Defence Business: A Joint Warfare approach | ADM Dec 2011 / Jan 2012

Gregor Ferguson | Canberra

Until this year Australia had never hosted a proper Joint Warfare Conference. Each of the ADF’s three services sponsors or supports in some way a conference and expo that focuses on its operational aspirations and equipment ambitions, but until this year, there had been no proper Joint event.

The inaugural ADF Joint Warfare Conference, held in Canberra on 12 and 13 October, broke new ground and signalled the growing authority of the ADF’s Joint Capability Coordination Division, which sponsored and organised it.

The message from the conference was simple: this is how the ADF will do business in the future, a point underlined by the Chief of the Defence Force, General David Hurley, whose presence alone was a powerful message. He drew the attention of the international audience to the ADF’s Future Joint Operating Concept, developed by the JCC Division and endorsed by the senior leadership of Defence in late-2010.

This document, which was promoted to the attendees as ‘required reading’ beforehand, has far-reaching implications for the ADF, which the Head of Joint Capability Coordination, MAJGEN Steve Day, discussed in more detail during the conference.

Hurley reminded delegates that the ADF faced major changes over the next decade, driven by the arrival of the Navy’s Canberra-class LHDs and the RAAF’s F-35A Joint Strike Fighters (JSF). At the same time, budget constraints will force a fundamental re-think of how Defence does its business. The ADF has been moving steadily towards a Joint approach, he noted, and has achieved good outcomes in Joint C2 and Joint Logistics. Defence, and especially the ADF, is starting to live the aspiration of Joint Education and Training, but ‘must try harder’, he said, in developing truly relevant Joint Exercises.

EX Talisman Sabre, held every two years with the US, will become the ADF’s evaluation exercises, just as EX Talisman Sabre 2011 was the certification exercise for Commander US 7th Fleet as a Joint Task Force commander.

As noted during the earlier Williams Foundation Seminar on ‘LHDs and ADF Aviation’, the CDF’s intent is that during EX Talisman Sabre 2017 the ADF will embark, deploy, sustain and certify an ADF Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) based on one, or preferably both, of the LHDs. That certification requires not just the platforms and equipment, but a commander, headquarters and constituent units equipped and trained to deploy as a joint force effectively and efficiently.

Within the ADF the Vice-Chief of the Defence Force is the Joint Capability Authority, and in his keynote address to the conference the VCDF, AM Mark Binskin set out his view of where the ADF’s Joint capabilities should go.

Joint Coordination of Joint Capabilities needs to be embedded in the ADF’s operational culture, he said bluntly. This in turn needs to be reflected in, and driven by the continuum of strategic policy and guidance that informs defence planning guidance, military strategy, the FJOC and, ultimately, the defence capability strategy and DCP.

The emerging response to current strategic guidance will see the development of an amphibious capability that represents the biggest change in the ADF’s force projection capabilities since the arrival of the RAN’s first aircraft carrier, some 63 years ago. The ADF’s ARG needs to integrate the full range of ADF capabilities, Binskin stated. And as well as the air component that only the RAAF can contribute,  that includes giving due attention to the Cyber domain, Simulation and Modelling, and overall Preparedness, all of which are underdone within the ADF, he added. Binskin foreshadowed a new CDF Preparedness Directive due out in July 2012.

Effective Cyber capabilities are essential – ‘non-discretionary’, in Binskin’s words – and this will be reflected from January 2012 by the establishment within JCC of a Cyber Coordination Office.

Preparedness can be enhanced by proper use of modelling and simulation technologies – but much of Australia’s capability in this domain resides within industry, Binskin noted. How can that be mobilised efficiently?

The ADF’s progress towards its joint goals will be supported by DSTO’s corporate enabling research program, while the ADF is having to learn to work with Defence’s civilian workforce: civilian APS personnel are already essential to current joint operations across the globe and will likely become more important still, along with civilians from other government agencies – DFAT, the AFP and AusAid, for example – and Non-Government Organisations (NGO).

One of the most important set-piece presentations was by MAJGEN Steve Day, head of JCC. In a sense he ‘launched’ the Future Joint Operating Concept 2030 at the Conference, setting it in its context as a ‘Capstone’ concept for future warfighting: the Defence White Paper states the ‘ends’ sought by defence policy; FJOC sets out the ‘ways’, and the DCP sets out the ‘means’.

The FJOC and the campaign of military experimentation flowing from it will play a key role informing the 2013 Force Structure Review and the development process leading to the 2014 Defence White Paper. It will provide a baseline operating concept against which the relative value of force structure options can be assessed, and creating foundations for specific – and measurable – capability goals.

Day said the future Joint force will have key tasks in conflict and peace: combat and security in the former case, and deterrence and engagement in the latter. In each case the Joint capability embraces the land, sea, air, cyber and space dimensions.

Figure 1 shows Day’s concept for what he calls the ‘Military Instrument’ in 2030 and how the ADF’s Joint Military Capability is integrated through its operational functions and operational concepts to provide Strategic Response Options.

Some essential context was provided by MAJGEN Mike Keltz, Director of Strategic Planning and Policy for US Pacific Command (PACCOM), and LTGEN John Koziol, the Director of the Pentagon’s ISR Task Force and Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Joint and Coalition warfighter Support.

Keltz pointed out bluntly that China will have the military capability by 2015 to be able to take Taiwan, and that it was no coincidence that, of the USAF’s six F-22A Raptor squadrons, three were based in PACCOM’s territory. China’s growth, and the increasing US presence in Australia, have important implications for US-Australian interoperability and combined and shared capabilities, and therefore the development of the ADF’s Joint approach.

The Pentagon’s ISR Task Force was set up in 2008 to overcome the US services’ stove pipes, specially in ISR Collection, Communications and PED – Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination. Koziol drew on US lessons in the Middle East: the US (and the Coalitions it leads) needs Wide Area Surveillance (WAS) for situational awareness including, where necessary, high-definition full-motion video. The sheer volume of surveillance and recce data involved can only be gathered, processed and used efficiently on a joint basis.

ISR collection management is a major training and competency issue, he added, pointing out that the US currently deploys 176 personnel on the ground for each UAV that is actually airborne. Surveillance UAVs must be integrated into a joint C2 architecture. And he pointed out the US has 70 aerostats in Afghanistan alone, carrying WAS payloads. By next northern summer this will have climbed to 200 aerostats.

Here in Australia, the ADF is playing catch-up. It isn’t set up properly for PED and the RAAF has carriage of the ADF’s program of improvements in this area. The service’s recent experience in Afghanistan operating the Heron UAV will be invaluable in this regard.

The UK has learned important lessons from the development of its own Joint HQ, according to AM Sir Stuart Peach, the UK’s Chief of Joint Operations. His Joint HQ is responsible for no less than 20,600 personnel operating in 26 countries, with the main focus, of course, being the Middle East.

Like the ADF, the UK Armed Forces are organising themselves so the individual services have ‘raise, train, sustain’ responsibilities but the business of warfighting will be carried out by a Permanent Joint HQ. Alongside the services will be Joint Forces Command whose responsibilities will include Joint Education & Training, the Surgeon General and Joint Medical Command, Directorate of Special Forces, Joint Counter-Terrorist Training & Advisory Team, and Defence Cyber Operations Group.

The UK’s Joint Forces Command, said Peach, will command, generate and develop joint enabling military capabilities, lead joint warfare development to deliver joint operational capability and integrate the enabling capabilities held within the services. It will establish initial operating capability in April 2012 and should achieve its full operating capability 12 months later.

Importantly, the Commander JFC will report to the Chief of Defence Staff and will sit on the Chiefs of Staff committee.

So what? Peach highlighted the key principles informing this process:

• Joint action gives governments more choice (there is a time factor advantage)
• Integration of effect (better ways to win the battle)
• Reduction in overlap (efficiency and effectiveness)
• Command is critical, Control is variable
• The nature of war doesn’t change, but the way we must conduct it does
• Flexibility and adaptability are the key attributes

The British experience, and the models emerging as a result, have considerable relevance to Australia because the UK’s force structure most closely resembles that of the ADF. The US Marine Corps may represent the pinnacle of Joint efficiency and deployable combat power (because the USMC combined land, air and sea assets under a single command infrastructure), but the UK is closer to the ADF in numbers, resource constraints and culture.

An interesting observation to ADM from a British attendee at the Conference was that the ADF has been good at learning its own lessons as well as those of others: the ADF’s HQJOC construct puts it ahead of many defence forces in establishing a truly Joint command and control set-up. This is having a very beneficial shaping effect on the ADF’s emerging amphibious capability.

While it’s easy to dismiss the ADF as a late starter in terms of embracing Jointness, it doesn’t seem to be lagging significantly compared to many of its key allies and coalition partners. The ADF Joint Warfare Conference has thrust the whole issue of Jointness into the spotlight and the growing authority of the JCC Division will undoubtedly have a shaping effect on the next Defence White Paper and the DCP which emerges from it. The next ADF Joint Warfare Conference, probably in 2013, will undoubtedly tell us a great deal about the evolving shape of the ADF.