Ibid - Australian Army

Land Warfare Studies Centre 46
Instead, the term ‘operations in defence of Australia’ was to be
used. Lieutenant General Sanderson stated:
Low force-to-space operations and protective operations of the type
foreseen for the immediate future are a necessary focus for
contemporary doctrinal development . . . and it is these not
short-warning conflict which should be the immediate subject of our
doctrine. 184
In September 1995, Lieutenant General Sanderson approved
a Training Command Statement of Doctrinal Principle in order to
give further direction to doctrine development in the context of the
A21 force structure review. 185 The statement outlined five priorities
for doctrine development. First, to meet the demands of dispersal
on Australian soil, the Army was to move towards the brigade as
the fundamental building block for operations in defence of
Australia. Brigades were to be structured to conduct independent
and dispersed operations. 186 Second, traditional divisional-level
operations were to be discarded. However, because brigade
operations were likely to be widely dispersed, it was considered that
command and control might still need to be exercised by a superior
tactical-level headquarters that might be joint. 187
Third, doctrine for major conflict was to be developed using the
American, British, Canadian, Australian Standardisation Agreement
(ABCA) corps model rather than the 1st Australian corps model
184
185
186
187
Doctrine Status and Development 1996, p. 15, para. 55.
Army Doctrine Centre, ‘Outline Plan for Introduction of the
Statement of Doctrinal Principle into Australian Army Doctrine’,
Minute, Headquarters Training Command, 14 September 1995.
See also ‘Message from the Director of the Army Doctrine Centre’,
Combat Arms Journal, December 1995, I, pp. v–vi.
‘Outline Plan for Introduction of the Statement of Doctrinal Principle
into Australian Army Doctrine’, p. 1; Doctrine Status and
Development 1996, pp. 10–11, paras 32–40.
‘Outline Plan for Introduction of the Statement of Doctrinal Principle
into Australian Army’, p. 4.