By Robbin Laird
I have returned from Australia and the latest Sir Richard Willians seminar.
In that seminar, we dealt with the challenge of how to enhance the ready force while investing in the future force.
The modernization of the ADF is a case study in the clash between force design for an envisaged future force and the need to enhance the force in being to deal with the world as it is.
The challenge for any force planner is to combine a projection of desired core platforms, connectivity technologies, the nature of the adversaries to be dealt with by such a force and to do so from the perspective of what we believe of the future envisaged from the present.
It has always been difficult, but it may be well be the case that future force planning built around projections of the platforms of the future has outlived its day and is perhaps counterproductive.
What good is a thirty-year shipbuilding program when we are entering a period which will be significantly reshaped by maritime autonomous systems?
And are we preparing for World War III or are we shaping a strategy to sort through how to deal with the gray zone conflicts and local wars characterizing the multi-polar authoritarian world?
This difficulty of force planning is enhanced by how today’s ready forces need to modernize to deal with current operations.
Or put another way, closing the gaps for the fight tonite force generates change which simply is not captured by future force planning built around iterative platform replacement. You are not going to capture the nature of future air warfare by designing a so-called sixth-generation fighter to replace a fifth-generation fighter.
We have entered the world of the kill web where the evolution of warfare is being shaped by the payloads which can be configured and connected to create the desired effects in a combat space. We are building combat clusters rather than platform identified task forces. We are building maritime combat clusters not destroyer task forces. And this approach decisively challenges a platform defined future force planning approach.
The Australian government has identified a number of characteristics of the future force. The problem is that for the current force to be effective, lethal and survivable, it needs to upgrade its force on the fly.
And this requires more attention to rapid modernization than has been pursued in the past two decades.
For example, Jennifer Parker, the noted Australian naval strategist, argued this about the implications of the changing littoral environment for capital ships:
I had a chance to follow up with Jennifer Parker on her excellent presentation at the 26 September 2024 Sir Richard Williams seminar which focused on the evolving threat environments in the littorals and insights to be gained from operations in the Black Sea, Red Sea and the Philippine’s Sea.
She argued in that presentation that new capabilities, notably USVs and UAVs used by the Ukrainians and the Houthis posed new challenges to capital ships in the littorals. And that capital ships clearly can still be effective but ongoing modernization of their defensive systems in the new context on an ongoing basis was critical.
In our discussion, she underscored that the threat from land systems was of enhanced range, and new threats posed by unmanned maritime systems introduced additional threats to capital ships as well.
What this meant for her was the absolute importance of ongoing modernization of the combat systems aboard surface ships. Rather than viewing updates as occurring in long periods of block upgrades, there needs to be an ability to weave in upgrades based on the rapid evolution of offensive threat systems from various operational theaters.
It is crucial to have very credible threat information from a diversity of deployments by the Royal Australian Navy and its allies, and to be able to weave that information into ongoing upgrade efforts of combat systems.
And modern airpower is being generated by software upgradable systems such as the F-35 which need regular upgrades to keep pace with the rapidly changing combat environment.
The need to upgrade more rapidly dips into the costs of funding the future force or alternatively if you starve the current force to pay for a future force you threaten its viability.
But in the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams seminar focused on the ready force, a further challenge for future force planning was laid bare. Virtually every major speaker who spoke about how to ramp up the capabilities of the ready force highlighted the salience and importance of incorporating autonomous systems within the force.
But how to do so is a major challenge in part because these systems do not follow the strictures of legacy future force building models. They are payloads more than platforms, and as with all payloads their utility is determined by actual warfighters, not think tank strategists and force planners.
This character of the evolution of the ready force incorporating autonomous systems was highlighted by the former chief of the Australian Navy Vice Admiral Tim Barrett in an interview I did with him.
This is how Barrett put it in the interview:
The reality is that for autonomous systems to come into the current force, they need to be well practiced at the operational end – promotion of their adoption is a behavioral piece. New systems need to be in the hands of warfighters to ensure that these systems make the current force more agile and take actions that are effective in their application.
Operational success is still about the application of force in the mind of the person responsible for delivering it. It’s about forcing them to think of operational success by whatever means they have available to them, and then having the courage to take those actions.
You are not necessarily after disruptive change in process, but disruption in the effect. In some cases you don’t want disruption in the efficiency of the process of operations. But, you want to be able to cause a disruption that has an effect on your adversary.
With regard to the Ghost Shark, to fully achieve its potential, it has to quickly enter the operational world of those who are managing the underwater warfare space throughout the regions of our interests.
To be effective as a disruptive technology, it will need to contribute to the operational effects being sought by those managing the undersea domain; in tactical terms this means it has to be of benefit to those managing the water column. It could generate strategic consequences but not simply because of its technology but in the way this it is used to produce disruptive operational effects.
A successful water space management process is key to being able to determine where your adversary is, or, more importantly, where it isn’t, so that you can put the right forces in the right place.
Bureaucracies don’t necessarily think like that. Operators absolutely do so, because it’s their day-to-day business, and they’re in the practice of only putting in harm’s way those things that need to be there to affect a disruption to the enemy’s operations.
The disruptive effects that a Ghost Shark can produce should be determined by those who actively manage the battle space, the undersea battle space, rather than someone who’s programming from afar and doing so in complete isolation from the rest of the water space management concepts of operations.
In other words, the Australians face a challenge common to the United States and its allies: How is the changing nature of more rapid upgrades in the ready force affect the practice of future force planning?
There is probably no starker reminder of how things have changed than watching the Israelis execute a strategy in their seven front war. They have combined fifth generation aircraft with exploding pagers and a variety of new combat clusters to deal with a deadly threat generated by Iran through its complex web of warfighting.
Does anyone really think that force planners sitting down a decade ago envisaged the force engaged today?
Rather the Israelis have modified in a variety of innovative ways the ready force, adding some new core platforms, but focused on a kill web enabled force to deal with a range of threats.
We are at a turning point in our military modernization strategies.
Are we paying for a future force while being compromised in the conflicts of today?