With Army’s transformation plan for the future now deep into its implementation, a great deal of thought is being given to what comes next. To find out more, ADM recently spoke with Brigadier Mick Ryan, Director Strategic Plans - Army.
The reorganisation of Army’s three combat brigades will be completed by the end of 2016; 1 Brigade, with elements in Darwin and Adelaide is re-organised; 3 Brigade in Townsville has begun the process, with Brisbane-based 7 Brigade will follow suit in 2016. BRIG Ryan highlights how, at this point, Beersheba will have met its objectives.
“There are four elements of Beersheba: the Force Generation Cycle improvements, which have been implemented over the last few years and within which we have a reset year, a readying year and a ready year.” BRIG Ryan explains.
“We’re seeing efficiencies, both in training, in our workforce and in our sustainment starting to flow through. It’s still early days and we’ll need to run through the cycle a few times but we are starting to see things like more efficient use of equipment, a better capacity to forecast future requirements and more effective ability to sustain it.”
Ready Reserve integration The next phase is Army’s approach to the total force. This will see the integration of the ready reserve and civilian workforces to generate land force capability throughout the Force Generation cycle.
“In the reserve space we’ve realigned two Reserve Brigades with each regular Brigade and they step through that Force Generation Cycle together. Last year we carried out the first certification activity of a Reserve unit on exercises Hamel and Talisman Saber and we’re gradually stepping that up to the battle group capability over the next year or two,” BRIG Ryan said.
“That’s a big step forward to have regular and reserve soldiers side by side and be certified ready for operations. It really represents the true achievement of what goes all the way back to the 1974 Miller Report, which was the first time we started talking about a total force. Remember, it’s not only about Regular/Reserve, it is about the Regular/Reserve/civilian workforce.”
BRIG Ryan sees Army as comfortably on track. Many of the concepts trialled over the past couple of years have been ‘normalised’ and he predicts that procedures such as the certification process trialled during Hamel and Talisman Saber will become ‘business as usual’.
The future Army and amphibious capability Another dimension to the future of Army is realised with the introduction of the two Landing Helicopter Dock ships, which are currently due to achieve full operational status following the Talisman Saber exercise in 2017.
BRIG Ryan predicts that this joint capability, one that involves all three services, will gradually step up as personnel are trained and new equipment is introduced to service.
“The obvious elements are the large LHDs, but there’s a range of other pieces of equipment that are involved here, that need to either be brought into service or used in amphibious settings,” he explained.
“It involves helicopters being certified for operations aboard HMAS Choules and the LHDs; it involves being able to perform airspace control in a land/sea/air amphibious environment. What are the training competencies of a landing force? Army carries a lot of the load, but there’ll be Air Force people in there, there will also be Navy personnel.”
This learning process is set to continue between now and 2017, with the next major milestone coming with the participation of the first LHD (HMAS Canberra) in the 2015 Talisman Sabre exercise. It has been very much a ‘crawl, walk, run’ process.
A lot of work has been done on the development of concepts and standard operating procedures, as well as training, networking and capability development with the other services.
“There’s still some way to go but we feel comfortable that in 2017 we’ll be able to conduct the certification activity that we’ve got planned on Talisman Saber and that will be a fairly significant activity for us,” BRIG Ryan predicts.
Between now and 2017 Army will be learning how to generate an amphibious force. A deliberate decision was taken to concentrate that process within 2RAR, based at Lavarack Barracks in Townsville. Army is developing its core capability, overseen by 1 Division and informed by experiences of the other organisations, including the US Marine Corps and Royal Marines.
“So by 2017 we’ll be in a position to make a judgement on what is the best way to generate a landing force. We’re working our way through that process at the moment but we are not in a position to make that judgement without some more detailed planning, without learning more lessons over the next couple of years,” BRIG Ryan says.
The Chief of Army, LTGEN David Morrison has previously said that the decision on the most efficient way to generate the landing force within a Force Generation Cycle will be taken by his successor.
Lessons from Beersheba One of the hypotheses when Beersheba first began was that the current structure of three unlike brigades was not an efficient way of managing readiness or fleets of equipment. One of the major lessons learned thus far is that the standardised brigade approach is more efficient and permits the process of cycling through the year-long high readiness status.
“We’ve also learned that if you want to have a brigade ready, which is a government requirement of us, you need more than one or two brigades to do that. You need to cycle brigades through that process. You cannot keep people on high readiness indefinitely,” BRIG Ryan adds.
“So the three brigade construct really is the minimum required to keep a combat brigade ready for the range of different contingencies that government requires Army to be ready for.”
Another lesson learned is the need to focus on the very specialised skills that reside in what Army calls the ‘enabling brigades’: Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, as well as other very specialised skill sets, have been centralised within 6 Combat Support Brigade.
“For aviation, we’ve formed 16 Aviation Brigade, we’ve centralised a lot of our logistics organisations within 17 Brigade,” BRIG Ryan adds.
“And as we’ve stepped through the readiness cycle and the Force Generation Cycle we’ve learnt better how to integrate these specialist capabilities into the combat brigades.”
The three-year readying, ready, reset cycle allows much better forecasting of the specialist inputs over a long term and permits more efficient use of equipment. It also confers greater certainty in the planning of servicing requirements.
“When it comes to tanks in particular, another study we have at the moment is to look at how we best disaggregate under the Plan Beersheba model and there are a range of different options that we’re looking,” BRIG Ryan said.
“That analysis will go to the Chief for a determination on the most effective and efficient way for tanks to be integrated with the armoured combat regiments that will be resident within each of the combat brigades.”
The current timetable suggests that the options will be placed before LTGEN Morrison in the next few months, with a decision due by the end of the year.
Beyond Beersheba, informing the future Army Brigadier Ryan says Beersheba has opened the door for a 21st-century digital Army as it transitions from what he describes as an ‘analogue approach’.
“But it only starts the journey by giving us the wherewithal. The digitisation, the battle management systems and these kinds of things are a start point. So that gives us a foundation,” he adds
“That foundation didn’t start with Beersheba, it started in 1901 when we formed the Army, but every lesson and operation and activity that we learned from in that time is a foundation for Beersheba, which then gives us a launch point for what comes next.”
Thought is now turning to what the next major challenges in a post-Beersheba Army might be. Four discussion papers have been developed to help prepare the way for the future.
“We think the big challenges include a revolution in how we educate and train our people. An improved approach to collective training that isn’t just about land force training but a truly joint and connected approach,” BRIG Ryan notes.
“The digital army we’re talking doesn’t just have digital radios. We’re talking about what is the manifestation of that better connectivity and better networking, both in our people, how we think, how we fight, how we organise and how we support ourselves.”
BRIG Ryan says the final major challenge identified to date is how Army becomes a truly joint organisation and how it will work as part of a joint force in the future.
“So they’re what we think the big challenges are. They’re informed by the work we’ve done on the Future Land Warfare Report, and that really is a scan out to 2035 of the trends that we think will impact on the Army,” he said.
The Future Land Warfare Report has had external input which, according to BRIG Ryan was about proving a distributed decision making approach and seeking solutions globally.
“It was not just about critiquing the document and our views of the future. It was about proving a distributed decision making approach and seeking solutions globally. It really highlighted to us that we really need to get out there, we really need to engage globally for some of the solutions to the challenges that will face our army in the future,” he noted.
Beersheba is a milestone in the continuous modernisation process of Army, which will never reach an end state. But where will Army be at the end of 2016?
“We will have reorganised our brigades. We will have embedded that three-year Force Generation Cycle, we will have better aligned our enabling brigades, reserve brigades and special forces force generation within that as well, and we will have identified what we think the next steps are,” BRIG Ryan concluded.
“Before we leap into planning for specific actions let’s have a look at the environment, which we’ve done with this Future Land Warfare Report, let’s look at the challenges for the Army within that, and let’s actually have a dialogue, broadly, in an open and transparent manner about are they the big challenges. If they are, have we defined those challenges sufficiently? And once we think we’ve got to a point where we’ve sufficiently bounded the problems we need to solve, we’ll then go into a more deliberate planning process where we’ll develop options for the Army beyond Beersheba.
“And once we think we’re in a pretty good position then we’ll go into some deliberate planning and move on to develop the Army for 2025 and beyond.”
