vendilia. Strategic intelligence indicated that the Keratos Navy was assembling an amphibious task group in preparation for their own evacuation. The Australian government quickly directed long-range maritime surveillance around Vendilion waters. DGS-AUS analysts were now supporting maritime surveillance missions by MQ-4C Triton and P-8A Poseidon aircraft as well as the continuing ISR missions over Vendillia. DGS-AUS integration with the strategic intelligence community provided substantial cueing for RAAF assets to maintain battlespace awareness on the potentially looming threat that was heading to Vendilia… To be continued… Squadron Leader Rodney Barton is an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force. This post was originally submitted as part of a Squadron Leader Barton’s Graduate Certificate in Public Sector Innovation through the University of Technology Sydney in 2018. The opinions expressed are his alone and do not reflect the views of the Royal Australian Air Force, the Australian Defence Force, or the Australian Government. #artificialintelligence #ScienceFiction #RoyalAustralianAirForce #ShortStory #Fiction

We are very pleased to welcome Damien Hare to the Central Blue with his fascinating exploration of Operation Carthage and its implications for contemporary operations. The popular perception of bombing in World War II is of inaccuracy and indiscriminate destruction. Despite early intentions to conduct precision raids in Europe, both the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Forces found that limitations of technology, training and the elements severely constrained their ability to conduct accurate bombing. Consequently, they adopted strategic bombing techniques that involved the delivery of explosives from high altitude against targets often defined only as ‘factory complexes’, and frequently with the primary, if unspoken, the aim of simply devastating large areas of German urban development. However, in an age of air power application renowned for area bombing and circular error probables measured in thousands of feet, Operation Carthage – the 1945 raid on the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen – is notable for its remarkable accuracy.[1] Operation Carthage demanded a level of precision that a modern audience would typically associate with laser-guided weapons being delivered through windows that first embedded itself in popular consciousness during the 1991 Gulf War. Moreover, a failure to have successfully done so would have directly endangered the very individuals the raid was, in large part, being conducted to protect. The ultimate success of the raid was thus a testament to the planning and execution of the operation and a tribute to the remarkable skill and airmanship of those involved. Despite the precision of the raid, Operation Carthage was bedevilled by the perennial problem of the bombing of pinpoint urban targets in World War II – large-scale collateral damage. Operating under the constraints of the navigation and target identification technology of the time, some of the raiding crews misidentified their target and delivered their munitions on a nearby school, resulting in the deaths of over one hundred children and teachers. Operation Carthage thus underscores the influence of the Clausewitzian concept of friction in war: while precision munitions can be shown to have reduced the numbers of non-combatants harmed as a result of air attack, arguments that technology may one day eliminate friction are fallacious.[2] For all its accuracy, Operation Carthage demonstrated a problem that remains no less relevant now – that high explosives, once committed to a target, can kill and maim indiscriminately. If the target itself is wrong – through misidentification in planning, through the confusion in execution, through friction – the precise delivery matters little. Rubble and ruins of the rear of the Gestapo HQ building in Copenhagen following a daylight attack on 21 March 1945, in which Mosquito aircraft of No. 464 Squadron RAAF took part. (Source: Australian War Memorial) The Raid As World War II drew to a close in Europe, members of the Danish Resistance became increasingly concerned that their movement was in danger of being eliminated by the German Gestapo. The Gestapo, operating from their headquarters in the so-called “Shell House” in Copenhagen, held considerable documentary evidence on Resistance activities in the building. Additionally, they had installed a number of cells where prisoners could be interned and interrogated. The Danish Resistance, through British operatives in Denmark, had for some time been requesting an RAF attack on Shell House to destroy the Gestapo’s files and remove the threat to their operations. Complicating their request, however, was their desire that the raid should, in addition to destroying the files contained on the central three floors, leave the upper floor – the location of the prison cells – intact to enable the detainees held there to escape.[3] Although initially unwilling, the RAF ultimately agreed to conduct the raid, which its designated Operation Carthage. Responsibility for the mission was assigned to No. 140 Wing of the RAF’s 2nd Tactical Air Force, comprising aircraft from Numbers 21 Squadron RAF, 464 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force, and 487 Squadron Royal New Zealand Air Force, all operating de Havilland Mosquito light bombers. Assignment of the operation to the 2nd TAF was due less to the nature of the raid in a tactical or strategic sense than to the planned method of execution, which would involve a strike conducted at roof-top level. No. 140 Wing was the most experienced in such techniques of the RAF’s Mosquito force at the time and thus possessed the capability and means to achieve the accuracy required.[4] Planning for the raid was meticulous. As one of the raid’s major challenges was the need for crews to identify an individual building in a built-up urban area visually, considerable effort was expended on creating a high-fidelity visual reference for the pilots. The imagery of the target area was gathered from aerial photography and Danish Resistance members, and a detailed relief model of the Shell House and the surrounding city environs constructed. The model enabled pilots to get their eyes down to the level at which they would fly their route and visualise the target as they would see it during the attack.[5] Further effort was devoted to weapon delivery. Though scepticism persisted as to whether it would be successful, the Mosquito crews planned their ingress to the target at rooftop level, aiming to deliver their bombs on a flat trajectory, or ‘skipping’ them in to the lower floors of the Shell House, destroying the Gestapo records on these levels while leaving the upper floors undamaged long enough that the prisoners held there would have time to escape.[6] Moreover, the raid was timed to reach the target when the Gestapo would have two shifts present, and the majority of document safes in the building would be reckoned to be open.[7] The raid was launched on 21 March 1945. Departing from RAF Fersfield in Norfolk, England, a total of 18 Mosquito bombers from No. 140 Wing were accompanied by 28 Mustang escort fighters and an additional two Mosquitos tasked with filming the mission. The aircraft travelled the 350 miles to Copenhagen over the North Sea and Danish countryside at wave and rooftop height, arriving at the target at approximately 11:00. Achieving surprise, the first wave of six bombers successfully identified the target and delivered their bombs, fused with a time delay to permit the aircraft to escape, with considerable accuracy. Their efforts were remarkably successful. Significant immediate damage was done to the central structure of the Gestapo Headquarters, killing around 150 members of the Gestapo and their Danish collaborators, and destroying the archives stored there.[8]  Additionally, though the initial blasts did kill some of the prisoners held in the attic, 18 of the 26 detainees held in the Shell House were able to escape during the raid.[9] The Shell House, substantially damaged, ultimately collapsed. By these results alone, the raid was a success. However, as they sped from the burning target at rooftop height, the Mosquito crewed by Wing Commander Peter Kleboe, and Flying Officer Reginald Hall clipped a post and building roof, and crashed into the nearby Jeanne d’Arc Catholic School, killing the crew.[10] As the second and third waves, each comprising six Mosquitos, approached, several crews misidentified the now-burning school as the actual target. As a result, seven of the 12 aircraft in the follow-on waves delivered their bombs – with No. 140 Wing’s trademark accuracy – on to the Jeanne d’Arc school, killing 86 children and 18 adults, and injuring over 150 more.[11] Speaking of the mission in a film made after the war, Ted Sismore, the master navigator for the raid, noted the irony of the tragedy, observing that, given the success of the initial wave: [h]ad all the bombs gone into the target [the Shell House], it’s most likely that most of the Danes in the attic would have been killed. The loss of the children […] affected us very much.’[12] Three other Mosquitos and two Mustang escorts were lost through enemy action with one Mustang pilot becoming a prisoner, and the remaining seven aircrew killed.[13] The Gestapo HQ building in Copenhagen was a burnt out shell following a daylight attack on 21 March 1945, in which Mosquito aircraft of No. 464 Squadron RAAF took part. (Source: Australian War Memorial) Friction and Precision Carl von Clausewitz described friction in warfare as comprising: [c]ountless minor incidents – the kind you can never really foresee – [that] combine to lower the general level of performance so that one always falls far short of the intended goal.[14] Moreover, friction ‘is everywhere in contact with chance’, and thus brings about effects in war that cannot be measured and, importantly, reliably predicted.[15] Operation Carthage, though objectively a successful military operation, is illustrative of the role of friction in the conduct of war. Despite thorough planning, well-trained crews, and state-of-the-art equipment, the mission resulted in over 250 civilian casualties, none of whom had been accepted during planning as anticipated victims of the raid. It was chance and friction that placed them in harm’s way. The limitations of the technology of the day compelled crews to identify targets visually. The speed and altitude of the approach, necessitated by the need to both maintain surprise, protect them from air defences and identify the target, gave crews precious little time to line their approach up, select the correct target, and deliver their weapons before beginning evasive manoeuvres and leaving the target area. Once the smoke from the burning school, located near the actual target, became prominent, the limitations of human capacity in this demanding and stressful environment made misidentification of the target increasingly likely. The cascading effects of Kleboe and Hall’s Mosquito clipping structures, crashing into a school, igniting a fire, smoke from this fire obscuring the actual target and drawing following crews to identify the school as the Shell House epitomise the concept of friction in war as Clausewitz envisaged it. Casualties are sustained where they had not been anticipated. Plans lose effectiveness as the course of action deviates from the expected path. Actions are taken that produce unhelpful results. The simplest things become difficult, as Clausewitz warns, and with this difficulty comes unpredictability and undesired effects.[16] The civilian casualties at the Jeanne d’Arc school were not the result of wayward bombs that missed the Shell House due to poor aim, aerodynamics, or any other vagary of an unguided weapon. The bombs that hit the school did so because they were aimed at the school; they were delivered precisely at a structure that the crews had identified as their briefed target. By precisely bombing the wrong target, the Operation Carthage crews highlighted an enduring reality of war that promises offered by enhanced technologies have not yet overcome – and will likely never do so. With the introduction of precision-guided munitions on a large scale in the 1990s, advocates of the technology argued that their use would make war cleaner, less destructive, and reduce the suffering of non-combatants. Some proponents, such as former Admiral William Owens, former US Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued that technology, in general, would reduce such a constraint on war to the point where it is militarily insignificant.[17] However, Clausewitz’s notion of friction was not limited to the physical domain and included influential intangible factors that exist in the mental domain.[18] Such factors – fear, stress, confusion, the effects of physical hardship and fatigue, the uncertainty of information and what it may mean – can be influenced by technological aids and solutions, but existing in the non-physical realm the ability to eliminate from the battlefield completely is highly questionable. While enhanced technology offers greater fidelity in target acquisition, identification and discrimination, and precision munitions provide a high level of confidence in striking a target, the precise effects that precision munitions can attain are contingent on the target being right in the first place. Here, the non-physical elements of friction can have a significant influence. During the 1990-91 Gulf War, a civilian defence shelter in the Amiriyah neighbourhood of Baghdad was struck by two laser-guided bombs after it had been incorrectly identified as a command post or military bunker for the Iraqi military. Over 400 civilians and the incident led to restrictions on further US raids on the Baghdad for the duration of the war.[19] Another case occurred during the 1999 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation bombing campaign against Serbia. Inexperience, complacency and poor information management combined to lead the Central Intelligence Agency to misidentify the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade as the headquarters of a Serbian arms agency. Passed to the air planners as a target, the embassy was struck by five satellite-guided bombs Three Chinese nationals were killed, 20 injured, and tensions in the US-China relationship significantly increased.[20] As was the case with the Jeanne d’Arc School, in these examples, the precision munition functioned as designed to, highlighting that where the wrong target is identified, today’s technology simply makes it more likely that the wrong target will be hit precisely. At the heart of this particular manifestation of friction is the human element in warfare. During Operation Carthage, as in the case of Baghdad and Belgrade, the involvement of humans in the application of weaponry through misinterpreted or incorrect information was a clear contributing factor to the tragic outcomes. However, removing the human entirely from the loop itself, as may be promised through the development of autonomous weapons systems, will not completely mitigate the effects of friction either. An adversary may act, such as countermeasures to ‘spoof’ or jam precision guidance or surveillance systems or may defeat intelligence collection and analysis efforts through deception and concealment. Moreover, technology, regardless of its sophistication or reliability, can fail. A system designed and constructed by humans remains susceptible to a myriad of human factors, influences and failings, even when the human is no longer involved in the actual operation of the system. Technology itself thus introduces an element of friction, independent to human involvement, and the enduring nature of war as a chaotic, violent act ensures that the influence of this friction can never be completely eliminated.  Technology may promise a cleaner, more precise war, but the effects of friction will continue to be experienced in the application of force. Unintended consequences will remain an unavoidable fact of conflict in the future as much as they were in 1945. Operation Carthage was in many respects a triumph of determination, planning, training and courage. It reflected the epitome of human skill in air strikes at the time. The strike foreshadowed the potential of precision munitions nearly a half-century later. At the same time, it demonstrated the impact of friction in warfare. The raid was planned and executed with the specific intent of minimising unnecessary casualties; of targeting as precisely as was possible with the technology of the time; and with the explicit aim of avoiding harm to certain individuals and enabling them to escape the subject building. Tragically, through friction and chance, and their cascading effects on human perception and action, the planning and execution were misapplied, and dozens of non-combatants were killed as a result. With precision weapons today offering those same potential effects as Operation Carthage sought to achieve – the ability to target precisely and minimise unnecessary suffering – it remains pertinent to recall the outcome of the raid. War is and remains a human activity, subject to all the limitations and constraints of the human condition. Friction, and its impact on human actions in war will endure as long as humans continue to have a place – any place – in the conduct of conflict. Wing Commander Damien Hare joined the Royal Australian Air Force as an Aerospace Engineering Officer in 1996 and has worked in a variety of roles, including F-111 maintenance and engineering, Aerial Delivery Certification, Aircraft Accident Investigation and the acquisition of the P-8A Poseidon aircraft. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Aeronautical), a Master of Arts (War Studies) and a Master of Military and Defence Studies, specialising in the Art of War. He is currently posted as Directing Staff at the Australian War College, Canberra. The opinions expressed are his alone and do not reflect the views of the Royal Australian Air Force, the Australian Defence Force, or the Australian Government. [1] For any given weapon system, the ‘Circular Error Probable’ is a measure of accuracy. The distance represents the radius of a circle, centred on the aiming point, within which half of the projectiles released will land [2] For example, see P. Meilinger, ‘A Matter of Precision,’ Foreign Policy (2001), p. 78. To be fair, arguments for the ability of precision munitions to minimise civilian casualties usually acknowledge that chance, error and friction – normally through human involvement in the use of precision munitions – will continue to exert an influence on adverse outcomes, even if heavily reduced. However, argumentation in favour of the use of autonomous weapons systems as being ethically sound due to their technology-based precision and their elimination of human-based error suggests there is a potential case for friction to be eventually overcome. See R. Arkin, ‘Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems and the Plight of the Non-Combatant,’ AISB Quarterly, 137 (2013), pp. 1-9; B. Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War (Institute for National Strategic Studies McNair Paper 68, National Defense University, 2004), pp. v-vii for elements of both sides of this debate. [3] M. Gilbert, Second World War (London, UK.: Phoenix Press, 2000), p. 651 [4] A. Leong Kok Wey, ‘Special Operations by Air Power: Strategic Lessons From WWII,’ Air Power History, 2017, p. 37. [5] T. Sismore, as shown in the film ‘The Shell House Raid’, Balkan, E. (producer), 2011, Ed Balkan Productions. [6] K. Velschow, ‘The Bombing of the Shellhus’ (2013). [7] Balkan, ‘The Shell House Raid.’ [8] Kok Wey, op cit. [9] Velschow, op cit. [10] http://www.peoplesmosquito.org.uk/2013/12/06/operation-carthage-the-shell-house-raid-21st-march-1945/. [11] A. Keleny, ‘Ted Sismore (Obituary),’ The Independent, 25 June 2012, p. 44. [12] Sismore, as quoted in Balkan, op cit. [13] http://www.peoplesmosquito.org.uk/2013/12/06/operation-carthage-the-shell-house-raid-21st-march-1945/. [14] Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by M. Howard and P. Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), Bk. 1, Ch. 7, p. 119 [15] Clausewitz, op cit, p. 120. [16] Clausewitz, op cit, p. 119. [17] W. Owens, extract from Lifting the Fog of War, as quoted in M. Cancian, ‘Seeing through the Fog of War,’ Proceedings, 30:2 (2004), p. 50. [18] E. Keisling, ‘Fog – ‘On War’ without the Fog’, Military Review (2001). [19] R. Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Gulf War, (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1994), pp. 275-7, 285-90. [20] E. Schmitt, ‘In a Fatal Error, C.I.A. Picked a Bombing Target Only Once: The Chinese Embassy,’ New York Times, 23 July 1999. #SecondWorldWar #RoyalAustralianAirForce #AirPower #AirPowerHistory #RoyalAirForce