ADF entering new era of interoperability
Forging closer links

By Leesha Furse

Interoperability between the ADF and US armed forces is set to evolve to a higher level, with the Office of Interoperability being established to ensure a concerted effort is made to make it easier for the ADF’s three services to work together, as well as with the military forces of other countries, particularly the US.

The Office of Interoperability was set up on July 1 after the Minister for Defence, Robert Hill and the US Secretary for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, agreed to the recommendations of the strategic and operational level reviews of interoperability between the Australian and the US forces. The reviews were initially commissioned in 2001.

The Director-General of Interoperability, Air Commodore David Pietsch, said recent coalition experience had shown that interoperability was “absolutely critical” to achieving combat outcomes in coalition operations.

“Equipment is only part of it,” AIRCDRE Pietsch said. “It’s an important part of it, but there’s training, there is exercising together and there is the building of understanding and trust between people in both forces so that at short notice we can contribute and we can come together as partners in a coalition and be combat-effective.”

Whilst the ADF’s equipment, tactics, training and culture must be compatible with those of the US armed forces, it is the trust between ADF members and their American counterparts that will continue to be the deciding factor in how successful Australia and the US are when working together militarily, according to Office staff.

CMDR Stephens, one of the two Directors of Interoperability, said trust was the underlying principle of interoperability, and this was important when considering the inevitable military posting cycle and the potential loss of corporate knowledge between individuals who had built a close professional relationship.

“Recent operations have demonstrated that it’s the personal relationships that develop between the soldiers, the sailors and the airmen that actually empower interoperability. You can have the same equipment, the same tactics and procedures, but if there’s no trust between the operators then it’s really difficult to make it work,” CMDR
Stephens said.

“The Navy’s been in The Gulf now for almost a decade and the Air Force’s squadrons have been working with US squadrons for decades.

“For example, the Commander of Coalition Maritime Forces in The Gulf on many occasions has been an Australian naval officer. In the case of the Air Force squadrons, they can seamlessly fit into each other’s air tasking arrangements.”

Feedback from US senior officers suggest they do trust Australian military.

“One of the things we kept hearing from our US allies from officers of four stars down to Colonel, was that they couldn’t believe the high quality of our junior personnel and the high degree of leadership they displayed. And because of our leadership and ability, the ADF is held in very high regard,” CMDR Stephens said.

One of the immediate outcomes of the interoperability work is establishing a joint combined training centre, initially by enhancing amphibious, land manoeuvre and air combat capabilities at Shoalwater Bay, Delamere Air Weapons Range and Bradshaw training area.

“The benefit of interoperability is that the warfighter – the soldier, the sailor and the airmen who actually conduct the fighting - gets all the information that they need to do their job and it’s invisible where the information comes from,” CMDR Stephens said.

“It doesn’t matter where it’s coming from. The information just appears when you need it, where you need it.

“For example, sitting in an operational room on a frigate, with the operational picture, nearby there’s a ship which the boarding party are planning to board and the ops room staff are getting all the information on that particular vessel, it’s alleged cargo, and all that sort of stuff.”

The main task of the Office of Interoperability is to work closely with its US counterpart, which has been established in US Pacific Command (USPACOM), to progress all the interoperability issues which have been raised as a result of the two reviews. Whilst the Office’s charter is focused on the US, our warfighters conduct regular exercises with Australia’s regional partners, improving interoperability with them, as well.

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