Making
headlines
Experiments
test future capabilities
By
Maj John Liston
WHILE the Army’s combat formations train to meet the current
tempo of operations, a small group of soldiers and DSTO scientists
prepare to develop the Army’s future fighting force.
Tucked
away in a quiet part of Puckapunyal, the Land Warfare Development
Centre’s (LWDC) Army Experimental Section recently conducted
the 2002 Headline Experiment (HE02) to answer questions about design
attributes for the Navy’s future amphibious platforms and the
Army’s troop lift helicopters within the AIR 9000 project.
The
experiment also confirmed generic force structure, future close
combat warfighting capabilities and combat service support requirements
for operations in the 2015 littoral environment.
The
littoral is where the three operational domains of sea, land and
air converge and is characteristic of northern Australia and our
region.
Under
developing Army doctrine, the littoral area may be defined to include
inland areas up to a distance of 150km from the coast – an
area where 70 per cent of the world’s population is predicted
to live by 2015.
The
MOLE concept (manoeuvre operations in the littoral environment)
describes how joint manoeuvre operations may be conducted by the
ADF to influence, deter, delay or defeat threats unilaterally or
as part of a combined force.
In
the last in a series of five experiments conducted this year, the
2002 Headline Experiment team built on the smaller Neptune Series
of activities to further explore the capabilities required to execute
the MOLE concept.
Syndicate
groups from the Australian Command and Staff College (AC&SC)
focused on phase two of the MOLE concept – entry from air and
sea – where Australian forces conducted a simultaneous air
and amphibious insertion utilising various surface and vertical
lift capabilities.
Syndicate
plans incorporated a range of current and potential future ship
and helicopter types to identify capabilities to support land operations
ashore under various tidal, climatic and threat conditions.
This
is the Army’s fourth year of experimentation and Headline’s
experimental co-ordinator, Lt-Col Grant Sanderson, saw tremendous
value in the involvement of tomorrow’s leaders from AC &
SC.
“We
were able to develop a network of people who are now better informed
about the experimentation process and they will take this to their
next job and use it,” he said.
While
Headline does not decide the particular vessel or helicopter type
the ADF will eventually procure, it will provide the senior decision-makers
with clear outcomes on which these expensive decisions can be based.
A key
issue in driving the ADF’s needs for the future amphibious
system will be the landing of forces capable of achieving decision
in the battlespace.
A clear
outcome from the 2002 experiment and supporting DSTO studies is
that warfighting success in complex littoral environments depends
on the ability to produce, deliver and fight balanced combined arms
teams.
Lt-Col
Sanderson said the findings support the CA’s message to the
ADF and Government that the warfighting capabilities of armour and
artillery remain key components of any future Army.
The
experimentation used in HE02 was a cost-effective process that relied
on analytical rigour to give the Army a thorough understanding of
future force investment priorities.
A US
Marine on exchange duty with the LWDC, Lt-Col Bill Schulz sees himself
as part of the Army of tomorrow, through his involvement with HE02.
“You
can’t learn lessons the hard way anymore. There is only so
much money in the procurement and capability kit bag so we need
to look for the best way to achieve force lethality within a combined
arms approach,” he said.
Headline
has also exposed more people in the Army to MOLE with amphibious
planning staff from the US Army, UK Royal Marines, RAN and RAAF
on-hand to lend their valuable expertise.
The
ship and aircraft capabilities examined during HE02 will have enormous
utility in all spectrums of conflict, including non-combatant evacuations,
humanitarian assistance tasks and peace support operations.
An
amphibious capability provides the ADF with naval forces that can
maintain and sustain a presence in potential trouble spots and have
inherent flexibility to quickly insert embarked ground forces to
protect Australian nationals or Australian interests.
Forward
operating bases and land force command and control elements can
remain aboard large amphibious platforms, which enhances ground
force protection, reduces the need to establish facilities ashore
and minimises the logistics footprint.
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