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160 australian maritime issues 2009: spc-a annual
Modern amphibious or littoral manoeuvre doctrine espouses seamless multidimensional
manoeuvre by projecting force from the sea directly to the objective without stopping at
the beachhead. Furthermore, modern littoral manoeuvre concepts aim to increase force
flexibility and mobility by limiting the force footprint ashore and basing components
at sea to enable the force ‘to move freely between objectives, poise as required and
engage and disengage at will’. 23 MOLE has failed to fully realise or exploit these
modern manoeuvrist characteristics of amphibious warfare. 24 Moreover, MOLE lays the
continental manoeuvrist foundations to which the globally accepted littoral manoeuvre
concepts of Ship to Objective Manoeuvre (STOM), Distributed Operations (DO) and
sea basing could be a major force multiplier and/or critical enabler.
Ship To Objective Manoeuvre
MOLE’s entry methodology seeks to insert forces close to or onto objectives in order
to achieve decisive outcomes, exact surprise upon the adversary and avoid the pause
associated with securing and establishing a point of disembarkation. 25 This is not
conceptually new as it is a key feature of the existing littoral or amphibious warfare
concept known as STOM:
STOM emphasises focus on the projection of force by both surface and air
means directly to the objective from the sea, to dislocate the adversary in
time and space. STOM balances high impact with a smaller footprint and
offers freedom of manoeuvre to achieve surprise and maintain tempo. 26
If fully exploited joint or multidimensional manoeuvre and the concept of STOM could
offer the MOLE concept a more seamless transition between the entry and manoeuvre
phases of the operation. Within the entry phase MOLE articulates a requirement for a subphase
called exploitation to set preconditions for the manoeuvre phase, however modern
joint manoeuvre can negate the requirement for a pause for exploitation. 27 The concept of
exploitation appears to reflect the establishment of a beachhead concept or ‘the break in
then pour it all ashore approach that characterised many historical amphibious operations’. 28
This is evidenced by MOLE’s specific reference to the establishment of ‘an FOB [Forward
Operating Base] or force maintenance area for combat support and combat service support
(CSS) elements’ in the exploitation sub-phase. 29 With the acquisition of the Amphibious
Deployment and Sustainment (ADAS) System the ADF will have the capacity to execute
STOM inserting ‘two company groups by air in two waves and concurrent insertion of two
company groups by surface means in multiple waves’ thus allowing rapid generation of
combat power ashore (potentially to multiple objectives) to facilitate seamless transition
between the entry phase and manoeuvre phase with limited requirement for a pause for
exploitation. 30 Furthermore, the concept of STOM is conducive to the deployment of small
combined arms teams to which the Army’s Joint Land Combat and MOLE concept refer. 31
These small combined arms teams are suited to fighting in a complex littoral environment
and insertion into a number of dispersed entry locations. 32