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132 australian maritime issues 2009: spc-a annual
Conclusion
So what does all this mean for the ADF and future operations by a maritime
expeditionary force? Well, all three Services, but particularly the Australian Army,
need to get behind the latest strategic and operational developments in maritime
expeditionary operations. This will involve a significant cultural change as well as some
structural change. There are many options for Army: it may decide to develop into an
equivalent Marine organisation in its entirety, or it may be necessary to redesignate
a specialist Marine Brigade Group (equivalent to a US Marine Expeditionary Brigade).
Whatever decisions are made in future, it is clear that Adaptive Campaigning needs to
refocus the Australian Army’s attitude, and its level of commitment to a truly effective
maritime expeditionary force.
Notes
1
Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, A Concise History of Warfare, Collins, London,
1968, p. 356.
2
Adaptive campaigning is defined as ‘actions taken by the land forces as part of the military
contribution to a whole of government approach to resolving conflicts’. See Australian Army,
Complex Warfighting, Canberra, 2004; Adaptive Campaigning, Canberra, 2006; as well as the
17 April 2009 draft of Australian Army, Adaptive Campaigning: Army’s Future Land Operating
Concept (AC-FLOC), Canberra, 2009.
3
Joint land force is defined as ‘the Army, including special operations, and those elements of the
Navy, Air Force and, other government agencies, including cyber and space capabilities, that
support land operations’. (AC-FLOC Draft April 2009, p. ix); and ‘This entails a fundamentally
maritime strategy, for which Australia requires forces that can operate with decisive effect
throughout the northern maritime and littoral approaches to Australia, and the ADF’s primary
operational environment more generally’, in Department of Defence, Defending Australia in
the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030, Canberra, 2009, p. 59.
4
Many of the ideas presented in this paper are not new. The fundamentals of sea power are
described in Geoffrey Till’s book, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd edn,
Routledge, London, 2009, chapters 3, 8 and 9 are especially important for this paper. Navy
doctrine is also essential reading: Royal Australian Navy, Australian Maritime Doctrine
(AMD): RAN Doctrine 1, Sea Power Centre - Australia, Canberra, 2000. Note the Navy’s 2010
update of AMD, released by the Chief of Navy on 4 June 2010 has particularly embraced the
expeditionary concepts developed over the last decade or so.
5
An expeditionary force is defined as ‘a force projected from the home base capable of sustained
operations at distance from that home base’ (Australian Maritime Doctrine 2010, using JWP