By Lauren Harris

Exercise Excalibur is part of the Contemporary Conflict and Operations module in the Australian Command and Staff College course, involving people from all over the world and honing critical skills in the civil-military humanitarian aid field.

ThE Contemporary Conflict and Operations module was convened in the Australian Command and Staff College (ACSC) Masters for the first time in 2012 and included Exercise Excalibur - a multiagency exercise involving multinational participants and organisations which first came to fruition in 2009. It replaced the Counterinsurgency elective and Stabilisation Operations module.

The exercise took place from September 17 to 21 and involved people from all over the world, including: ACSC; US Marine Corps Staff College; US Army Command and General Staff College; Pakistan Command and Staff College; Australian Council for International Development; Australian Civilian Corps; International Committee of the Red Cross; Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; AusAID; Australian Federal Police; and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The aim of Exercise Excalibur was to conduct design and preliminary scoping of an unfolding, complex emergency to produce effective, high-quality planning documents with input from multilateral, multiagency planning staff. The scenarios were designed to encourage cooperation between military and Government departments, domestic and international agencies, and civil societies - including non-government organisations and the United Nations - to understand each others' complex roles in the civil-military humanitarian arena.

Course members role-played as senior planners on the headquarters of a multilateral assistance task force.

Preparedness and execution

Lieutenant Colonel Nick Floyd was the military
co-convenor for the Contemporary Conflict and Operations module, and developed the new program with his Australian National University counterpart,
Dr Garth Pratten.

"The purpose was to combine all the different aspects and attitudes that are important in gaining a more holistic approach to this problem area and, most importantly, to provide a proper academic and practical assessment for it," Lieutenant Colonel Floyd says.

"Education continually evolves and adapts to fit the professional requirement and the operating environment, so we have built on previous activities to meet the new challenges.

"Taking into account the many people involved who are driven by different motivations with different modus operandi, I think this is a very important change for Defence."

He says it is important to be proactive and try to understand the immense complexities of a problem rather than immediately acting.

"Scoping, framing and coming up with a design to fix the problem is a key part of the scenarios put forward in Excalibur," Lieutenant Colonel Floyd says.

"What we are finding through this exercise is that there is ample scope for collaborative learning and interaction - the range of people we have on this exercise is extremely gratifying.

"In particular, the other parts of 'Team Australia' have found exposure to this very beneficial. They need to learn how other actors in this same space act - we all have to work together. For example, knowing how the International Committee of the Red Cross thinks and applies itself to a problem is crucial to the ADF because, when we next deploy, they have a better understanding of what we do.

"We are also developing some fantastic interpersonal relationships. It is great that all these different agencies and organisations have a network and a rapport as this is crucial to building understanding. By understanding the reasons that motivate and drive other organisations, we don't become surprised by them, and we understand what they are out to achieve.

"By no means does this mean we are developing a formal coalition - but, when mutual empathy is established through training such as Excalibur, it helps during a mission."

Participating students' perspectives

Major Andrew Baker is a student at ACSC who participated in the exercise.

"It has been a worthwhile activity in terms of allowing the military to engage with the other elements with whom we would likely interact in an operational setting," Major Baker says.

"The context for the scenarios was a stabilisation-type mission in a post-conventional conflict setting. Some of the considerations we had to discuss were humanitarian assistance, election management, reintegration of threat force, and management of internally displaced persons."

Major Baker enjoyed the opportunity to conduct the exercise with Pakistan and US military members. He says it was very much a consultative process.

"We had a rotation of military and civilian organisations to the different syndicate rooms that came to teach us about their components of past operations," he says.

"The civilian agencies, in particular, are better versed in the cultural nuances of situational problems, as opposed to the discrete tactical tasks the military are more experienced in.

"The most important thing is the requirement to establish good working relationships with the other entities and to maintain a consultative approach, which means the early establishment of rapport and maintaining a collaborative approach to problem solving."

Major Baker says a brief from a RAAF officer who was closely involved in the 2009 Afghan elections was among the highlights of the exercise.

"We've had a number of briefs from high-level staff, including the commandant of the Pakistan Staff and Command College in Quetta. Their briefs included a practical demonstration of things like humanitarian affairs, disaster response or the running of elections, and I think those practical aspects provide a better understanding of the challenges military and civil organisations face."

US Marine Major Christy McCutchan is based at the Marine Corps Staff College located in Quantico, Virginia. This year was the first time Marines participated in Exercise Excalibur since it began in 2009.

"I think it is a great fit for us because it was our first trip over here and we didn't really know what to expect," Major McCutchan says.

"We have been in classes for a month now so this has been a great learning experience. This course has been great in getting us thinking early about civil-military considerations on an operation because, obviously with contemporary conflicts, you have to think about post-conflict operations. It's good for us to talk to individuals from different backgrounds and organisations."

Major McCutchan says something she took away from the exercise is the importance of early collaboration within civil agencies.

"Australia tends to have more civilian involvement with the military, which creates strong collaborative relationships," she says. "I have observed that Australian military personnel are used to working with civilian agencies and it seems quite structured in the way it is built in."

Looking forward

Sebastian Rhodes-Stampa is the Regional Civil Military Coordination Officer for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Bangkok, Thailand. His collaboration on the exercise was of great help to the ACSC.

He says ongoing dialogue and collaborative approaches between civil-military organisations in humanitarian operations is important.

"Military and civil societies work well together in a disaster response context," he says.

"It is more complicated to work together where there's intra-state conflict and we need to keep working on this and using past experience. We need to build relationships and build on common strategies to overcome the difficulties we face.

"It is important to remember that, previously, AusAID, Australian Federal Police, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and humanitarian civil societies were not represented on this course. Now they are, which I think is an encouraging step forward."