Commando News Edition 13, 2022

SPECIAL WARFARE IN THE GREY ZONE
Special forces operations are the stuff of legend
in our culture. The Australian commandos who
worked with Timorese people to resist the
Japanese onslaught in 1942 have remained the model
of what even a small, starving band of soldiers can
achieve deep behind enemy lines.
It’s an example that inspired me to become a
Commando and that continues to shape my service in
political life. Australia has raised world-class special
forces since the famed Z Special Unit, the ancestor of
our modern forces, so bravely raided Japanese ships in
Singapore harbour during the war.
In recent times, Australia’s SAS and Commando
units carried the burden of our high operational tempo
in Iraq and Afghanistan, being over-used for their skill
and because leaders saw them as less politically risky.
While their mission has always been broader than
counterterrorism and direct-action tasks, special forces
operators are set to be on the frontline of Australia’s
broader responses to a continuum of threats ranging
from grey-zone tactics to conventional warfare.
To grasp the enduring centrality of special forces in
modern war, look no further than Ukraine’s heroic
resistance against Russian aggression.
In the opening days of the war, the Russian strategy
of regime change hinged on assassinating the
president and deploying tanks to Kyiv as soon as
possible.
To achieve this, Russian airborne troops needed to
land at Antonov Airport in Hostomel.
But a small Ukrainian special forces unit and some
drone pilots and militias defended the airport, com -
pletely throwing off Russia’s initial war plan.
The lesson that special forces can turn the tide at
the strategic level is vital for Australia to re-learn
because, while our conventional forces lack the mass to
change the course of a major war, we train first-rate
special forces soldiers.
In an ASPI seminar, Dr David Kilcullen and Major
General (Rtd) Professor Adam Findlay recommended
ways to use that capability in an era of grey zone
warfare.
The first key point was that Australia’s special
warfare role should be strengthened, which could
mean training the indigenous forces of a neighbouring
country to help them better defend against aggression
by a third country.
Kilcullen points to the experience of the Baltic
states’ special forces in conducting support to
resistance, the training of civilians in resistance warfare,
as a potential model.
Kilcullen’s second point is something the Defence
Strategic Review should consider. He calls for the ADF
to get out of its War on Terror “defensive crouch”.
By Luke Gosling OAM MP
A Norforce soldier receives the Australian Defence Medal at a
recent graduation ceremony in Darwin.
Instead of just scanning for threats, he says we should
get in the habit of thinking of ourselves as the grey
zone threat With that mindset, special forces could
train in small teams for long periods in remote loca -
tions to simulate potential missions.
And crucially, Kilcullen calls for “think[ing] about
ethnically appropriate [special forces]. It’s going to be
extraordinarily difficult to be running around some of
the areas of operation that we are going to be
operating in with a bunch of guys that look like me.”
Major General (Rtd) Findlay also called for ethnically
diverse operators, and not just tall white men, who are
also area experts and linguists. Such a capability should
either be evolved from the current special warfare
capability or be raised as an entirely new unit (or subunit)
with clear responsibility for special warfare,
including support to resistance, with particular skill sets
relevant to our Indo-Asia-Pacific region.
With our principal special forces units presently
based in Sydney and Perth, there is a case for basing a
new unit (or sub-unit) in the Northern Territory to
acclimatise it to conditions closer to those in our
region.
While Commandos and SAS have talented linguists,
a new special warfare unit could distinguish itself as a
unit by and for those diverse regional experts and
linguists that we will so direly need in future operations.
(Continued on page 51)
COMMANDO ~ The Magazine of the Australian Commando Association ~ Edition 13 I 2022 49