Defence

Tactics

The Chauvel essay Prize – 2006

The case for minimum mass tactics in the Australian Army

The Australian Army Journal (AAJ), in association with the Land Warfare Studies Centre (LWSC), recently awarded the Chauvel Essay Prize for the most outstanding contribution published in the AAJ. Selected by members of the Editorial Advisory Board, the author of the winning essay is presented with a medallion and a $500 cheque by the Chief of Army. The Chauvel Essay Prize aims to raise the intellectual profile and professionalism of the Army and rewards discussion of important issues. The winner of the 2006 Chauvel Essay Prize was Brigadier Michael Krause, Director-General Future Land Warfare. An excerpt from his essay follows...

The Australian Army’s current organisational structure is reminiscent of the fable of the rally driver who would not change his Cooper S Mini after he gave up racing and married. When the rally driver’s first child arrived, he retained the Mini as the family car on the assumption that he would eventually return to racing. A second child soon followed and the family could barely fit in the car. Yet the rally driver refused to dispose of his beloved racing vehicle. A third child duly arrived and the family found that it could not fit in the car at all. In order to resolve this dilemma, the rally driver, rather than recognise that he had the wrong car, insisted on undertaking two trips whenever it was necessary to transport his family.

Like the rally driver, the Australian Army also has ‘the wrong car’ and must change its approach to military organisation if it is to be an efficient 21st-century land force. With considerable investment in modern equipment and the important advances that the Hardening and Networking the Army initiative will bring, the land force cannot afford to retain an organisational structure that is designed for 20th-century, industrial-style armed conflict. Without significant and wide-ranging organisational reform, the emerging 21st-century Australian Army risks being squeezed into roles and situations for which it is neither designed nor suited.

Organisational redesign to meet the needs of future conflict is an imprecise art, but it is clear that the Army needs to develop an adaptable and agile structure over the next two decades. Such a structure would be capable of taking maximum advantage of emerging technologies while remaining true to the human character of war. The longer the Army delays change to its base organisation, the more obsolescent that organisation will gradually become.

Although predicting the future of war is an exercise fraught with difficulty, intellectual effort must be expended on it. In the 1990s, advocates of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) argued in favour of a future conflict environment dominated by information technologies that recalled the spirit of Jomini rather than Clausewitz. Their approach was one of narrow science, without always considering the fundamental uncertainty at the heart of war as a basic human activity. However, one of the nuggets of great interest that emerged from RMA-style speculation was the concept of minimum-mass tactics. In broad terms, advocates of minimum-mass tactics argue that the age of the mass military formation has ended because detection and surveillance technologies have greatly enhanced the use of small teams of soldiers. In the future battlespace, small teams are likely to be capable of operating within a powerful information-technology network, which will permit greater situational awareness, decision superiority and tactical discretion in operations.

Early arguments in favour of minimum-mass tactics were, however, often exaggerated. For example, there was an unjustified belief that stand-off air strike would ameliorate the problem of close combat by land forces. This was an approach to combat that ran contrary to the entire history of warfare waged by armies, and one that has been exposed in the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Nonetheless, although often exaggerated in its utility, the concept of minimum mass remains worthy of intellectual exploration within the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and the Army, particularly since it holds promise in the key area of future organisational design. The caveat is that the concept of minimum-mass tactics must not be removed from the context of realistic ground-combat conditions and must be seen within the contours of joint warfighting.

The rise and fall of mass in warfare

The adoption of minimum-mass tactics is not an argument for or against the use of advanced military technology. Rather, the concept of minimum mass is related to exploiting the physics of the modern battlespace. Mass may be defined as the ability to concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time. A salient lesson from military history from ancient to industrial warfare was that the combatant fielding the larger forces often won battles, campaigns and wars. As Napoleon once put it, victory usually went to the big battalions. A dominant theme in modern military history, particularly after warfighting became industrialised in the late 19th century, was the drive to outnumber and overwhelm an opponent with larger armies and bigger fleets. In World War II, quantity tended to overcome quality, particularly on the Eastern Front between 1943 and 1945 when the German and Soviet armies became locked in a war of mass and materiel.

Modern warfare, especially in the era of the two world wars between 1914 and 1945, was ultimately about a clash of industrial and materiel resources. During the Cold War, from 1947 until 1989, mass continued to matter. Indeed, until the coming of precision weapons in the late 1970s, it was the size of the Soviet and Warsaw Pact armies that convinced many Western observers in NATO that a Soviet-led mass attack on Western Europe could only be stopped by recourse to tactical nuclear weapons.

Since the late 20th century, the concentration on mass has declined principally for four reasons. First, in the wake of the end of the Cold War, the conventional power and high technology of the United States military is largely unmatched by any other modern military. The 20th-century trend of matching symmetrical strength on the battlefield has been reversed, and gradually asymmetrical strategies such as insurgency, guerrilla warfare and terrorism have received more attention in military circles. In modern conflict characterised by the spectrum of peace, crisis and war, there are often no convenient targets for mass fires. Rather, civilians, aid agencies, refugees and combatants are frequently intertwined in an operational area.

This type of situation demands great discrimination in the use of force. Second, technological advances have made smaller weapon systems such as precision-guided missiles significantly more lethal. Most contemporary weapon systems possess sophisticated fire-control systems that enhance accuracy and destructive impact. In World War II, it took the Allied air forces 1000 bomber raids to destroy German cities. Today, precision firepower and Tomahawk cruise missiles are capable of demolishing selected urban targets with great accuracy. Hub-to-hub artillery pieces are being replaced by a variety of accurate weapons capable of precise applications of fire. In short, in the early 21st century, technological advances have made it no longer necessary to mass firepower in order to achieve tactical effects, as was the case during the era of the world wars in the 20th century.

Third, in an age of instant media images and electronic reporting, mass fires that produce mass effects – including large numbers of civilian casualties – are no longer acceptable or sustainable. Discrimination in targeting and restraint in inflicting destruction are required, and armies have become as concerned with how they fight as much as who they fight. The problems of collateral damage inflicted on both innocent civilians and their vital urban infrastructure have become areas of legitimate and pressing concern. Low-yield precise engagements are required far more often than mass saturation strikes. Modern armies cannot employ mass fires in an age in which the rehabilitation of an enemy and the reconstruction of his resources may be required as political imperatives.

Finally, in contemporary social conditions, armed forces are expensive to build and maintain. In particular, mass conscript armies have become not only unnecessary but also unaffordable. In post-industrial conditions, there has been a return to the small and highly trained professional forces that were the hallmark of pre-industrial limited warfare in 18th-century Europe, as practised by Frederick the Great of Prussia. Contemporary armies seek to become more highly trained and professional and in post-industrial societies must compete for scarce, high-quality manpower. In sum, the age of the great standing army supplied by conscripts as citizens in arms has passed. Small, professional armies are the norm in most of the modern West. The combination of the above four factors raises serious questions about the value of relying on mass organisation in warfare. Mass has become a receding requirement and is losing its utility in an age when precision technology, low demography and postmodern social conditions call for a more discriminating and skilful form of warfare. The trend away from maximum numbers and indiscriminate firepower ushers in the possibility of, and indeed the need for, the adoption of realistic minimum-mass tactics.

To read the complete essay, follow this link: http://www.defence.gov.au/army/LWSC/Publications/journal/AAJ_Autumn05/AAJ_Autumn05_krause_9.pdf

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