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Dr Robbin Laird, Enabling and Defending the National Information Society: The Space Dimension, 7 October 2024 Link to article (Defense.info) Some time ago – more than a decade – I worked with Alan Dupas, the noted French space expert, on a project for a European space company on the future of space in 2020. We focused on the key point that although a space company was most closely identified with launchers and satellites, the future was its engagement in the global information society. Let me say that we were not greeted with cheers and love. Rather the major company we were dealing with shuddered at the thought that its “things” might be overshadowed by a product – data, communications and information. This of course puts a space company into competition with a range of providers of data, communications and information. Space is enabler of much which goes on in earth providing the nodes and networks of an information society. But space is costly, complex and governments are loath to invest more than they have to in such “esoteric” technology whose investments might cut into social spending or green energy or whatever the priority is for a sitting government. This is certainly the case for Australia. Dr. Malcolm Davis at the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar provided a compelling case for Australian space investments and acceleration of engagement in the space sector. This is how presented and discussed this important subject: Space is contested and congested. When we’re talking about resilience, both being contested and congested are really becoming much more acute as a challenge. Assuring space access for the ADF can be defined in different ways, but I would argue that it’s not just about being able to use a foreign provider. It is also about sovereign space capabilities. Space domain awareness allows space control. If you look at the national defense strategy and integrated investment program, it highlighted space domain awareness. Then importantly made the point that space control is an important task for the ADF.. We can’t have assured access to space if we only rely on foreign launch providers to give us that capability. We need to prioritize our national space capabilities, including sovereign launch. We need to pursue space policy as a whole of nation endeavor. We don’t currently have that. It was started by the previous government. Those efforts were canceled by the current government. I would argue that we need to restore a whole of nation space strategy. Space is an operational domain in its own right… We’re seeing in the arsenals of our adversaries counter space capabilities. And these capabilities do not apply only in hot war scenarios. They could also be used in terms of gray zone operations as well… We need to think in terms of how we defend against what the Chinese call system destruction warfare or how they can utilize counter space capabilities along with cyber attack, electromagnetic operations, and kinetic operations to take down critical Information Infrastructure as quickly as possible… Part of resilience is managing space traffic and that requires a new approach to how we think about space domain awareness, how we manage the increasing amount of material that’s in orbit. Space is increasingly competitive in the sense that it’s no longer just the sole domain of the major powers. It is also about the activity of small to medium powers, including Australia, as well as commercial actors. And space has become democratized through a combination of falling costs that are driven by new technologies which allows more states to do things in space than previously was considered possible or financially viable. That means there is a greater possibility that you could get either non state actors, commercial actors or hostile state actors essentially using space in a way that’s inimical to our interests. But it also brings opportunities in the sense that more states like Australia can actually do things in space that previously were beyond our capabilities… We’re starting to think about space 3.0. Space 1.0 was the Apollo era of big space agencies and the activities were the taxpayer funded and government led. Space 2.0 was the establishment and the emergence of commercial space activities which really transformed the space environment and global space activity, Space 3.0 is that next step that beckons in the future. It’s that opportunity to do space-based industry and a manufacturing capability, a space based economy that exploits space resources and new environments such as lunar space. We have to challenge the orthodox mindsets that I think currently exist within government which primarily thinks about space in terms of satellites and rockets and start thinking about how we can utilize space in radically new and different ways that generate prosperity and growth. He then went on to discuss how adversarial actions in space (war in space) can bring down or dismantle space infrastructure and that this infrastructure is a key part of a functioning information system for Australia. This meant that the Australian government needed to get out of any stoved-piped look at space and take a broader view which would include space policy in the whole of nation concept of defence. A slide from Dr. Davis’s presentation at the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation. He then added: The democratization of space technology means that space is no longer dominated purely by the major actors, so it’s far more unpredictable as an operating environment. Increasingly, counter space technologies are moving in radically different ways and posing direct threats to space assets. For example, If you think back to the Cold War, there was no such thing as cyber warfare. Now we have the potential opportunity for cyber-attacks on satellites that can create scalable or reversible effects to disable or deny. And so suddenly, space weapons or space warfare or counter space capabilities become far more usable because it’s in the interests of our adversaries to use them. And I think that our adversaries recognize that space warfare and counter space capabilities can generate decisive strategic effect. Space is critical for maintaining how we fight wars and how we undertake joint and integrated operations across multiple domains, but it’s also vital for sustaining our information-based economies and societies… Modern information-based societies depend on space capabilities to function, in particular through satellite communications, but also positioning, navigation and timing services. Everything that we do in a modern society from using information on our mobile phones, to our computers, to stock markets, logistics systems, all of that depends on the space capabilities. That dependency will grow in the future, particularly as we get more and more reliant on processes of change associated with the Internet of Things and pursue the fourth industrial revolution. Such transitions demand that we have continued access to space Dr. Davis then went on the identify the various means of space attack and degradation which adversaries have already demonstrated. And his point was clear – If Australia wants to protect its free and open society, if it wants to support a “rules-based” order which in my view is shrinking globally, how can you do so without an effective space engagement policy? Featured Photo: Dr. Davis speaking too the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation.

Dr Robbin Laird, The Challenge of Shaping the Way Ahead for the Ready Force and Preparing for Future Threats, 5 October 2024 Link to article (Defense.info) Prior to the 26 September 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar which focused on shaping a way ahead for the ready force, I spoke with John Conway to get his perspective on the focus of the seminar. With four decades experience in the business of air combat across operations and industry, John is identified this way on the foundation website: John is the Managing Director of Felix, an independent company providing specialist capability development and operational analysis services to Defence since 2017. He was previously a business development and strategy executive with Raytheon Australia specialising in air combat integration, electronic warfare, advanced weapons systems, test and training ranges, and integrated air and missile defence. John retired from the Royal Air Force as a Group Captain in 2010 having served 24 years in a number flying, staff and senior command roles. His operational experience on F4 Phantom and Tornado F3 aircraft included Cold War Europe, the South Atlantic, the Balkans, and the Middle East. He commanded the United Kingdom’s largest Permanent Joint Operating Base at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus between 2005 and 2008 enabling the airbridge into Iraq and Afghanistan, and supporting strategic ISR operations in the eastern Mediterranean. Conway underscored that the foundation seminars had most recently focused on the strategic redesign of the government for the ADF. But the future is not yet here, and the question is how lethal and survivable and effective is the ADF now in its operations? How can it be more effective in the near term? And how are the ADF and defence industry focused on doing so? “For defence leadership, there is a very complex challenge of balancing investments in today’s battles and the future ones. But to understand the challenges for the ready force we need to get outside of the Canberra environment and understand how operational commanders and the ready force are addressing current challenges and shaping a practical way ahead. “We have threats squeezing the defence force. We have a challenging fiscal environment. Despite starting from a less-than-ideal situation, how do we operate more effectively in the here and now while keeping an eye on the future? How do we get everybody to work together to create outcomes greater than the sum of the parts?” He then discussed the late Cold War period where the West understood that it was at a disadvantage with the Soviet Union in a number of areas but worked on building its own asymmetric advantages as part of a credible deterrent structure. He argued that we need the same attitude and approach for today’s world as well. By focusing on our competitive advantages and enhancing them, one can build a pathway to reinforce the ready force and build for the future. He identified a number of areas for particular attention where activities today can shape the development of the future force. The first is the sophisticated exploitation of the electromagnetic spectrum in both defensive and offensive counter air missions. Here he discussed the importance of enhancing the resilience and redundancy in our systems and honing a kill web approach which makes the denial of core ADF electromagnetic capabilities very difficult and hence enhancing the overall deterrent effect. The second was the question of shaping credible ways ahead to build combat mass. Here the focus is upon building and operating within the ready force various types of autonomous collaborative systems and working them in as key enablers of the payloads necessary for a significantly enhanced integrated force. The third is strengthening the enablers of a kill web, notably in terms of C2 and distributed ISR and the ability to perform effective counter-ISR against the adversary. Central to this is an enterprise approach to mission data management and reprogramming for the integrated force. Work is being done to enable the ready force now and how it is being done is shaping the future force as well. He concluded with a very important core point about leveraging and building on the ready force and our lessons learned in the Cold War as we build the future force. “I think going back to some of the traditional ways that we’ve done things in the Cold War and making them more contemporary by the exploitation of new radio frequency technologies and putting the money into the back end of the systems, through the networks, the comms architecture, the mission data environment, and start bringing tempo as well to the way we operate. “It sounds a little bit more like an evolution rather than a revolution. And I think that’s fair. We don’t need to destroy everything that we’ve learned in the past. We just need to keep investing in that next stage and accept that the future probably is a smaller available workforce, and this means we need to effectively exploit technology such as autonomous systems for an enhanced ready force.”

Dr Robbin Laird, How Does the Ready Force Deal with a Rapidly Changing Operational Environment? 4 October 2024 Link to article (Defense.info) It is fine to have long-range force structure planning, but what happens when the operational environment is rapidly changing for your operational force? How to adapt the ready force effectively and adeptly in a timely manner? And what consequences does that have for one’s long-range force structure design? The presentation by Jennifer Parker, Expert Associate National Security College of the Australian National University, focused on a key challenge which raises such questions. Her presentation was entitled: “The Contested Maritime Domain: Challenges for an Integrated Force?” What she focused on was the changing nature of littoral maritime operations, the emergence of new technologies and concepts of operations by various actors notably in the Black and Red Seas, and how those shifts in approach affected maritime operations. The bottom line of her analysis was that the new technologies and approaches had a clear impact on capital naval vessels, and with relevant defence measures, technologies and relevant training, capital ships could still operate effectively in the littorals. But the point can be put bluntly: you need to adapt your ready force to deal with new technologies, new con-ops and technologies. And a point outside of her presentation was inherent within it: what is the future of capital ships integrating maritime autonomous systems? For defence? For offense? Or as I would put it, it is not a question of crewed versus uncrewed vessels. It is about how crewed vessels could leverage offboard assets like maritime autonomous systems or air systems for the projection of effect or defence in depth. Jennifer Parker speaking at the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation. Her first case study was of the Black Sea and contested littoral operations there. She argued that: The range of the littoral is increasing. Ukraine has effectively used uncrewed surface vessels, cruise missiles and UAVs to target ships at greater ranges. Now we don’t know the exact ranges of some of the uncrewed surface vessels that Ukraine has operated, but certainly they managed to hit the Kursk bridge at about 300 nautical miles from Ukrainian controlled territory. That is a dramatic change in terms of the range of the littoral. Ukraine has managed to destroy about 30% of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and certainly pushed them back from Ukraine and territorial seas and from Crimea, and that’s no mean feat when you look at the USV engagements, But what must considered is how the Russian ships have defended themselves. They have no countermeasures whatsoever. They’re barely maneuvering or defending themselves…As offensive capability evolves, we need to be working hard on what the defensive capability is and integrating it into our platforms. She noted as well that USVs can certainly attack ports and port infrastructure. This means that there need to be countermeasures for this new threat as well. The key takeaways from her analysis were the following: Range of the littoral is increasing Sea denial strategy in enclosed seas Ship preparedness / posture is key Balance between development of offensive / defensive balance (capability / counter capability) Maritime trade does not stop during conflict Importance of port infrastructure protection Her second case study was of the Red Sea and the approach of the Houthis to disruption in the littorals. She argued that: The Houthis have been successful in changing the direction of maritime trade. There have been over 100 attacks now on merchant shipping, and 30 of these attacks have managed to sink a couple of ships. This shows the vulnerability of choke points using the kind of systems and technology available to the Houthis. They have attacked but not damaged surface combatants. She underscored that prepared surface vessels have successfully defended themselves but two problems have been underscored for the ready force. First, the fleet needs to find ways to be rearmed with missiles while at sea. Second, the fleet needs to find much cheaper ways to defeat the unmanned strike force directed against the fleet. She argued that it was necessary for the ready force to be “stressed tested” by engaging in such deployments to evolve its combat edge. The key takeaways from her analysis were the following: Vulnerability of chokepoints Continuing relevance of surface combatants Magazine depth / Replenishment at sea Integration of counter-drone capabilities Importance of stress testing capabilities Continuing relevance of convoy operations Strategic depth in maritime fleet Defence / maritime industry coordination Maritime trade doesn’t stop / it evolves Her third case study was of the PRC actions against the Philippines. The key takeaways from her analysis were the following: Blurring of civil maritime security threats Criticality of maritime domain awareness Effective presence operations require quantity of forces Integration of information operations into wider campaign strategy And finally she addressed the active threats to sea laid cables which are critical to the information flows globally. Here she asked the poignant question: “Whose responsibility for such defense is this in Australia? And what are we doing about it?” This challenge is a key one, which parts of NATO are finally addressing in Europe. For example, in the recent NORDIC WARDEN Exercise, the UK and Northern European nations exercised their forces to shape a con-ops to deal with this, although the exercise indicated important technology and force structure gaps to deal with the challenge. With regard to operations in the Red Sea, she noted: A number of the European navies who have gone through their workups and gone through their test and evaluation have sent ships to the Red Sea and learned very quickly that their combat systems and their missile systems were not up for the fight and had to withdraw them. That is something that we want to learn before we are getting multiple missiles shot at us in the event of a more significant conflict. Parker underscored the really crucial point that when it comes to naval operations, the military and the civilian aspects are intertwined. Australia depends on maritime trade, which will need to continue in times of conflict, and to do so, the military and civilian parts of the equation need to be clearly working together. She noted: We’ve learned that defence and maritime industry need to coordinate now. That’s something that we consistently relearn, and that has been a key point of the defence of merchant shipping in the Red Sea, and something that Australia needs to think about as we try and grow our maritime industry with strategic fleet… Maritime trade does not stop in the event of conflict, so the view that we don’t need to worry about it or that we just need to worry about protecting Australia has not borne itself out in our previous world wars and it is not bearing itself out in the Black Sea or the Red Sea. And what is happening in the west Philippine Sea is a clear blurring of civil maritime security threats. This is something that we need to pay attention to. We currently have a civil maritime strategy. We have a military maritime strategy, and the two don’t connect. It’s not too far to think that an adversary could try to overwhelm Australia’s maritime domain through using what we would continue consider civil maritime threats. And to Parker’s point about “Ship preparedness / posture is key”:

Dr Robbin Laird, Building Combat Mass: A Navy Perspective, 30 September 2024 Link to article (Defense.info) When you are a medium-sized force and not adding a lot of manned platforms in the next five years, how to you enhance combat mass? Or put another way how does the ADF as a ready force create mass effects with what they must fight with tonight and what they can plus up with in the short to mid-term? This was the focus of the panel chaired by AIRMSHL (Retd) Darren Goldie with participation from the commander of the Royal Australian Navy, RADM Christopher Smith and the commander of the Royal Australian Air Force, AVM Glen Braz. In this piece, I will deal with RADM Smith’s remarks and in the next with AVM Braz’s remarks. Let us start with RADM Smith’s remarks and then unpack them. Considerations of agility are paramount to our force structure. But how is this achieved framed against the scope and the pace of today’s military challenges, while preserving the flexibility to respond to contingencies of climate change and mass migration> How do we generate the necessary mass to deliver on this broad remit of diplomatic constabulary and warfighting missions? Generating mass will continue to challenge us, but I will attempt to articulate specific methods I think can assist. I’ll focus particularly on generating mass by increasing survivability of our forces, generating mass through partnerships, both with industry and in our region, and finally, generating mass by developing multistage force structures that add scalability, resilience and agility relative to our traditional conceptualisation of mass. Today, the challenge we face pairs near persistent, wide area surveillance capabilities with advanced, long range precision strike. Moreover, the volume and pace of the PRCs naval program has altered the landscape in which we must conceive of mass. Collectively, these challenges require us to reappraise our methods of confronting that challenge. The first way in which today’s RAN in is able to build combat mass and depth by incorporating distribution forces operating across the maritime domain aim to defeat our adversary’s ability to find, fix, track, target and engage Australian forces. This methodology seeks to distribute our forces in less detectable, less targetable means that present no clear center of gravity to the opposition. This approach eschews optimizing defeat of the adversary’s missiles in lieu of defeating their ability to effectively employ them. Distributed forces are also able to match their firepower across a wider area compared to denser concentrations. In this way, our forces become more survivable and better able to safeguard our maritime communications and trade. Echoing the wisdom of the classic theorists, distributed maritime operations places emphasis on massing effects vice platforms to generate the necessary depth of lethal force at the decisive point. Distribution as a core concept of our operations therefore seeks to manage a defensive problem while seizing an offensive opportunity. But there is tension between greater distribution and effective c2. Distributed forces will need to be supported by scalable and flexible c2, elements able to operate, either ashore or afloat and remain connected by resilient, low signature, redundant data networks that can withstand the contest for spectrum. To support our survivability and decision advantage, we must dominate the various spectra in which our forces operate, employing techniques of deception and maneuver to install doubt in the mind of our adversaries. The contest for spectrum will impact the wider contest for decision making advantage critical to our ability to dictate the tempo of conflict. Together, these concepts will enable the RAN to achieve electromagnetic mass simultaneously flooding the spectrum and manipulating the pace of decision making of our adversaries. Decision superiority and the ability to dictate the scale and tempo of operations will thus be generated through distribution and manipulation of the perception of mass that we present to our adversary. This brings me to the second point on how we will deliver mass. The concepts I’ve outlined will require leveraging our critical partnerships across industry and across borders. The pace and scale of change is perhaps nowhere where more obvious than in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Of particular note is the ability of Ukrainian forces to generate a sea denial capability against the Black Sea Fleet through employment of remote and autonomous systems delivered by industry partners to fill a critical capability gap for Ukraine. The full impact of what these developments may mean for potential great war conflict in our own region may not be fully known yet it appears there are. Opportunities available for their employment as a complicating feature of the contested physical and informational battle space. The potential of these systems to raise the noise floor for our opposition may go well beyond their presence in the physical domain to what signatures can be synthetically manipulated and what synergy may be found with loitering munitions and decoys. The full realization of these capabilities to generate electromagnetic mass will necessitate the type of technology and information sharing with our partners that AUKUS can deliver and will be reliant on our continued engagement with domestic industry partners to push the boundaries of what is viable. Finally, pairing the two points above, the RAN will seek to generate mass by reshaping its multistage system that leverages the potential of modern, uncrewed systems and spectrum manipulation with the long range understood benefits of distributed forcesin the maritime domain. A multistage system can be understood as a combat force that maximizes the versatility, adaptability, survivability and controllability of multiple layers of the fleet and maritime forces. The combat power of a stage system is simultaneously concentrated and distributed to generate mass in the battle space that commanders will leverage to dictate and scale the the tempo of combat. Importantly, a multistage system requires all components to be defeated in order to negate its combat power. This increases the resilience of the systems, degradation and attrition. The next evolution in a multistage combat systems will almost certainly involve increased reach, persistence and agility by inclusion of remote and autonomous systems that are able to pair with or operate independently from their associated crew platforms. Future multistage systems will incorporate adaptability and interchangeability that goes beyond the power of carrier centric forces, as the diminished size and the crewing requirements make this capability available and affordable additions to even frigate and destroyer sized platforms. But more than just uncrewed systems, future multistage forces will leverage the joint capabilities of distributed land and air assets throughout the maritime environment. The ability of future ground and air forces to contribute essential kinetic, non-kinetic effects to multi domain strike missions in the maritime environment will be essential to improve the economy of effort and generate sufficient precision and firepower at the decisive points. The conception of mass in modern maritime combat demands clarity in the development of our doctrine and concepts. As past examples have shown us, challenges Australia faces today are not unique, and our thinking around combat, mass and depth should be informed by previous incarnations of this conundrum. We so we must again today, reconceive our thinking around mass. Our fleet has embarked on this journey, but full clarity around the destination remains ambiguous. Concepts of distribution and spectrum manipulation will support our requirement for decision superiority. Uncrewed systems will add complexity to the adversary’s situational awareness while simultaneously refining our own. Pairing these ideas as a network of scalable and adaptable teams to form multistage systems will build necessary depth, versatility and resilience. Yet the final product remains to be fully conceived, articulated and engineered to success. Engagement with industry and coalition partners will remain pivotal to delivering this end state. Along the way, we will require no small amount of innovation and an appetite to deal with the concomitant risk. What makes this presentation so interesting is that it combines ways to enhance the current force going forward with the end state which he sees as necessary for the Royal Australian Navy. In the near to mid-term, one needs to enhance the ability of the fleet to be augmented with the additional of uncrewed systems but do so by having significant creativity in creating combat clusters afloat which can leverage ground and air capabilities as well supporting distributed fleet operations. While not talking directly about ship building his emphasis on mass effect is upon what he calls a multi-stage system or what I would call a maritime kill web. The idea is simply that through ISR, C2 and Counter ISR, the maritime maneuver force is able to mask, and to integrate with joint or coalition forces to deliver the mass effects necessary to confuse, mis-direct and defeat adversary forces. It is really about building kill web maneuver forces. In a recent interview I did with LtGen (Retired) General Heckl, the recent head of the USCM combat development command underscored that what Force Design for the USMC is really all about was creation of a maneuver force able to operate against a force with better ISR and significant long-range precision strike. And in that interview, we focused on what I see is a major unsolved problem – the need to use autonomous systems now as part of the maneuver force and how to begin solving the ability of manned and autonomous systems to work effectively in crafting the required capabilities of a successful maneuver force. One problem he highlighted was the following: “How we effectively communicate with autonomous systems is the key to using them effectively. We don’t want rogue robots in the battlespace. And bandwidth is a key challenge. How do I work with multiple autonomous and manned systems? How do I communicate? How do I exercise fire control? And how do I provide the kind of interactive support and guidance with the Ground Combat element as it works the kind of offensive-defensive maneuver required in the conditions of being threatened by adversarial long-range fires and capable surveillance systems?” This is a key element for working the kind of multistage system Smith is talking about. And this is not a long-range problem. It is part of the challenge in the next 2-5 years and as it is worked, the scope and nature of the future force will change significantly in ways no future force planner can now accurately predict. This raises what I think is a key conundrum: If the force structure in being is modernized through the digital enablers for an integrated force –- C2, ISR, and Counter-ISR – and autonomous systems which are also software upgradeable payloads, how then do you know what exquisite platforms to buy for the future? Featured Image: RADM Christopher Smith speaking to the Sir Richard Williams Foundation September 26, 2024

Dr Robbin Laird, The Chief of the Australian Army Explains How They are Dealing with the Simultaneous Challenges of the Three R’s, 3 October 2024 Link to article (Defense.info) In the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams seminar, we focused on how the force in being can evolve effectively in the near to mid-term as investments are being made in future force capabilities, most notably the new SSNs. This means that the services have to deal with three challenges simultaneously or what one might call the three R’s: Re-structuring or redesign, readiness and resilience. I had a chance to discuss how the Australian Army was dealing with these challenges in a meeting in the office of Lt. General Simon Stuart on September 29, 2024. Lt. General Stuart underscored: We must do all three simultaneously. That means that we have to change the way we are set up and the way we work. Previously, we did our force generation, force modernisation and readiness activities separately. They were three different parts of the force. We had a readiness model where we consumed readiness while we were deployed. We cannot operate that way anymore, as we did in the so-called ‘wars of choice’. We start with the consideration that time is the key resource. It is insufficient to invest our time in three different activities and then converge on an operation. We assign land forces to the Chief of Joint Operations (CJOPS), and I give him a level of assurance that these forces are ready and at a clearly defined readiness level. CJOPS assigns the mission and tasks for the particular operation, activity or investment. Now – In a new way of working, I will also assign tasks in support of force generation and force modernization objectives. When we deploy, whether onshore or offshore, bilaterally or multilaterally, we are going to make the best return on investment we possibly can. For example, the forward deployed forces working in Indonesia as part of Exercise Super Garuda Shield, worked with a partner, had assigned tasks from CJOPS and me. The tasks from me may be individual and/or collective training objectives, or in support of force modernization. There might be an experiment. They may have new kit, and I might task them to figure out what tactics, techniques and procedures we must adopt to employ and integrate this new kit on operations. In other words, we are flipping the model from one where we consume readiness when we’re deployed to one where we build readiness while we deployed. If we are doing that consistently across all operations, activities and investments, and we are doing that at scale, then we start to build readiness across the force. We cannot afford a model where we have one part of the force at a high state of readiness, and the rest of the force at low levels of readiness. It is very expensive and inefficient. We must be disciplined in understanding the difference between training levels and readiness levels. I noted that the Army was a crucial force for working partnerships across the region, and frankly, I consider a major contribution of the ADF to enhance its operational capabilities out to the Solomon Islands. The Army can provide the kind of local knowledge and local partnerships crucial for the defence of Australia and for the region. Lt General Stuart certainly agreed. Some of the value of land forces is in presence and persistence, and those relationships you need in terms of placement, access and understanding the situation, the micro terrain, understanding the littorals, understanding the ports and the airports, understanding the language, the local culture. What does normal look like? And how do you detect what’s different? How do you characterise threat? We then return to a discussion of readiness built as well through a change in the training process. Lt General Stuart underscored this approach as follows: We have changed markedly since the so-called ‘wars of choice’. Back then a battle group would go the Combat Training Center and be trained for a specific mission and theater. The trainers provided a full mission profile environment for the specific theater of operation. Today the battle group comes to the training center and is provided with a full mission profile for various operational environments and the Commander trains their unit or formation. That is how we are building readiness now. We then shifted to the discussion of force structure redesign. Lt General Stuart emphasized the following: In terms of force structure redesign, it is 18 months last week since the 2023 Defense Strategic Review. The Army has moved very quickly to execute on our mission and tasks, and our transformation. In that time, we have rewritten the land domain concept, the land operating concept (which translates the joint or the integrated force concept into the land force component), and translated the Chief of Joint Operations plans into force structure and readiness requirements for the Army. We have rewritten a number of the subordinate concepts, for example, the special operations concept. We have re-organized the Army. We have changed its disposition, and we are getting after the reorganization of units at brigade and at battlegroup level, changed the way we do operational command and control and the physical footprint and disposition of our formation level headquarters. We have created a dispersed nodal structure. We understand the bandwidth requirements, the data exchange requirements, the data standards and the architecture needed in order to operate in this manner. How does the Army contribute to and draw upon the combined kill web? We have been exercising and experimenting over the last four years across northern Australia with the first brigade which is our lead unit for littoral operations. We’ve been doing that across the North of Australia and projecting into the Northwest. We’ve been doing that with our teammates in the Marine Rotational Force-Darwin, and U.S. Army Pacific and specifically with their composite watercraft company. We have leased civilian stern landing vessels to practice and to experiment and figure out how we’re going to incorporate new weapons, new watercraft, new digital systems in order to meet our operational mission. It is experimentation with a focus on ‘learn by doing’ and builds readiness in the process. We are redesigning the Army in a very practical way. And the way that our soldiers have embraced innovation from the ground up to solve operational problems is just phenomenal. It’s a work in progress, but it’s moving quickly, and we are working with every partner, whether industry, allies or the other services to get after these problems. In that way, the redesign turns upside down the capability development and delivery process. We used to start with the major system, let’s say watercraft. We then built some facilities, we trained some people, we did some Operational Test and Evaluation, and then we fielded the system. That process would traditionally take about a decade for a major system. One of the requirements of the 2023 Defence Strategic Review is to change the way that the Government, Defence and the other agencies do acquisition. While we wait for those changes to occur, we’re doing what we can with what we have and taking that approach already. For example, the very last thing to be delivered for the littoral maneuver capability will be the watercraft. We’ll have the doctrine, the concepts, the tactics, techniques and procedures already adopted. We will already have adopted different structures, different ways of working, and different equipment sets to support how our formations fight. The third piece, which you asked about, was resilience. We are not going to fight alone nor are we going to sustain ourselves on our own. We are working with small and medium enterprises, Australian enterprises notably, as well as the large primes we are associated with, to build the magazine depth and effectors we need for today and tomorrow’s fight, particularly when it comes to long-range strike. The other aspect to resilience is what I call ‘adaptive reuse’. In other words, what do we have that can be reused in different ways – perhaps with a technical inject? Because you go with the kit you’ve got in a ‘fight tonight’ situation. How can we use our extant kit in different ways through the application of technology or by integrating it into a human-machine team? We are building an ecosystem that fosters innovation from the ground up, adding resources to it, and we’re getting some great results. We have completely changed the mission of our 1st Armored Regiment which was previously a tank regiment, but it is now the lead trace for applied modernisation in our Army. It is the center of a network of industry, military and academia focused on solving today’s problems by putting new kit in the hands of our soldiers and enabling them to figure out how they are going to best use it operationally. Featured Image: Defence Advisor, Colonel Corey Shillabeer, Malaysian Chief of Army General Datuk Muhammad Hafizuddeain bin Jantan, Chief of Australian Army, Lieutenant General Simon Stuart AO DSC, and Malaysian Defence Advisor to Australia Colonel Mahammad Fazli pose for a group photo, during the bilateral engagement program as part of the Chief of Army Symposium 2024 in Melbourne, Victoria. September 12, 2024 Credit: Australian Department of Defence

Dr Robbin Laird, Building Combat Mass: An Air Force Perspective, 2 October 2024 Link to article (Defense.info) The panel on combat mass was chaired by the former Air Commander Australia, AIRMSHL (Retd) Darren Goldie who provided an overview to the discussion. AIRMSHL (Retd) Darren Goldie introduced the panel with a clear overview regarding the challenge. This is how introduced the subject: The definition of combat mass is widely agreed as overwhelming combat power at the decisive place and time. And it’s worth remembering that this is about massing combat effects, rather than massing combat forces. It’s worth remembering that this concept is not new. To quote Clausewitz On War, the center of gravity is where mass is concentrated. We hear a lot of negativity in Canberra: There’s not enough money, there’s not enough people, there’s not enough strategy, there’s not enough drones, there’s not enough everything. We need to uplift this conversation and talk about the great things that are happening in the fighting parts of our force. Between the two speakers, they command 40% of the Australian Defence Force, and it’s a rare opportunity to have the two operational commanders in front of you and talking about how they are thinking through the most complex problems facing the operational force. AIRMSHL (Retd) Darren Goldie chairing a panel at the Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar September 26, 2024 After the presentation by Admiral Smith, the current Air Commander Australia, AVM Glen Braz, then spoke. Let me start with his presentation and then unpack some of his thoughts to discuss the challenge of ramping up the capabilities of the ready force. AVM Braz highlighted a number of key themes in his presentation: Building combat mass is front and center of all of our efforts across Air Command and Air Force at the moment, and I like to think of it across a few layers. And those layers are broadly the technology layer, the human layer, the operational layer, and finally, and perhaps most importantly for us in this context, is the organizational layer. From a technology layer perspective, there is no doubt we need the enhancements of proliferated UAS and UAV systems that are collaborative in human and machine teaming, and we are working to build the basic steps of bringing that into service as soon as we can, pending the outcomes of the good work across MQ 28 and other similar systems. I do need off-board weapons systems, and I do need off board sensor systems as part of a mass force. We need to be able to concentrate massive force at the time and place of our choosing. And it’s going to be a relative measure, one that will be undoubtedly constrained by the physics of our force which remains small. I absolutely need UAS for combat effects, but I also need them for survivable distributed logistics… In developing agile operations concepts and to orchestrate the operation of the force, I need to understand what’s going on across the force. Situational awareness and resilience of communications are fundamental to how we achieve the tactical and operational effects that we need… to be able to synchronize and harmonize the mass effect that we need at the right time and place. Cost effectiveness in terms of affordable and attritable systems need to be part of that concept. We are outstanding at building long duration projects with exquisite platforms… But they’re not perfect, and they need ongoing investment. They need ongoing sustainment and upgrade to remain relevant, because even the major systems like F 35 need updates, and they need to be brought up to the latest standard. It’s no different for the enhanced force in being, where we need to embrace the concept of more consumable capabilities that are more quickly adapted into the battle space and that can give us affordable and rapid mass if and when we need it. And I’ll talk more to how we get after doing some of that in terms of manufacturing and adaptation, that is going to be key to generating and sustaining mass. And I have already mentioned that the ongoing ability to remain aware of the battle space where our own forces are in the distributed model will be fundamental to what we do. If I look at the human layer, we have scaled up pilot training and the number of graduates. I’m actually at the point where I have to throttle the number of graduates for air force through the pilot training system at the moment, because I need to be able to absorb them downstream, and I need to sustain and operate them downstream as part of a broader force. And while I can grow elements of the workforce as directed by the national defense strategy, I need to buy and grow all parts of the system with a degree of proportion or the system will be misshapen and will fail as a result. So pilot training is a success story for us, but equally, we’ve ramped up our ability to scale initial military training and initial employment training across the air domain. There’s workforce allocations available across the department and in the air domain and I’m confident that we can success. We are attracting more people than ever. People want to come and join our Air Force and the ADF writ large. And I want to leverage that, and I would absolutely welcome the apportionment to the air domain to let me to continue to grow in the right shape and in the right proportion… AVM Braz, Air Commander Australia, speaking at the Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar on September 26, 2024. We’re working very hard to get better at how we apportion and appropriate relevant or minimum viable skills to the workforce… The human layer is mindset. For example, with regards to the Combat Support Group, we are changing the mindset of that organization to be one that acknowledges that everyone is in the fight, not one wing over another, not a garrison wing versus a deployable wing, but the whole of Combat Support Group is adapting to the mindset that they will be needed to go forward to generate the mass and the resilience and the depth in the force to operate across the bases and places that we need them to function… When you’re a small force with outstanding capabilities, you need the absolute most from your people, and you want to generate mass in time and place of your choosing, then having the ability to surge key parts of that workforce will be fundamental… The design of how we would cluster and disaggregate and reaggregate is something that’s a core activity, mostly led by the Air Warfare Center, and I’ll come back to them in the organizational mindset in a moment, but they are working on the ideas of deception and and dispersal and how to maximize how to be survivable, including hardening and other elements that are very important to us. Fundamental to all of this will be interoperability with our key allies and partners, and while we can generate interesting agile operations mindsets, unless they are well integrated and nested with our partners then our ability to collaboratively generate mass will suffer. I’m working very closely with Pacific Air Forces as one example, to enhance our interoperability across the c2 and across the weapon system that is the air operations center. Finally, let me discuss the organizational layer. I want to see a pivot in our defense organization that is underpinned by what has been often mentioned this morning, namely a sense of urgency… I would love to see that permeate more broadly across the department. The pivot that we need to take is one that moves away from the mindset of long term, very large, long duration, low risk, in some ways, projects to deliver exquisite capabilities, and one that is more adept, structured, organized, and has the risk tolerance to take on short term consumable capabilities that can rapidly and with relevance uplift the force in being. That might take some time and will take commitment from across the organization to achieve that sense of urgency. [For the RAAF, one way to do so] is to leverage my Air Warfare Center which is a crucible for creativity and ideas and where we can bring new technologies into the force quickly. We can experiment with them. We can apply them to great training scenarios, and we can inform a rapid capability cycle inside the system in ways that will be tangible and meaningful for the enhanced force in being and help us generate mass…. Let me unpack some of these thoughts and make some comments. As Air Commander Australia, Braz is charged with being ready for the fight tonight. He must be focused on a sense of urgency. One area where a lack of a sense of urgency is evident across the three AUKUS countries is getting at buying and deploying military kit and solution sets that are gap fillers. Last year I interviewed a senior U.S. Admiral who put this challenge very well: Rehearsal of operations sheds light on our gaps. if you are rehearsing, you are writing mission orders down to the trigger puller, and the trigger puller will get these orders and go, I don’t know what you want me to do. Where do you want me to be? Who am I supposed to check in with? What do you want me to kill when I get there? What are my left and right limits? Do I have target engagement authority? This then allows a better process of writing effective mission orders. so that we’re actually telling the joint force what we want them to do and who’s got the lead at a specific operational point. By such an approach, we are learning. We’re driving requirements from the people who are actually out there trying to execute the mission, as opposed to the war gamers who were sitting on the staff trying to figure out what the trigger pullers should do. We focused in that conversation on the need for the ready forces to be able to order short term capabilities to fill gaps. This will become crucial as we work the payloads on air and maritime autonomous systems to fill gaps. Or put another, a sense of urgency at this time in history requires an ability for greater acquisition authority to shift to the ready force. And the interview I did with this Admiral also highlighted that the U.S. and its allies working together could shape a division of labor to fill gaps in addition to acquisition of things, but this required training and operative force redesign among the forces working together. This is what the Admiral emphasized: We need to build a centralized planning organization in the Pacific, that has intelligence, future plans, future ops, current ops, ISR, logistics, all of those things included in the discussions. And it’s made up of all of anybody who has desires to participate. This will allow us to understand what allied objectives are, and what their limits are, too, and helps us to identify the barriers such as foreign disclosure, so we can start to break down some of those barriers. We can recognize weaknesses in our operational forces, the gaps as we have discussed, and we can focus on closing those gaps ourselves or by interchangeability with an ally. There are places where allies have capability that we do not have which can fill the bill. Another point raised by the AIRMSHL was the need to fund and execute in a timely fashion the upgrades necessary for the core combat programs. This is especially important as air platforms have become software upgradeable, and ways need to found not only to fund but to accelerate where possible software upgradeability. For the ready force, there is an increasing need to be able to operate with significant software transient advantage, something that has been clearly demonstrated in the battles over electromagnetic spectrum in the Russian-NATO war in Ukraine. A final point which I will highlight is training. The relationship between training and experimentation and inclusion of the outcomes of this effort INTO the ready force rather than on the conveyer belt of science projects for some future force is central to enabling a sense of urgency to lead actually to enhanced capabilities for the ready force. Several years ago, I talked with Air Vice-Marshal (Retired) John Blackburn about this challenge. This is how we discussed the challenge in this 2017 interview: During my visit to Canberra, I had a chance to discuss with Air Vice-Marshal (Retired) John Blackburn how the training approach could be expanded to encompass and guide development. “We know that we need to have an integrated force, because of the complexity of the threat environment will will face in the future. The legacy approach is to buy bespoke pieces of equipment, and then use defined data links to connect them and to get as much integration as we can AFTER we have bought the separate pieces of equipment. This is after-market integration, and can take us only so far.” “This will not give us the level of capability that we need against the complex threat environment we will face. How do we design and build in integration? This is a real challenge, for no one has done so to date?” Laird: “And the integration you are talking about is not just within the ADF but also with core allies, notably the United States forces. And we could emphasize that integration is necessary given the need to design a force that can go up an adversary’s military choke points, disrupt them, have the ability to understand the impact and continue on the attack. This requires an ability to put force packages up against a threat, prosecute, learn and continue to put the pressure on. “Put bluntly, this is pushing SA to the point of attack, combat learning within the operation at the critical nodes of attack and defense and rapidly reorganizing to keep up the speed and lethality of attack. “To achieve such goals, clearly requires force package integration and strategic direction across the combat force. “How best to move down this path?” Blackburn: “We have to think more imaginatively when we design our force. A key way to do this is to move from a headquarters set requirements process by platform, to driving development by demonstration. “How do you get the operators to drive the integration developmental piece? “The operational experience of the Wedgetail crews with F-22 pilots has highlighted ways the two platforms might evolve to deliver significantly greater joint effect. But we need to build from their reworking of TTPs to shape development requirements so to speak. We need to develop to an operational outcome; not stay in the world of slow-motion requirements development platform by platform.” Laird: “Our visit this year to the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center at Fallon highlighted the crucial need to link joint TTP development with training and hopefully beyond that to inform the joint integration piece. “How best to do that from your point of view”? Blackburn: “Defence is procuring a Live/Virtual/Constructive (LVC) training capability. “But the approach is reported to be narrowly focused on training. We need to expand the aperture and include development and demonstration within the LVC world. “We could use LVC to have the engineers and operators who are building the next generation of systems in a series of laboratories, participate in real-world exercises. “Let’s bring the developmental systems along, and plug it into the real-world exercise, but without interfering with it. “With engagement by developers in a distributed laboratory model through LVC, we could be exploring and testing ideas for a project, during development. We would not have to wait until a capability has reached an ‘initial’ or ‘full operating’ capability level; we could learn a lot along the development by such an approach that involves the operators in the field. “The target event would be a major classified exercise. We could be testing integration in the real-world exercise and concurrently in the labs that are developing the next generation of “integrated” systems. “That, to my mind, is an integrated way of using LVC to help demonstrate and develop the integrated force. We could accelerate development coming into the operational force and eliminating the classic requirements setting approach. “We need to set aside some aspects of the traditional acquisition approach in favor of an integrated development approach which would accelerate the realisation of integrated capabilities in the operational force.” Let me close by examining more closely the AVM’s comments on off-boarding. When I worked for Secretary Wynne as a consultant beginning in 2004, I was focused primarily on the challenge of building a F-35 global enterprise. Wynne often made the point that a major problem for fighter pilots with fifth generation was that often they would not be delivering the kill shot, for their role was to identify targets for other shooters. The off-boarding of weapons and sensors is at the heart of the kill web force, whether manned or inclusive of unmanned or autonomous systems. This strategic shift to off-boarding is what allows one to consider massing force from different locations, from different platforms, from the joint force or the coalition force. But how does the emergence of off-boarding affect the future of platform acquisition or the design of “next generation” core manned platforms? In other words, adding new autonomous systems is not simply additive but goes to the core of weapons design and I would argue will change significantly future force design. That is why I would argue that adding autonomous systems to a ready force which is built around a kill web con-ops of off-boarding is not simply a gap filler but a strategic shift in next generation platform design. Featured Image: AIRMSHL Braz with Rear Admiral Smith at the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar.

Dr Robbin Laird, The Force in Being to Protect the Nation: Its More than the ADF’s Role, 1 October 2024 Link to article (Defense.info) We focused in the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams seminar on ways for the force in being to be augmented in the short to midterm. But for the effective defence of Australia as a nation, one needs to expand the notion from a force in being to a force in being embedded in the national enterprise which participates beyond the remit of the ADF to defend the nation. Two presentations at the seminar provided insights in how to think about this approach. The first was by Chris McInnes, Executive Director, Air Power Institute, and the second was by Dr. Malcolm Davis from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. McInnes highlighted the importance of an Australian-wide aviation enterprise incorporating the civil sector as a key part of the overall defense of the nation. Davis focused on the space dimension as a key part of Australia having an effective capability to participate in the broader information society domestically and internationally. In this piece, I will address the McInnes presentation and in the next piece the Davis presentation. McInnes entitled his address: “Building a national air power enterprise.” This is what he had to say on this subject: Australia needs a concept and vision for a national air power enterprise. This is National Defence – the foundational principle of the NDS – in the air and is key to accelerating and enhancing the ADF’s effectiveness. This enterprise includes the civil and military aviation sectors as well as the aerospace industry as complementary and interdependent components. We need a vision of where the nation needs this enterprise to go, with national priorities and policies to reshape Australian air power. These are the first steps in Australian air power becoming more than the sum of its parts. We need it to be more than the sum of its parts this because Australia is a nation “uniquely reliant on aviation” as the Government’s Aviation White Paper declared in August. We need it to happen now because the air superiority underpinning that reliance could be disrupted at any moment and responding to that challenge will be a national effort. We are four years along from when we last had ten years warning time. Historical analogies are imperfect but as Prime Minister Morrison invoked the 1930s when discarding Australia’s ‘ten-year rule’ in 2020, so shall I. Britain dropped its ten-year rule in March 1932 – after Japan’s invasion of Northeast China but before Hitler came to power in Germany. By the end of 1936, four years after Britain’s ten-year warning time elapsed – that is, where we are now – it had: – Begun coordinating production of airframes and aero engines through the Air Ministry – Devised the shadow factory scheme, which built more production capacity ‘in the shadow’ of related industries. – Flown the first prototype Spitfire in March 1936 and ordered the first 310 production models by year’s end. – Massively expanded flying training, including forming the RAF Volunteer Reserve and using civilian flying schools for elementary training. Many setbacks lay ahead, but the foundations of Britain’s air power enterprise were in place. This included the “foundational principle” that air power was a national – indeed an imperial – enterprise for Britain. This enterprise approach is why the multi-national RAF never came close to losing control of the skies over Britain and why Western air forces eventually dominated the skies in all theatres, despite their opponents’ head start. I would ask you to ponder the status of Australia’s national air power enterprise four years since our own ten-year rule lapsed. While you think on that, I will to talk about why air power and aviation matters specifically to Australia. When it comes to aviation and air power, I suggest many Australians – including large swathes of the Defence organisation – are bit like the two young fish in David Foster Wallace’s anecdote. After a passing older fish says, “morning boys, how’s the water?” the two young fish swim on for a bit before one turns to the other and asks “what the hell is water ?” This is an aviation nation – but we take it for granted. The Aviation White Paper described Australia as “uniquely reliant on aviation” because it said we are, “a vast island nation with a dispersed population, far from our key trading partners and visitor markets, air transport provides Australians with critical links to each other and the world.” Australia has about 0.3% of the world’s human population but responsibility for 5% of its surface area. Air power turns days into hours and gives Australia and its residents choices and abilities that would not otherwise exist. This is why Australia was an early adopter of aviation services – such as Qantas and the Royal Flying Doctor Service – and remains dependent on them. The same is true militarily. The ADF reduces its need for surface forces by relying on air- delivered firepower, communication, transport, and observation. Both civil and military aviation depend on air superiority to use airspace free from prohibitive interference. Air superiority is the primary reason governments formed separate air forces– to ensure a nation could harness its air power to first secure its skies. A key implication of the ten-year rule lapsing is that Australia’s comfortable assumption of air superiority is no longer valid, even over the homeland. And it will not take a major conflict to challenge air superiority because it is generally a subjective belief. The perception of risk from any source can be enough to disrupt aviation, often severely. Volcanoes, military operations or exercises, security incidents, and aerial intrusions have all disturbed the free use of airspace in recent years. Consequently, potentially hostile actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party need not actually attack or threaten Australia’s airspace or aviation to unsettle nerves. Consider the experiences of Taiwan and Japan in recent years. While not without challenges, the Peoples Liberation Army can project power into Australia’s periphery in a straightforward and perfectly legal manner. Its about 2,500 km from PLA bases in the West Philippines Sea to entering the Indian Ocean via the Makassar and Lombok Straits. That is about 3.5 hours flying time for H-6 bombers. Another two hours has them approaching Australia’s coast anywhere from Exmouth to Darwin . Its less than a week’s sail for a PLA naval task group – which could include aircraft carriers approaching the size of US super-carriers in the next few years. Notably, last week saw the first open-source evidence the PLA had three aircraft carriers at sea simultaneously. Six will be in service by 2035, including four big ones. The world has seen over the last few decades how sensitive Australia’s politics can be to border security. Consider the outcry over images of PLA aircraft with Darwin in the background. Imagine they are visibly armed. Now imagine there are no Australian aircraft with them. In his classic 1966 book The Tyranny of Distance, Geoffrey Blainey observed “the ease with which foreign bombers… could fly to Australia was probably the sharpest mental change” for Australians experience of aviation in the first half of the twentieth century. The same seems likely to hold true this century. Now I have no doubt the RAAF can monitor and intercept PLA aircraft approaching Australia’s airspace. But covering multiple areas or sustaining alert for weeks or months if not years must surely be a different matter. A peacetime challenge to Australia’s air superiority would have national implications and require a national response. An actual conflict would only compound this. The elements of this response exist but there are few public signs of a coherent concept of an Australian national air power enterprise to add necessary depth. The NDS, released in April, called for ‘a whole of government and whole of nation approach to Australia’s defence’ and that we needed National Defence as “a concept that harnesses all arms of Australia’s national power.” Unfortunately, nobody told those responsible for the Aviation White Paper, published in August. Instead, we have departmental rather than national policies that pass each other by like aircraft in cloud. Each treats the civil, military, and industrial components of Australia’s air power as separate entities rather than part of a coherent whole. The AWP – produced by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, and the Arts – focused tightly on civil and general aviation. The Department of Defence is not listed as having made a submission to the AWP, though it may have done so confidentially. The NDS dealt with defence issues, of which air power is but one. Policy responsibility for the aerospace industry, meanwhile, is truly fragmented – resting across Defence – which published the Defence Industry Development Strategy in February – and the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, Thinking of military power as a national enterprise is not unique or new, it just is not clear in Australian air power policy. The ADF peak air power doctrine defines it as “the total strength of a nation’s capability to conduct and influence activities in, through and from the air to achieve its objectives.” This explicit characterisation of air power as national capability is a promising start, but the doctrine otherwise focuses solely military aviation and its applications. Navalists have consistently portrayed Australian sea power as a national enterprise for years, leading to government investment in Australia’s merchant fleet and naval spending consuming more of the Defence budget than air, land, and cyber forces combined. Britain’s 2018 combat air strategy explicitly placed a national values framework including whole-of-nation security and prosperity at the heart of its decision making. New Zealand’s national aerospace strategy released this week explicitly links a vision of doubling the size of aerospace industry by 2030 to the country’s security and foreign policy. Australia’s fragmented approach to air power is is making the enterprise less than it could be, just when shared challenges and deteriorating security demand the opposite. There are shared challenges across the enterprise for which national solutions may offer opportunities. At the highest level, there are over 16,000 aircraft on Australia’s civil register performing a wide variety of roles, including surveillance, response, and airlift. What contribution could these make to Australia’s defence? What mechanisms are needed to make that happen? To zoom in on a specific example, there are 28 A330 type aircraft listed on Australia’s civil register. This is the platform upon which the RAAF’s seven overworked KC- 30 tankers are based. How quickly and by what means could civil A330s be modified in Australia to boost refuelling capacity? What about A330 crews? Can they be inducted into military service to add depth or free up permanent crews for other requirements? Do they have to be in uniform to do so? Zooming out again, there are more than 50,000 Australians working in civil aviation – that is a pool of aviation-savvy Australians almost triple the size of the RAAF. What role can they play in the defence of the country? Workforce shortages are among the most serious challenges facing every part of the air power enterprise. But the components are competing for a diminishing resource. The AWP recognises the ADF is a major source of skilled aviation labour but then describes it as a competitor that will “exacerbate future skilled aviation workforce challenges in Australian civil aviation.” Treating the aviation skills base as a national asset could create opportunities to address civil shortages in the short-term while building a trained reserve for times of crisis, and the mechanisms for their employment. Such an approach could look like the Volunteer Reserve approach Britain employed in the 1930s. This low readiness reserve supported part-time aircrew training through civil aviation schools while also providing a means to induct trained personnel into service should the need arise. The use of military training arrangements to grow the civil workforce while building a military reserve illustrates the interdependency of the air power enterprise. Infrastructure challenges are also common. The NDS says the Government will spend up to $6.6 billion on the ADF’s airbases in the next decade and acknowledged the need to ensure “civil society and civil infrastructure can support ADF requirements.” This may be implemented through a Northern Air Base Network, alluded to at a conference in May, that will include “established military bases as well as other places that can support expeditionary air power.” These NDS objectives are relevant to the AWP initiatives to spend an extra $90 million on the Remote Aviation Access Program and Regional Airports Program over the next three years. But on this, along with every other aspect of civil aviation’s significance to the defence of the country, the AWP is silent. What is missing altogether is guidance on how the Australia’s aerospace industry – development, manufacturing, and repair – can reshape Australia’s air power to create new potential in the national interest. Instead, the aerospace industry is viewed primarily as a supporting function – and policy and priorities, often conflicting, are spread across multiple sources. The Defence Industrial Development Strategy alone spreads direction for the aerospace industry across at least three of seven priority areas. According to a 2019 report commissioned by the Federal Government, Australia’s aerospace industry included almost 1,000 companies, employed 20,000 Australians and boasted world-class research quality, uninhabited systems, and advanced manufacturing. This is far more than a maintenance and repair industry. Critically, the report also found the aerospace industry is independently commercially viable through diverse customers, including exports. This is not a government monopsony. The report found the aerospace industry added almost $3 billion annually in gross value to Australia’s economy – more value add than shipbuilding and rail rolling stock – which are both supported by national approaches. In the five years since then, and despite Covid, Australian companies have gone onto design and build a growing variety of advanced aviation components and autonomous systems domestically. These include the fighter-sized Ghost Bat combat aircraft, designed, and built by over 200 Australian companies and the electric Vertiia – a vertical take-off and landing aircraft whose planned hydrogen-fuelled version will carry 500 kg payloads over 1,000 km. In Australia’s geography, size matters. But if there has been Government support for these efforts, it has been platform – or project-based, rather than efforts to build a coherent Australian autonomous air power ecosystem. In a speech in May, the Chief of Air Force said the Air Force was exploring autonomous air systems to build a “national ecosystem that can rapidly scale production of uncrewed systems.” That is promising but surely we can be doing more than exploring. Australian industry has a demonstrated competence and comparative advantage in a field that is advancing rapidly around the globe. Moreover, it is an area of particular value to Australia because autonomous systems could liberate Australian air power from the constraints of a small population, just as aircraft overcame the tyranny of distance a century ago. This is what I mean by the aerospace industry reshaping air power to create new potential. But we first need a coherent concept of Australia’s air power enterprise and a vision of where the nation needs it to go. Australian aviation operators and aerospace companies can then compete or collaborate across the enterprise to meet those needs. Governments should guide and support but avoid trying to control a a market-driven sector. Deteriorating security and resources shortages are national challenges that demand national responses. As an aviation nation, Australia needs its air power to be more than the sum of its parts. The first step in doing so is to think of it as a national air power enterprise. Let me now unpack some of the ideas in his presentation and augment some of them. I would start by turning to one of the RAAF’s key focus, namely on the need to create a more agile force able to operate across bases in Australia, notably Northern Australia. Last year John Blackburn and I interviewed the then Air Commander Australia, Air Marshal Goldie about his thinking with regard to being able to do this. Goldie commented: We are developing concepts about how we will do command and control on a more geographic basis. This builds on our history with Darwin and Tindal to a certain extent, although technology has widened that scale to be a truly continental distributed control concept. We already a familiar with how an air asset like the Wedgetail can take over the C2 of an air battle when communications are cut to the CAOC, but we don’t have a great understanding of how that works from a geographic basing perspective. What authorities to move aircraft, people and other assets are vested in local area Commanders that would be resilient to degradation in communications from the theatre commander – or JFACC? We need to focus on how we can design our force to manoeuvre effectively using our own territory as the chessboard. But to do this, the RAAF needs a civilian structure that can allow for this to happen. Where is the fuel? Where are the means to move the fuel on a distributed chessboard? Where is the personnel to support distributed logistical support for a distributed RAAF? Without a well thought out civilian support structure, force distribution is challenging and maybe not doable. Normally when we talk about force projection, we are talking about going somewhere else to confront an adversary. For the RAAF, force projection is what they do to operate domestically. The aviation enterprise which McInnes is calling for is part of the kind of mobilization which is crucial if defence is credible not just for Australia but more generally for liberal democracies. But shaping a feasible mobilization effort needs to start with the kind of enterprise thinking which McInnes provides, namely, to find ways to leverage domestic capabilities that are NOT part of the ADF but could be mobilized in case of crisis. And in his presentation, he makes an important point when referring to the Chinese Communist Party and not to China. The CCP running China is the threat; it is not some benign nation state called China. But I want to close by focusing on one very key point which McInnes underscored, which is the following: In a speech in May, the Chief of Air Force said the Air Force was exploring autonomous air systems to build a “national ecosystem that can rapidly scale production of uncrewed systems.” That is promising but surely we can be doing more than exploring. Australian industry has a demonstrated competence and comparative advantage in a field that is advancing rapidly around the globe. There clearly needs to be a wider view of how to include autonomous systems in the force, and not simply thinking in terms of Air Force using air systems and the Navy using maritime systems as additive plus ups defined in terms of what manned systems currently do. It really is the broader notion of a combined arms paradigm or ecosystem if you wish whereby there is a collaborative relationship between autonomous, unmanned and crewed systems. If we conceptualize the new systems as simply fitting into what crewed systems do we will wait too long to use them and not understand what they can and can not do. Above all, we need to move from experimentation to putting then in the hands of the warfighters as they augment the force in being and allow it to become the transformative force without waiting for the future force. Featured Image: Chris McInnes speaking at the Sir Richard Williams seminar on September 26, 2024.

Dr Robbin Laird Final Report: Enhancing and Accelerating the Integrated Force: An Operational Perspective - will be released in October More articles from Dr Laird are posted in Event Proceedings Synopsis and Program Conference speakers Welcoming Remarks VADM (Rtd) Tim Barrett AO, CSC, Sir Richard Williams Foundation Introduction and MC WGCDR Sally Knox, Sir Richard Williams Foundation Politics and Defence in the AUKUS countries - the agenda in the 2020s Peter Jennings AO, PSM, Director Strategic Analysis Australia Building Resilience in the Space Domain Dr Malcolm Davis, Australian Strategic Policy Institute The Contested Maritime Domain: Challenges for an Integrated Force Jen Parker, Expert Associate, National Security College National Air Power Enterprise Chris McInnes, Executive Director, Air Power Institute Panel Discussion: Building Combat Mass AIRMSHL (Retd) Darren Goldie AM, CSC– Facilitator RADM Christopher Smith AM, CSM, RAN, Commander Australian Fleet AVM Glen Braz AM, CSC, DSM, Air Commander Australia Industry: Enhancing Technology - panel Katherine Ziesing - Facilitator Andrew Doyle AM, CSC, Director, Business Area Lead, Aeronautics, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Nick Leake, Head of Satellite and Space Systems, Optus Derek Reinhardt, Director Engineering and Operational Excellence, Northrop Grumman Australia Dr Brad Ferguson, Joint Battlespace Systems Technical Director, Raytheon Australia Daniel Reiniger, Engineering Manager MQ-28A Ghost Bat Combat Collaborative Aircraft, The Boeing Company Dr Gary Eves, Principal Technology Officer, CAE Defense and Security Video - PACAF Perspective Gen. Kevin B. Schneider, Commander, Pacific Air Forces Joint Capabilities Perspective LTGEN Susan Coyle, AM, CSC, DSM, Chief of Joint Capabilities Enhancing and Accelerating the Integrated Force – an RAF Perspective AVM Mark Flewin CBE MA BEng RAF, AOC 1 Group, Royal Air Force The Integrated Force – an ASD Perspective Phil Winzenberg, Deputy Director General – Signals Intelligence and Effects, Australian Signals Directorate Chief of Air Force Perspective AIRMSHL Stephen Chappell DSC, CSC, OAM, Chief of Air Force

Dr Robbin Laird, The September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar: An Initial Take, 27 September 2024 Link to article (Defense.info) The most recent seminar of The Sir Richard Williams Foundation was entitled: “Enhancing and Accelerating the Integrated Force: An Operational Perspective.” This seminar focused on how the force in being or the ready force was focused on improving its capability, its survivability and lethality for the fight tonight. For such a focus, one needs a sense of urgency for how to improve the force in the short to mid-term, rather than over emphasizing the long term future and future force structure planning. This seminar begins the third phase of The Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminars since I have been writing the seminar reports. When I first came in 2014, the seminar focused on “Air Combat Operations: 2025 and Beyond.” Well, 2025 is almost here. And 2014 was as well the first year that the Marines began their six month deployments to Australia or MRF-D showed up. This first phase focused on modernization of the RAAF, in terms of a crafting a fifth-generation air force and the impact and intersection of this effort with the overall modernization of the joint force or a fifth-generation force. This focus continued until the pandemic hit in 2020. The work conducted in the seminars is summarized in detail in my book published in December 2020 entitled Joint By Design: The Evolution of Australian Defence Strategy. The second phase has focused upon the strategic redesigns envisaged for the ADF first by the Liberal government and then by the current Labour government. Here the focus was upon discussing and analyzing the way ahead for long-range force planning and strategic redesign of the force. We focused on these topics in the seminars which began after the pandemic lifted and through the first seminar of this year. I have summarized the work of this phase in two books, Australian Defence and Deterrence: A 2023 Update published last year and Australian Defence and Deterrence: A 2024 Update published recently. Now we are launching a third phase focused on how the ADF is enhancing the force in being from an operational perspective. In future articles and the final report, I will summarize the presentations and comments of speakers and participants in the seminars, which together provide a solid launch point for analyzing and discussing the challenges of the way ahead. A rule of thumb is that a military has 80% of the force it will have in a decade, so the challenge is always adapting the force in being while new platforms and systems are added 10 to 20 years into the future. There were several themes discussed during the seminar. The seminar began with a presentation by Peter Jennings who focused on the political dynamics within the three AUKUS countries and how those dynamics might affect budgets, operational demands and force structure choices in the five year period ahead. Quite obviously the fight tonite force is clearly affected by operational demands and the ability and willingness of governments to provide sufficient funds for near term operational demands as well as funds for longer term force modernization. A key challenge as well is the need to broaden the consideration of how defense notably in a multi-polar authoritarian world challenging the rules-based order has become a much broader consideration for the Australian nation than simply what the ADF can deliver. Notably, the information society is a bedrock for modern Australia, and enabling the information tools of a modern society is a whole of Australia problem, not just an ADF issue. Three speakers especially noted this aspect of the way head. Chris McInness, Executive Director of the Airpower Institute, underscored that the central role of aviation within Australian society requires rethinking the whole of aviation enablement challenge, rather than simply focusing on military airpower. There is a much broader eco-system. Space systems clearly fall into the same class of challenges, whereby space for Australia is a whole of nation domain, not just a warfighting domain that requires only ADF-competence. Nick Leake, Head of Satellite and Space Systems, has made this point repeatedly in his past presentations, and did so as a member of the panel of industrial representatives. Dr. Malcolm Davis of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has underscored in his extensive work on space and in his presentation, the need to ramp up the investment and work of the Australian government more generally on the space domain because of its basic significance for the viability of the information society and economy of Australia even beyond defence considerations. Throughout the day, there were discussions on the need to modernize continuously the enablers for joint operations, C2, ISR, Counter-ISR, or what my colleague Ed Timperlake calls the essentials of prevailing in Tron Warfare. The Chief of Joint Capabilities, LTGEN Susan Coyle argued that this area is indeed the high ground of military capability. And I would add the further challenge is that this is a software dependent world which is evolving rapidly and capabilities needed are ongoing and simply are not long range force structure platform planning targets. The Deputy Director General-Signals Intelligence and Effects from the Australian Signals Directorate certainly reinforced Coyle’s emphasis on the role of Tron Warfare and intelligence as an enabler for the joint force and in this way it becomes a force which can operate as an integrated one. The most targeted discussion of the force in building and the approach to change from an urgent shorter-term perspective was provided by a core panel. This panel was headed by AIRMSHL (Retd) Darren Goldie and the two members of the panel were the Air Commander Australia, AVM Glen Braz, and the Commander of the Australian Fleet, RADM Christopher Smith. No short summary of their comments is adequate so I leave for a later article a fuller discussion. But both focused on priority modernization efforts to work force distribution for the air and naval forces to be more lethal and survivable. We benefited as well from a video presentation from General Kevin Schneider, Commander Pacific Air Force, and in person presentation by AVM Mark Flewin, Air Officer Commanding 1 Group Royal Air Force. The first discussed the challenge of modernizing the force in being from an American point of view and the second from a British point of view. And with the AUKUS emphasis, there is growing convergence on force integration issues with Australia. There were several other presentations which provided insights into near term challenges which I will simply mention here and will provide future articles which discuss their presentations in more detail. Jen Parker of the National Security College discussed the evolving maritime environment and its challenges, notably the changing littoral operational environment and the appearance of new technologies. The Chief of Air Force, AIRMRSHL Chappell, discussed the importance for the RAAF to be able to operate its force in depth, in terms of space, time and posture. Throughout the day the growing significance of autonomous air and maritime systems was mentioned as a key element of the way ahead for near term modernization of the force, and this along with the Tron Warfare evolving capabilities were obviously key building blocks for the future. These systems are also part of the Tron Warfare effort and their approach to modernization will parallel the software world more than the legacy platform build world. And this ultimately is the challenge: How does enabling the force in being, the fight tonight force, in the near to midterm mate with long term visions? This is a major challenge for industry supporting defense whether those are defense companies or commercial companies. How does industry make the investments in defence modernization which upgrades the force in being to fight tonight? A key issue involved in all of this is how to enable the acquisition process to fill the gaps which the current force must meet to become more survivable and lethal for the fight tonight rather than prioritizing 10 year to come platforms? The industrial panel provided insights with regard to this challenge which I will deal with in a later article. We have much to discuss in future seminars in our new phase of analysis and discussion. The featured photo: Air Commander Australia, AVM Glen Braz, on the right, and the Commander of the Australian Fleet, RADM Christopher Smith, on the left, participating in the seminar.

Dr Robbin Laird, The Challenge for Defence Readiness: The Impact of Politics, 29 September 2024 Link to article (Defense.info) If one is focused on how the force in being can be a more ready force, one will generally look in vain in the political class for a keen focus on this challenge. And this is true for all of the AUKUS partners. It is not difficult to see why. A ready force needs supplies, munition stockpiles, reliable energy supplies, food stocks, logistics capability and an ability to mobilize civilian and reserve military manpower. All of which cuts into spending for social programs, envisioned transitions to the green economy and supporting whatever party is in power’s pet rocks on defence projects. It is also the systemic bias towards short-termism in defence thinking as well as the desire of new governments to craft alternative defence futures with weapons that are not here and now. This is true across the board for the three AUKUS countries. As Air Vice-Marshal John Blackburn AO (Retd) and Group Captain Anne Borzycki (Retd) wrote in a recent essay: Short-termism, or ‘quick win’ thinking, is deeply embedded in the Australian political culture; collectively we tend to focus on today and largely on our personal needs, not on future interacting and cascading risks that will impact our whole society. Thirty years of relative prosperity in Australia, fuelled by lower trade barriers, privatisation, and deregulation, have increased our productivity and wealth, providing the resources necessary to address the challenges we confront today if we choose to act. However, many of these challenges are themselves a result of globalisation, e.g. our extensive reliance on overseas supply chains for critical goods, leaving our nation vulnerable. Whilst the lower cost of goods has had economic and standard of living benefits, there is a very high price to ‘cheap’ in a crisis. At the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams seminar, Peter Jennings took on the task of looking at the politics of the AUKUS nations and the impact of those domestic politics on defence spending and preparedness. He focused on looking ahead in the second half of the decade and what politics in AUKUS nations during that period of time might mean for defence. The core point he made, and a key one it is, was to emphasize that “defence policymaking is a generation of politics by other means.” And quite obviously the priorities of the party in power will decisively affect defence choices and policy making. Jennings underscored that the 36-month election cycle in Australia clearly impacts on the time-frame for defence decision making. He reminded the audience that although politics and economics are decisive for defence, too often professional conferences on defence simply ignore this reality. He underscored: What I find slightly unusual is that in professional defence conferences, there’s a tendency to put that to one side, to pretend that it doesn’t really exist, to make presentations that would argue that the shape of defence policy and spending priorities are things which kind of happen as a result of mutual great minds thinking deep thoughts. And I want to make the case this morning that in fact, politics has far more influence over the shape of defence policy than such a point of view would consider. I would like to reinforce this key point of Jennings. Later this year, I am publishing a book of essays by Dr. Harald Malmgren, one of the most distinguished political economists in our lifetime and who served several Presidents and was a major shaper of U.S. trade policy in government and the private sector. I would bet most people who attended the seminar never heard of him, but perhaps they might have heard of his dynamic daughter Dr. Pippa Malmgren, who was recently in Australia. I have worked with Harald off and on since 1980 and our work has been at the intersection of the Venn diagram between defence and economics, each of us helping the other to be up to date on these two domains, because these two domains decisively affect one another. But this is a struggle because Inside the Beltway makes defence strategic decisions often with no consideration to cost or impact on the American economy, something which has decisively affected American power and accelerated its decline. Jennings assessed each of the AUKUS partner’s political situations over the next few years and how they might impact on defence. The implications of his assessment were pretty stark: the three countries are not necessarily on a convergent path to strengthen collective defence or to provide the defence spending necessary for the ready force. When he turned to considering the future of AUKUS he made some hard-hitting judgments. He argued: What disturbs me is that there is no federal, no industrial, no state, no union advocacy for AUKUS. There is no clarity around the East Coast port and no further progress on the development of a uranium waste storage facility. This is a project which, right now, in public, has fewer and fewer friends, and I reflect on how the Shortfin Barracuda project had fewer and fewer friends until it was terminated. There’s no money, virtually no industry advocacy, no sense of urgent goals, no war fighting priority to get equipment to into the hands of our war fighters on an urgent basis. We have what a friend of mine in industry described as a series of science projects… The good news is that I think there’s been great progress, useful progress, on regional cooperation, gaining traction on the guided weapons enterprise, on the shipbuilding enterprise in the West of Australia. The negative side of the story is that the submarine is eating the budget…And that leads me to conclude is that the ADF is less ready, now, less capable now in 2024 than it was in 2022. That brings me to Phantom Force 40, The Future Force, the Integrated Force. Let me make the proposition to the integrated force never going to happen. And that’s because there’s not the money for it. It’s because right now, the policy presentation of government is putting is that you can have the SSNs, or you can have the ADF, but you can’t have both. The integrated force concept also ignores the reality that what’s driving the big movers of strategic thinking in Australia right now are Alliance priorities. It’s about how we position ourselves to deal with the challenge which China is offering now, rather than over ADF integration. I think we should say farewell to Phantom Force 2040, because I just don’t think it’s going to happen… I’m predicting 2026 as a use it or lose it moment. What I mean by that is to say it took about five years to get to the point where we concluded that the French submarine deal was not going to work and we needed to move away from it. I think it’s going to take about five years to bring government to the point where it is going to say do we really want to do this, once they understand the cost of the complexity involved. Not saying they should walk. I’m just saying that whichever government is in power in 2026, a decision will have to be made about the submarine’s future. Featured Image: Peter Jennings presenting to the Sir Richard Williams Foundation, September 26, 2024.

Dr Robbin Laird, The Perspective of Australia’s AUKUS Partners on Shaping the Way Ahead for Airpower , 28 September 2024 Link to article (Defense.info) General Kevin Schneider, Commander of U.S. Pacific Air Forces and AVM Mark Flewin, Air Officer Commanding 1 Group Royal Air Force both spoke at the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar. The first presentation was by a video recording and the second was an in person presentation after the long flight from the UK. Together, the two provided insights into USAF and RAF thinking about the way ahead with allied airpower. General Schneider underscored the close working relationship between the U.S. and Australia over the years and provided several examples of recent collaborative activity. Photo from the video presentation of General Schneider to the Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar on September 26, 2024. He focused on the recent Pitch Black exercise which was especially notable because of the expansion of partners in the Pacific region who participated. Exercises like Pitch Black are not only increasing our interoperability, but they are helping our allied and partner nations rapidly to grow their capabilities. This in turn, helps secure their nations and provide stability to the region. Your leadership in that exercise was evident, and the work accomplished there reached audiences around the world. You brought in so many firsts, the deployment of the Philippine Air Wing, our partners in Papua, New Guinea, and you worked tirelessly to bring in critical NATO allies from France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK. NATO recognizes the importance of the Indo-Pacific and understands the impact it has on Euro Atlantic security. They also know where to find world class training with allies like you as well. He then when on to highlight Australian cooperation in Filipino training as well as a key contribution to the common defence in the region. I found quite interesting his spending time discussing the E-7 as well. When I first came to Australia in 2014 and then subsequently visiting the RAAF Wedgetail squadron, it was clear that the ADF had something special in the Wedgetail. But the United States and the United Kingdom even though looking for AWACS replacements, were slow to embrace the Wedgetail option. But now they have. He noted: The RAAF’s significant focus and role in air domain awareness stems from your nation’s early investment in the E-7 Wedgetail. It is a critical asset in our most advanced high-end training. The US Air Force Weapons School hosted the RAAF’s No. 2 Squadron for the first time as part of the weapons school integration phase in May and as part of the modernization of our own fleet. We are excited to see the expansion of the exchange program, because now No. 2 Squadron is a multinational, integrated unit whose regular participation in global exercises with joint partners is a must, because we are developing and testing E-7 tactics with their air superiority and support for maritime strike forces. We wouldn’t be able to accomplish any of this without the genius of our collective airmen who are doing wonders at the tactical edge. The General underscored: Australia adds immense value at the cutting edge of our most advanced tactics, techniques and procedures. Quite obviously, the USAF needs to operate very differently in the evolving contested combat environment. And in this effort, it is working hand in glove with the RAAF. This is how PACAF put it: We must reorganize ourselves to tackle the high-end fights in the future, where we must be lethal while surviving in an anti-access area denial environment. We are learning to operate from austere locations, testing critical capabilities like our bomber Task Force and stressing our agile combat employment concept through a series of complex exercises at scope and at scale. Through tremendous support from you, we’ve increased the rotational presence of U.S. capabilities in Australia across all domains, ensuring our forces work as interchangeable teams who are efficient during peacetime and lethal and survivable during wartime… We want to find more ways to operate from different locations around the region to drive solutions to logistical challenges and to conduct rehearsals like hot pit refueling events and integrated flying operations to make our footprints even more lean and agile. The bomber task forces, and our strategic aircraft play a critical role in our collective ability to support counter-maritime missions, something that we must do because the rise of competitors in both the Indo, Pacific and European theaters has brought anti-ship capability back to the forefront of the ASW mission. The bomber fleet is finding innovative ways to integrate modern weapons capabilities to increase survivability in an anti-access area denial environment and to support the joint fight. He then discussed Agile Combat Employment and immediate ways ahead on training for this capability. Next summer, we’ll partner with like-minded nations to host a large scale exercise to test agile combat employment at speed and scale in the Pacific that will coincide with the Talisman Sabre exercise, and as we anticipate the exercise will include fifth generation fighters, ISR, C-2, airlift and air fueling, and all the enablers to test our ability to deploy from the continental United States into theater to regional hubs in the first and second island chains. We will disperse, aggregate, disaggregate, and recover aircraft. It is a highly complex logistical challenge in terms of access, spacing and overflight, maritime domain awareness and maritime strike capabilities, as well as generating and sustaining the force, making it even more challenging, we are adapting this new operational scheme of maneuver under significant fiscal constraints, a challenge that we all face as exciting as all these things are, I will never say that what we are doing is fast enough, that we have integrated enough, that we have prepared enough, or that we are ready enough. AVM Mark Flewin then provided an RAF perspective on the way ahead. He conveyed the sense of urgency as the West faces increasing threats and challenges. He looked back at World War II to remind the audience of the cost of the failure of deterrence. But his presentation underscored the need for the West to get it right in terms of deterrence and although there is clear progress in the West’s capabilities, the tenor of his remarks that as an enterprise, we need to get better in order to ensure that deterrence prevails. He underscored what he saw as five critical challenges that needed to be met on an urgent basis. The first is the need to generate greater combat mass. He noted: We need to have the capacity to scale. It doesn’t need to be exquisite in terms of combat systems though it can be. It needs to be on the right side of the cost curve. It can be cheap. We’ve seen from Ukraine that there’s a heavy mix of exquisite and non-exquisite capability that is ultimately delivering effects. But we need to absolutely partner with industry to be able to do that. The second is enhancing our ability to fight tonight. The majority of the equipment we will have in 10 years we already have so we need to engage in continuous force improvement and training to ensure our force in readiness is at the level needed for deterrence He underscored: We need to work together to optimize and get the most out of our platforms. We’re working that in the Royal Air Force through a program called Optimize. It’s seen significant benefits already. We’ve seen the 20% improvement in availability on some platforms. With Typhoon, for example, we’ve managed to remove 750,000 maintenance hours from that platform based on some data analysis and a risk aware approach which means we get more availability, and our mechanics are available for other tasks. And it’s really important that we continue to spiral develop these platforms. They are going to be the baseline of our capability up to 2040 and they need to be ready to deliver. The third is to ensure that we can adapt rapidly to technological change and to be able to incorporate relevant combat innovations being unveiled in the regional wars we see in front of us. He put it this way: My next point is on the criticality of embracing technological change. We talked about the electromagnetic environment today. What we witnessed in eastern Ukraine is that it’s an absolutely denied electromagnetic environment, we need to get around how we work in that environment, how we evolve in that environment. How we can bring operational advantage in that environment. We also need to not be afraid to fail and test and fail fast. It’s something we’ve worked on a lot in the UK. Naturally, we’ve moved away from it because we’ve been risk averse. The fourth is the challenge of overcoming risk aversion and become more agile and capable of rapid innovation in our tactics and warfighting skills. AVM Flewin emphasized: We need to continue to change our mindset and make sure that we’re ready for the fight tomorrow. You might throw back at me that our processes aren’t efficient enough. We procure very slowly, our commercial process isn’t proficient enough. We’ve learned a lot about that through Ukraine. We’ve adapted our process with industry. And I’d argue now that we are, we are getting after it, but there’s more to do. And we clearly need to transition from risk aversion to risk aware and objective focus. Note: This is what the RAF has to say about the E-7: The E-7 Wedgetail AEW Mk1 is the RAF’s successor to the E-3D Sentry and will provide a 5th Generation Airborne Early Warning and Control capability (AEW&C), with a Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA), that is interoperable and interchangeable with key allies. The Wedgetail is the most technologically advanced AEW&C system available and will provide UK Defence with eyes in the sky, for at least the next 20 years, to see far beyond ground-based systems and fighter aircraft sensors. Capable of generating a 360-degree view of the airspace and as a force multiplier, it will provide advanced warning of approaching threats to enable commanders to fight effectively in complex environments.    Already in service and proven with the Royal Australian, Republic of South Korean and Turkish Air Forces, the UK’s Wedgetail will serve under No 8 Squadron. It will be located at RAF Lossiemouth alongside the Poseidon Maritime Patrol aircraft, both of which are based upon the widely used Boeing 737 Next Generation airframe, allowing the RAF to take advantage of synergies between the fleets. CAPABILITY Capable of fulfilling a wide range of missions, Wedgetail can provide high fidelity and accurate target information utilising its cutting-edge MESA sensor housed in a distinctive fin on the spine of the aircraft. The sensor, combined with an advanced communications suite, enables the crew to provide tactical control to other assets via voice and tactical data link whilst enhancing the situational awareness of Joint Force commanders.  The mission crew will utilise the ten state-of-the-art workstations to deliver a multi-domain battle management capability: providing situational awareness to other assets, directing offensive and defensive forces whilst maintaining continuous surveillance of an area. The Wedgetail significantly enhances the capability of friendly combat aircraft and warships, enabling their missions and increasing their survivability in a hostile environment. The featured Photo: AVM Flewin presenting at the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar.

Dr Robbin Laird, Shaping a Way Ahead for Airpower in a Contested Region: The Perspective of Air Vice Marshal Glen Braz, 7 October 2024 Link to article (Defense.info) Air Vice Marshal Braz participated in the latest Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar on September 26, 2024. His presentation and engagement were as part of a panel with Rear Admiral Christopher Smith, Commander Australian Fleet which focused on how to generate mass for the ready force. I had chance to meet with him and to enhance the discussion in a meeting in his office. I had the privilege of interviewing him when he was at Amberley Airbase commanding the Wing which hosted the new Growler squadron. And then again when he presented at the August 23, 2017 Williams Foundation seminar on the future of electronic warfare. Obviously, his experience with electronic warfare put him at the heart of evolving combat realities, namely the core significance of prevailing in the electro-magnetic spectrum. During the discussion in his office, we went over the major elements of his presentation but discussed in more detail his point regarding the need to have a sense of urgency. It is crucial from a ready force perspective to drive change in how one organizationally shapes the force. This is how he put it: We need to enhance a sense of urgency in shaping the ready force. We’ve been very habitualized in managing long lead, large programs with long gestation and comprehensive oversight. We have done so through a slow approval process with rigorous analysis which deliver exquisite systems which allow us to shape a framework around which we can operate and with which we can operate, But such an approach is lacking in terms of providing rapidly what the near-term enhanced force in being sees as immediate needs. Such a system doesn’t naturally deliver the enhancements that I would seek for the ready force in a timely manner. We need to adjust our focus on defense preparedness to encompass organizational change that can quickly deliver near-term solutions identified by our forces in being. It was clear that as Air Commander Australia, Air Vice Marshal Braz has to be prepared for the ready force to support the missions directed by the Joint force commander. And one might put it that adaptation of the force under duress is a key driver of change, and the challenge is organizationally how to build in the capacity to drive force design from such a perspective rather than doing so primarily from the standpoint of the core platforms to be acquired in the future, And this approach underscores the importance of trusting the operational force to identify gaps to be met. Air Vice Marshal Braz put it this way: We talk increasingly about the workforce having a warfighter mindset. The ability and willingness for people to adapt is going to be fundamental to our war fighting effectiveness. I need every human that we have contributing to the effort, and I need them to be contributing in ways that they haven’t even figured out apply to them yet. There’s a trust equation inherent in mission rehearsal. In mission rehearsals, we find gaps, and we look for rapid ways, perhaps imperfect, to remedy the gaps. And then we try to give technology that we think will solve known problems to our workforce, and we let them have the license to integrate it and operate with it in ways that we probably never imagined that they would. But with their creativity and their adaptability they find ways to do so. By then adopting the solutions they find into the ready force, we are incentivizing them to work in an innovative way that makes the ready force better in the near term. I pointed out that when he was working in EW, it is an area which succeeds only by staying ahead of the game. In EW or more generally in Tron Warfare, it is crucial to ensure that the force has transient software advantage. In this graphic developed several years ago and presented to me during a visit to Australia, this challenge was visually imagined this way: Air Vice Marshal Braz further emphasized: One needs to be able to rebuild the force quickly, and that applies across the whole system of capabilities. We need to adapt quickly. And another element that I’m really interested in is our ability to generate tempo despite potentially disaggregating the force for survivability and for maneuver within that disaggregation. But I need to be able to catch the adversary off guard and to punch multiple times in diverse ways and axis of maneuver. We need to be able to maximize our force and do things that will disrupt the enemy’s thinking, and do the unexpected, which is going to be important for us a small force. We need to be a smart force to which can provide technological advantage in the sense of being able to have ongoing and transient advantage. Braz highlighted that collaboration among the Australian, American and British Air Warfare Centers provided an important way for the RAAF to explore concrete ways to get better value out of the ready force, and to cross-learn ways to gain combat advantages through enhanced training and identifying combat gaps that need to be and can be filled by technological or other fixes. He argued: We can find ways to seek asymmetry and apply new technology quickly. I thank such a capability is a key contributor to the deterrence equation.