Making it easier to join forces
Office of Interoperability formed

By Leesha Furse

US, British and Australian personnel stand together. Trust and understanding make for more effective interoperability.

INTEROPERABILITY between the ADF and US forces is set to evolve to a higher level.

The Office of Interoperability has been established to ensure a concerted effort makes 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 Defence Minister Robert Hill and US Secretary for Defense 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. 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,” AIRCDRE Pietsch said.

While the ADF’s equipment, tactics, training and culture need to 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 the two militaries are when working together.

Commander Chris Stephens, one of 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 up 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.

What is interoperability?

Interoperability issues include joint, combined and coalition operations, activities and information sharing policies.

Why has the office been formed?

In July 2001 the then Defence Minister and the US Secretary of Defense commissioned a review of the interoperability between their armed forces. Two reports were later issued, one at a strategic level and one at an operational level. The strategic level review was accepted in October 2002. Three weeks ago the operational level review was accepted.

What will the office do?

Oversee and coordinate the implementation of the Strategic and Operational Level Interoperability Reviews and their recommendations. Nine recommendations have been identified for implementation by 2006.

Address issues concerning interoperability with the US and other potential coalition partners, including New Zealand, Canada and the UK.

Maintain effective liaison with appropriate US combatant and unified commands and agencies.

Ensure changes to the Defence Capability Plan consider the office’s work.

Chair meetings and prepare and contribute to reports on the work of the office.

Who makes up the team?

AIRCDRE David Pietsch COL Mike Goodyer CMDR Chris Stephens, RANR An APS officer to be advised

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 has been working with US squadrons for decades. In the case of the Air Force, they can seamlessly fit into each other’s air tasking arrangements.

“One of the things we kept hearing from our US allies ... 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.” He said the benefit of interoperability was that the “warfighters – the soldiers, the sailors and the airmen who actually conduct the fighting – get all the information that they need to do their job”. “The information just appears when you need it, where you need it.

[For example] in the case of a soldier conducting firefights, his platoon commander has all the information he or she needs to carry that firefight to the bad guys.

It doesn’t matter whether it [the information] comes from an American satellite, an Australian special forces observer who’s 50 miles clear ahead of them or a ship at sea,” CMDR Stephens said.

AIRCDRE Pietsch said Link 16 – which has been planned for many years for the Air Force – would be available in the next couple of years. It will draw on data gathered by Australian and coalition forces to provide aircrew and air controllers with a comprehensive tactical picture.

“Basically, you can put information up on the display screen in an aeroplane, which we’ve never been able to do before. It’s graphic information so rather than someone telling you there’s individual aircraft 200 miles to the left, it actually comes up on the screen.

It links the combat aircraft with the supporting aircraft and with the ground environment, all of whom are working from a common operating picture,” he said.

AIRCDRE Pietsch said interoperability had to be continually addressed. “One doesn’t get to be interoperable and then stop.

It is an ongoing process. Interoperability is very easy to lose and consequently it must continually be attended to.

You can lose it from a technical perspective, a techniques perspective, a tactics perspectives and, importantly, a cultural and trust perspective.

Our task is to ensure that we maintain and, where appropriate, enhance our current levels of interoperability with our allies.”

The main task of the Office of Interoperability is to work closely with its US counterpart, which has been established in US Pacific Command, to progress the issues which have been raised as a result of two reviews into interoperability by Australia and the US.

While 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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