Ibid - Australian Army

Land Warfare Studies Centre 6
development became the responsibility of corps directors rather
than Army Headquarters, and British-modelled doctrine was
disseminated throughout the Australian Army by the Directorate of
Military Training (DMT), the Staff College and the corps schools. 13
Australian Army doctrine reflected British ideas and organisation
for both positional warfare in Korea and for counterinsurgency in
Malaya. 14
Blaxland’s work on Australian Army organisation shows how, in
the early 1960s, American Pentomic battle group doctrine was
briefly important in influencing the adoption of the ill-fated
Australian Pentropic division. 15 Tropical Warfare divisions and
brigades were restructured into battle groups in a tactical and
doctrinal experiment that did not suit Australian conditions. 16 By
1964 the Army had reverted to a traditional British-style Tropical
Warfare divisional organisation.
Bushby’s study of Australian Army doctrine during the Vietnam
War era from 1965 to 1972 demonstrates how operations, first in
Borneo and then in Vietnam, led to a focus on counterrevolutionary
warfare. Three Army pamphlets, The Enemy, Ambush
and
Counter-Ambush and Patrolling and Tracking, provided
a framework for understanding the nature of revolutionary
warfare. 17 In 1965 a new doctrinal series, the Division in Battle
(DIB), including the important pamphlet Counter-Revolutionary
Warfare, emerged on the eve of the Army’s long deployment in
13
14
15
16
17
Ibid., pp. 15–16.
Ibid., pp. 20–9.
Blaxland, op. cit., pp. 56–63.
Ibid., pp. 102–16.
Australian Army, The Enemy, Army Headquarters, Canberra, 1964;
Australian Army, Ambush and Counter Ambush 1965, Army
Headquarters, Canberra, February 1966; Patrolling and Tracking 1965,
Army Headquarters, Canberra, March 1966.