Five Challenges for Future Infantry: Thinking about ... - Australian Army

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Concepts • Colonel Chris Field by the Information Office. 5 The failure to create consistent messages across intentional and non-intentional recipient groups may lead to conflict-laden messages. 6 Frequently, information fratricide ‘results in credibility loss [and] contrary messaging’. 7 Future Infantry, as demonstrated by current Infantry operations, must have the ability to support and empower Indigenous Capacity Building within complex future battlespaces. Future Infantry support to indigenous or local people through training, mentoring, guiding and partnering, in combination with the four other Adaptive Campaigning lines of operation, will help to ensure that indigenous force elements can become self-assured, self-sustaining, self-learning and ultimately self-sufficient. In summary, Adaptive Campaigning’s five interdependent and mutually reinforcing lines of operation present Future Infantry with both challenges and opportunities. The starkness of these challenges and opportunities are self-evident to experienced Infantry personnel, who understand that Future Infantry’s need to adapt and change will be conducted in direct competition with equally adaptive, agile and lethal enemies. Future Infantry Challenge 3: Balancing the Fighting Force Infantry personnel will understand that Infantry’s operational tempo is high, and has been high since 1999. This high operational tempo has placed some strain on Infantry’s training models. In the last decade, the Infantry have faced the following challenges: 1. Maintaining a multitude of Infantry skills including: Special Forces, commandos, light infantry, airborne, mechanised and motorised 2. Allowing soldiers enough time to achieve excellence as riflemen, prior to promotion to lance corporal, and beyond 3. Maintaining Support Company skills in reconnaissance, sniping, direct fire support weapons, mortars, assault pioneers and communications 4. Conducting foundation warfighting training and education in the face of unique current operational requirements. Arguably, these challenges may be exacerbated by Infantry’s lack of balance. Infantry maintains a number of specialised battalions, companies, platoons, sections and individual Infantry personnel. Often such specialised organisations and people are not easily deployable and rotatable which, in an era of persistent conflict, presents a challenge for an army engaged in multiple force rotations in disparate operational environments. Is the Infantry trying to develop and maintain too many specialist skills? As the battlespace becomes more complex should Future Infantry remain a page 36 • Volume VII, Number 1 • Australian Army Journal
Five Challenges for Future Infantry ‘multi-specialist’ force, or should it aim to become more balanced in order to achieve excellence in fewer skills? Given these challenges in Infantry’s balance and maintenance of skills, what issues should Future Infantry address? The following are some questions for possible Future Infantry adaptation and change: 1. How will Future Infantry demarcate the difference between Special Forces and other Infantry? 2. What is the Future Infantry relationship with the Future Cavalry and Future Armour? How does Future Infantry generate combined arms teams that are modular and interoperable Future Cavalry and Future Armour? 3. What is the future of Support Company? Does Future Infantry need all of the ‘traditional’ Support Company skills, or can other corps fulfil those skills in support of the Future Infantry? 4. What combat team level intelligence and operations capabilities does Future Infantry require? 5. Is the current Infantry platoon structure appropriate for future operations? Do Future Infantry platoons need the ability to coordinate joint fires, see beyond ‘the next hill or village’, and conduct dynamic breaching in complex environments? What other capabilities do Future Infantry platoons need? Is the Infantry trying to develop and maintain too many specialist skills? Future Infantry Challenge 4: Employing LAND 400 – Combined Arms Fighting System Defence White Paper – Force 2030 (White Paper 2009) states that Army would, in future years, ‘acquire a new fleet of around 1,100 deployable protected vehicles’. 8 This project, which in the Defence Capability Plan 2009 is designated as LAND 400, 9 has been named by Army as LAND 400 – Combined Arms Fighting System (L400-CAFS). L400-CAFS has the potential to change Army, and change Future Infantry. The following are some questions for possible Future Infantry adaptation and change in the context of L400-CAFS: 1. Will L400-CAFS see a merging of current mechanised and motorised infantry skills into a single, enhanced, networked, mounted close combat infantry capability? 2. What does L400-CAFS mean for Future Infantry’s employment as part of the broader combined arms team? How does L400-CAFS affect Future Infantry’s interoperability with Future Cavalry and Future Armour? Australian Army Journal • Volume VII, Number 1 • page 37
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Five Challenges for Future Infantry: Thinking about ... - Australian Army

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