In a presentation made on the sidelines of Land Forces, Brigadier Chris Mills laid out Army’s modernisation priorities in light of anticipated changes to the way wars will be fought.
“The characteristics of future conflict, and the tools with which it will be fought, are in a place of radical change,” BRIG Mills said. “This is the Age of Surprise.”
“As a result, I believe the Australian Army needs to change its modernisation focus. We must rethink our mental paradigms.”
Those paradigms include changes to the fundamentals of soldiering: the likelihood that small arms weapons will overmatch body armour over the next decade; the evolution of half-drone, half-missile loitering weapons; the steady proliferation of autonomous systems, such as self-driving patrol vehicles already in use by Israel and other states; and direct energy weapons, which BRIG Mills believes will soon evolve at the same pace as UAV tech is evolving today.
So how will Army adapt?
BRIG Mills spelt out two options.
“First, we can become even more technologically enabled. However, this option is expensive and still doesn’t remove the risk completely.
“The alternative is to look to technologies that give the Australian Army an indirect advantage. By way of example, the Chinese decided that rather than invest billions of dollars matching [the US] carrier-for-carrier, to invest in cheaper long-range missiles that can destroy these carriers at strategic distance.”
Army believes that a similar approach for Australia necessitates investment in new technologies, tactics, techniques, and training that use the size of massed armies, and their needs, against them. BRIG Mills then outlined the following five priority areas.
First is the Land Combat System. “Army must acquire the digital capabilities to enable the land force to communicate, sense, understand, and act in a high threat environment faster than the adversary.”
“This is best described as Army’s future nervous system; the system of systems that pass and process information.”
Second, future offensive fires capability. According to BRIG Mills, the ADF’s current system is ‘well-below’ those of potential adversaries.
The third priority is armoured manoeuvre and protected mobility, which remains essential for Army’s core mission of closing with and engaging the enemy.
Fourth, BRIG Mills highlighted the importance of autonomous systems. “These will provide the opportunity to augment, enhance, and eventually replace components of the future Land Force,” BRIG Mills said.
Finally, Army aims to focus on integration. “Army must seek to enhance the capabilities that exist within its planned network integration centre and work with the Joint Force network integration centre.”
The speech comes after the Defence Innovation Hub also outlined its investment priorities, which echo those laid out by BRIG Mills, although somewhat imperfectly: ISR, space, cyber, and EW; key enablers such as machine learning; and land combat, amphibious warfare, and special operations.
It can be difficult to map out exactly what Army’s priorities are given the range of capabilities outlined by the Hub, BRIG Mills, and others. When everything seems to be a priority, perhaps some clarity is needed on what is not.
If there is one common theme amongst the multitude of threads, however, it is a desire to gain speed – to move to the next iteration of all technologies faster than adversaries and retain the capability edge that Army realises it is losing.