Ibid - Australian Army

Land Warfare Studies Centre 72
on the use of directive control in late 1993. 291 The report noted that,
although directive control had been authorised doctrine for training
since 1988, ‘directive control is not employed throughout the Army
nor is it generally understood’. 292 It warned that directive control
required ‘greater intellectual application than just tactics and
movement’. 293 Directive control was critical to successful
manoeuvre because it was a command philosophy that enabled
agility, tempo and dislocation of the enemy’s decision cycle. 294
Unless the Army absorbed directive control as a fundamental
modus operandi in peacetime training, its understanding of the
indirect approach and of manoeuvre warfare would be flawed and
might lead to attrition warfare. 295
Throughout the 1990s, Training Command continued to urge the
officer corps to develop the skills necessary for effective
operational level planning. In 1997, Brigadier C. A. M. Roberts,
a former Chief of Staff, Training Command observed:
While I have great admiration for our Army’s tactical ability, we
could be better, particularly in the area of the professional
knowledge of our officers. I despair that we will ever understand the
operational art . . . Our officers are not well read in their profession.
When confronted with new situations people will generally fall back
on what they know best. For our officers it is tactics. It is my view
that tactical applications to operational level problems leads [sic] to
an attrition approach. 296
The embrace of low-level conflict for operations across northern
Australia after 1988 reinforced the power of the Army’s tactical
291
292
293
294
295
296
See Australian Army, Doctrine Status and Development 1994,
Training Command Instruction 01/94, Headquarters Training
Command, Sydney, December 1993, pp. 1–2.
Ibid., p. 1.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 2.
Ibid.
Letter to the author from Brigadier C. A. M. Roberts, 20 May 1997.