Previous Chiefs' Speeches/Presentations
ADDRESS TO JOINT FUTURE WARFIGHTING CONFERENCE
by
GENERAL PETER COSGROVE, AC, MC
20 April 2005
Good Morning ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to address this conference on joint future warfighting.
As many of you know, my vision for the ADF in 2020 is of a seamless joint manoeuvre force that can exploit real time links between our sensors and all our weapon systems. That capacity was demonstrated most recently in a humanitarian relief operation that was a joint, seamless and involved manoeuvre. In all respects it was a joint operation. It started as a massive deployment by the RAAF and then quickly modified into being a truly joint operation involving platforms, systems, structures, organisations and men and women from all three Services. Of course, without the use of weapons.
This seamless joint manoeuvre force will need discriminating, innovative and mentally agile commanders who can harness and apply their people and their technology to produce military effects supporting our national objectives. I am confident that we are moving steadily in that direction.
Today, I intend to focus my remarks on the ADF's contribution to the extraordinarily complex task of countering terrorism. In particular, I want to use the changing character of terrorism as a catalyst to encourage you to debate and discuss the implications a changing world has for our institution and our people.
It is clear that terrorism, regional and global, is here to stay. Of course it didn't recently discover us, or us it. It has been around forever. It is, and will remain, a mainstream reality of our future. And, we need to continue to explore how we can work together to sustain a long-term response to this threat. The challenge is as much social, cultural and intellectual as it is technical and tactical.
9/11 did not change the world so much as it opened our eyes to the fact that it had already changed. Terrorism, in its modern globalised reality, demands collaboration between the Services-a joint response. It demands a coordinated Defence effort. And it demands a cooperative, integrated approach across government and between nations.
Modern, networked terrorist groups control no natural resources but exploit the flows of international resources. They control no national economy but access national economic benefits. They have no requirement to govern territory but they instil a virtual political unity and coherence in their followers. They have no communications infrastructure but maintain a presence in the world media. They employ irregular military forces but they do not defend territory or population. They are organised around ideas not 'things' and we will need to think and act differently to defeat them.
The era of globalisation has transformed every aspect of society and culture. The benign view is that globalisation, especially the IT revolution has flattened hierarchies and exercised a democratising effect. That is true to a point. But it has also brought a range of strategic effects within the grasp of individuals and small groups. The latter are agile and can mount lethal operations over strategic distances with relative ease and impunity.
In military and strategic terms, globalisation has facilitated the proliferation of WMD, expanded black markets in weapons, money and labour, as well as the widespread availability of increasingly lethal small arms. These challenges have emerged either independent of geography, or are at best weakly dependent on geography. The Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington were planned in Internet chat-rooms. The terrorists used e-mail and mobile phones to exchange tactical information. They booked their seats online. The once overwhelming importance of strategic geography has declined and terrorist networks are taking advantage of this fact. The most physically proximate threats are not by definition the most dangerous.
While the extraordinary improvements in health care, communications and science are unequivocally good, they have not been distributed evenly. There have always been Haves and Have-Nots in the global community but the old inequities, real and perceived, between say the Peasant and the Prince, are now magnified, globalised and open to manipulation by those savvy in the use of culture and communications.
Our counter terrorist capabilities, and I suspect much of our thinking about the problem, have their roots in the events of the 70's and 80's: hostage taking, hijacking, bombings and the like. Our Special Forces community continues to bear the responsibility for meeting this threat. And, in many parts of government and the wider community, our Special Forces are thought of as the ADF response to terrorism. As you will hear me say shortly, these troops are critical but far from the only Defence response. Paradoxically, this perception has been reinforced by their outstanding performance in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq. But to a large extent they were operating in a role reminiscent of the original SAS in the Western Deserts of North Africa-longrange reconnaissance and patrolling.
Terrorism has evolved, and our thinking and capability must evolve to meet the new challenges it presents. Terrorism's new form may have more in common with strategic insurgency than it does with the often isolated, nationally-focussed terrorist events of the late 20th Century, although these also remain a feature of our operational landscape. Another phenomena is that terrorists used to take hostages to bargain, certainly to publicise their cause and to create terror. Now it is their position to execute their hostages early and to accept their own death, which shows that this part of their tactics too has changed.
As you know, insurgencies are popular movements that seek to subvert the status quo through violence, political activity, and insurrection. Terrorism is their tactic of choice but it's their motivation that must be countered if they are to be defeated. Traditional insurgencies sought to overthrow governments or social structures in one state or region. Networked global terrorism seeks an end that is not contained by national boundaries. It seeks to remake those boundaries by changing global relationships.
The terrorists of the 1970's and 80's were seen as criminals who were aberrant misfits within a society. They were more a law-enforcement than a military problem, although we did have a role to play. Modern terrorist leaders, such as bin Laden, claim to be spiritual leaders. They seek to highlight, manipulate and communicate perceived divisions between cultures, religions and politico-economic opportunity. Defeating their insurgency requires a multi-national effort across the political, social and economic fronts, as much as an effective military response.
Terrorist related security threats are diverse and our response must be, and is, equally diverse. Intelligence, surveillance, troop deployments and maritime presence, all contribute. We must be joint, integrated and collaborative. We must be internally and externally seamless in everything we undertake-militarily, nationally and with our friends and allies throughout the world. Just a small example of this attempt to achieve integration and seamlessness is the creation of the Joint Offshore Protection Command-an amalgamation and integration of the existing function Coastwatch performs. This arrangement allows potentially for a command relationship from CDF and Commander JOPC, right down to ships and other military units deployed in the event of a situation that escalates beyond our current law enforcement that then requires the use of military force.
Defence currently makes a unique contribution to this national security capability, but perhaps we are capable of more. Can the ADF offer Government a wider range of options? The ADF's core expertise in weapons technology, military tactics-including Special Forces, intelligence, maritime capability, and aerial surveillance-and warfighting experience places the ADF in a good position to contribute to thinking on the nature of the threat and how to counter its effects. Additionally, our intelligence agencies, our strategic and international policy advisers and the scientific capabilities of DSTO give our institution a distinct edge. Let me expand on some of these points and in doing so offer some 'food for thought' with regard to the ADF's ability to combat terrorism.
Firstly, we must maintain the technical and human expertise of our Special Forces. The ability of the Special Forces as a tactical response group means they are an incomparable source of prepared and ready capabilities. You might then wonder why we don't simply increase this capability? The answer is simple. Given our population base there is a limit to how many of these enormously talented, multi-skilled, highly potent troops our country can produce. You just can't make additional people special. However, there is another option worth exploring in this regard- working to realise aspects of the hardened and networked concept for which the Chief of Army has been such a proponent. In this way, we might increase our situational awareness, our lethality, our ability to protect, and most importantly, our force agility. Terrorists, by their very nature, are able to operate inside the decision cycle times of most conventional forces. We have to work on bringing down the time it takes from observation to decisive action by some arm of Government-our Government or somebody else's Government. Really this is a continuation of the historical trend that sees Special Forces break ground militarily with conventional forces following closely in their footsteps. Simply, we should be able to optimise the powerful effect that any deployed force has through a coherent, determined and rapid move towards networking.
Secondly, in recent years we have made big in-roads into inter-agency cooperation as evidenced by our relationship with Customs and Coastwatch-particularly with the new Joint Offshore Protection Command, that I previously mentioned. Perhaps one day we will have the same fidelity of situational awareness in the land and maritime environments that has been achieved internationally since the terrorist hijackings of the 1970's in the air environment. In this regard Commander Pacific Command's attempt to get a better situational awareness of all kinds of innocent movement in the maritime environment warrants further development.
Finally, developments in science and technology have great potential to ensure the discrimination of our lethal weapon systems, extending their reach and capability whilst simultaneously reducing the risk to non-combatants. The 20th Century saw an alarming return to medieval times of the casualty ratios between combatants and non-combatants, with the civilians again baring the brunt of the violence and terrorists taking advantage of this fact. I hope the 21st Century can be different.
Additionally, there are a number of vital human aspects to this effort that require attention and development.
We will have to 'up-skill' the Force in anticipation of emergent technologies. This will be demanding for our fighting men and women. But I know they can and will rise to the challenge-thinking and adapting quickly to changing circumstances. They have passed every test the nation has thrown at them, particularly the in past five or six years. They have adapted tremendously well to every occasion and this shows that we can rely on them to adapt well into the future.
It is this adaptability, versatility and innovation that we need. Those qualities don't come from technology. Technology is important, very important, and we are getting a lot of it. But our people have to be able to harness the technology. And we have to focus, train and prepare their minds to use it wisely.
As the high-tech equipment from the Defence Capability Plan enters service, we must also pay close attention to the character of the ADF. Understanding who we are, what we stand for and what we can do is the wellspring of morale, cohesion, resilience and ethics in an increasingly complex, disorienting battlefield. And, unlike technology, this aspect of capability, our strategic culture if you like, will always be a fundamental source of our competitive advantage. The actions of some individuals at Abu Ghraib prison are a reminder to us all that we must not forget who we are, what we must do and what we must never do or become.
We will be placing additional burdens on our people as we increasingly move to a greater wholeof- government effort by further coordinating our efforts with other agencies. Again this was demonstrated tremendously clearly in the recent Tsunami relief operation. We were immediately working side-by-side with DFAT, AUSAID, the United Nations and many other private Aid agencies and NGO's-and of course with the agencies of the Indonesian Government. And all within hours of the disaster occurring. This all worked wonderfully well to a point, but there is always room for improvement. This has now become a benchmark and a stepping stone towards our new prosperous relationship with Indonesia.
The traditional departmental or agency boundaries may no longer be clearly defined. Whilst we undoubtedly have skills and experiences to pass on to others, the men and women of the ADF need to be open to learning-from within the Defence Force, from our inter-agency colleagues, from our foreign partners and most importantly, from our adversaries. Knowing your enemy is the first step to defeating him.
Currently, Defence training and educational experiences contribute positively to developing strong relationships across the three Services. Joint exercises and operational deployments are laying the foundations for a joint military culture. But the future demands an even broader horizon for our people, uniformed and civilian. Modern battlefields are shattered societies cluttered with the combatants, contractors, media, NGOs and agencies of many countries, each with an agenda, and not all of them mutually supportive. We need to be able to effectively and appropriately engage with all of them.
At a very busy time in the ADF's history, it is easy to focus on the near-term, to focus on the problem and ask only the obvious or easy questions. The ADF must mix warfighting- conventional or counter-insurgent-with peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. It's not an either/or proposition. We must master all these operations and we cannot afford to focus on one at the expense of the others.
In closing, I wish to record my enormous pride in the men and women of the Australian Defence Force. They are a credit to the nation and have burnished the reputation of the Australian Defence Force by meeting, in their unique way, every one of the diverse challenges that have been thrown at them. I will soon leave the ADF full of optimism about our national character continues to shine, based on what I have seen of our young folk on operations all over the globe. I can say with hand on heart that the ADF is in terrific condition. We have been operating at a high tempo over the past five and a half years. That has given us a sharp edge. I am also delighted with the way that we have been able to transform while maintaining that operational tempo.
As I speak, an Australian task group based on the Second Cavalry Regiment is forming in Kuwait before deploying to Iraq. This deployment to the Middle East affirms two of the timeless verities of Australian history; namely that our national interests are not exclusively bound by our territory or local geography and that we cannot predict the type of war we may be called upon to fight. The foot soldiers of global terrorist networks are our latest adversary. They must not prevail. Conferences like this are crucial to ensuring that we maintain our professional and intellectual edge, by not only identifying the problem but also by ensuring that we are asking the right questions. I wish you well in your deliberations.
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