By
Andrew Stackpool
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Pakistan’s
Deputy Chief of Air Staff (operations) Air Vice-Marshal
Shahzad Aslam Chaudhry was among the guests at the Air Power
Conference in Canberra. He also visited RAAF Base Williamtown,
where FLGOFF Chris Lowrey showed him a Hawk. He also viewed
a Hornet and was briefed on ACG and SRG.
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Photo
by LAC Euan Grant
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CDF
General Peter Cosgrove will soon release the Network Centric Warfare
(NCW) Roadmap that will pull together the ADF’s future warfighting
concepts.
CAF Air Marshal Angus Houston talked about the Roadmap at the
Air Force biennial Air Power Conference. “Network Centric Warfare
and the Future of Air Power” was the theme of the conference,
held by the Air Power Development Centre in Canberra on September
16 and 17.
More than 1000 people attended. AIRMSHL Houston told the conference
the NCW Roadmap provided the direction and initial steps to significantly enhance the ADF’s warfighting effectiveness through improved
collaboration and ability to share situational awareness.
“It is Defence’s internal guide to discovering and exploiting
the opportunities of NCW,” he said. “It sets the long-term goals
for the ADF’s warfighting capabilities through to 2020.”
AIRMSHL Houston said his intention was to bolster the ADF’s joint
focus by building an expeditionary, flexible and adaptable Air
Force, tailored for joint and coalition operations.
“Air Force must be fully expeditionary. Our structures and systems
must support forward operations, whether it is for the defence
of Australia, or for coalition operations further afield.
“We must be flexible and adaptable to circumstance and the Government’s
requirements. People and systems must be capable of multi-role
employment. And if we are to effectively deal with these, we must
be networked.”
AIRMSHL Houston said the Air Force must have a clear understanding
of how it would operate in the 2010-2015 timeframe through tested
air and space warfighting concepts.
“We are in the early stages of a truly networked force,” he said.
“For the near-term, we must develop a full suite of future operating
concepts to guide Air Force development into the future, further
enhance our capability development system, develop the use of
space and elaborate on Air Force’s role in space systems operations
and, finally, become professional masters of an increasingly
networked Air Force.
We will define the future Air Force around its culture, its concepts
and its capabilities. We need a culture that enables us to think
and act now for the future, a culture that makes things happen
rather than just letting things happen.
We need to challenge ourselves with open minds.
“We need to keep the right balance between our ability to contribute
jointly in homeland defence, to the security of the immediate
neighbourhood, and to global missions to protect our interests
or support humanitarian interventions.”
He said the right people and good ideas must be brought together.
The
Road Ahead
THE
new NCW Roadmap, to be launched soon, will set out four steps
for the ADF to become a seamless networked force.
The
steps are for Defence to:
Alliance focuses on NCW
THE
Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and ADI have
signed a strategic research and development alliance agreement
that has a strong network-centric warfare focus.
DSTO and ADI will investigate techniques for modelling the capability
enhancement delivered by network-centric warfare systems.
They will also focus on weapons technology, mine warfare, maritime
operations, electronic warfare, communications networks and architecture,
and aerospace systems.
The alliance aims to promote mutually-beneficial communication
between DSTO and Australian industry on matters of strategic significance to Defence, defence self-reliance or defence capability
development.
