Australia Day is held annually on January 26th to reflect on our nation’s past and celebrate the Australian spirit, mateship and sense of community.
A Royal Australian Navy MH-60R helicopter carrying the Australian National Flag took to the skies over Sydney Harbour to mark Australia Day 2021.
Australian Department of Defence
January 26, 2021
By Robbin Laird
On December 31, 2020, the Australian Department of Defence published an article by Flight Lieutenant Natalie Giles which highlighted a ceremony remembering one contributor to the small ship’s role in World War II.
Former World War II Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force telephonist Thelma Zimmerman was presented a United States Army Small Ships medallion on December 11 for her support of the small ships’ association.
Commander Air Warfare Centre and Senior Australian Defence Force Officer for the Edinburgh Defence precinct Air Commodore Brendan Rogers made the presentation to the 98-year-old at a ceremony hosted by the War Widow’s Guild in South Australia.
“While her husband, Alby, served overseas with the Royal Australian Air Force in the Pacific, Thelma served in Adelaide and Melbourne as a telephonist in the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force,” Air Commodore Rogers said.
“Thelma always appreciated the incredible work the US Army Small Ships provided to personnel like her husband and has gone out of her way to support the US Army Small Ships Association in recent years.
“In return, the association wanted to present Thelma with the special medallion to recognise her support.
“It was an honour for me to present this award to Thelma and to formally recognise her valuable contributions.”
Mrs Zimmerman said she was honoured to receive the medallion.
“My husband received so much support from the small ships that supported our boys in deploying to and from the islands in World War II so I have been forever thankful to them,” she said.
The US Army Small Ships Section was raised in Australia and consisted mainly of Australians who were too old, too young, or medically unfit to serve in the Navy, Army or Air Force in World War II.
Almost 3000 Australians served in the US Army Small Ships.
The unit supported the deployment and repatriation of Australian personnel and equipment, including Air Force units, in the south-west Pacific.
US Army Small Ships Association vice-president David Lloyd also presented a medallion to Air Commodore Rogers and No. 92 Wing Warrant Officer Suzanne Hall.
Mr Lloyd asked that the medallion be displayed throughout the year and be carried by the youngest member of RAAF Base Edinburgh on Anzac Day parades as a mark of respect to those who served in the small ships’ unit during World War II.
“It was a privilege to receive the medallion and we will ensure it serves to inspire the next generation serving at Edinburgh, particularly during the Air Force centenary next year,” Warrant Officer Hall said.
In a November 29, 2018 article published on Defense.info, I wrote a review of a book which focused on the role of the small ships in the World War II Pacific campaign and that article follows:
During one of my trips to Australia, I visited my favorite book store in Sydney, Dymocks, and purchased a signed copy of The Rag Tag Fleet.
The book tells a fascinating story about Australian citizens supported the war, and is a version perhaps not quite as dramatic of what the British did at Dunkirk.
It is a story of how a fleet of Australian fishing boats, trawlers and schooners supplied US and Australian forces in the Pacific in really desperate times.
In the words on the dust jacket of the book:
In this desperate situation, a fleet of hundreds of Australian small ships is assembled, sailing under the American flag, and crewed by over 3000 Australians either too young or too old to join the regular forces. Their task: the bring supplies and equipment to the Allied troops saving bloody battles against Japanese forces across the South Pacific.”
The book starts with the fascinating story of the Fahnestocks, Americans who game to the Pacific as adventurers and ended up as the personal spies for President Roosevelt in getting an eye on what the Japanese where up to in the 1930s in the Pacific.
As the book starts, we are introduced to the Fahnestocks: “For young men who would never want for anything, the Fahnestock brothers certainly had a way of putting themselves into places where they could easily lose everything.”
When you start like that, it is easy to see why I read on.
The origin of the Small Boats effort was generated by an ArmyBG reaching out to the Fahnestocks.
“In January 1942, as the Fahnestock brothers were preparing and delivering their presentation to a sold-out crowd at the New York Town Hall, a regular US Army Colonel named Arthur Wilson was promoted to brigadier-general and made quartermaster for all the US forces that had been, and would be. dispatched to Australia and beyond to confront the Japanese forces still sweeping through Asia towards Australia.
“Wilson knew President Roosevelt, and it may have been through him that he first learned of the Fahnestock brothers and their plan….
“One day in late January, Sheridan Fahnestock received a cryptic invitation to a meeting backstage at the Washington Auditorium. There, he found a US Army major sitting behind a plain desk. The man insisted Sheridan to sit in the chair in front of the desk and then proceeded to question him on his knowledge of the Pacific, as well as his background and general thoughts on the war no raging in the Far East.
Seemingly satisfied with the answers, the major introduced himself as Arthu Wilson and said that he had been made responsible for australia, but didn’t provide any context for that statement. Wilson then proceeded to ask Sheridan if he would be interested in commanding a small boats operation.”1
That is how it started. What the book then details is the story of how from this small beginning, Australians and Americans would work together to put together a very significant small boat effort to provide logistical support to Australian and American troops fighting the Japanese.
If one ever doubted the importance of logistics, that doubted should spend time examine the war in the Pacific. As courageous as the front line soldiers certainly were, the logistical support force was the key enabler of any combat force.
And in this case a “rag tag” fleet of small boats became the lifeblood of support in 1942 for American and Australian forces.
The courage and inventiveness of the Australians commanding and operating their small boats is provided throughout the narrative.
It is a reminder of how in times of crisis, any adversary should not underestimate the will and courage of either the Australian or American peoples.
We certainly have our ups and downs, but there is a basic community of interest and fellowship which no adversary should doubt.
Featured Photo: Senior Australian Defence Force Officer – Edinburgh Defence precinct Air Commodore Brendan Rogers presents a US Army Small Ships Section medallion to World War II veteran Thelma Zimmerman. Photo: Leading Aircraftwoman Jacqueline Forrester
A series of video clips from USAFE-AFAFRICA’s various units operating across Europe and Africa, playing to music as a narrator highlights key element’s from the major command’s successful year.
GERMANY
01.07.2021
Video by Master Sgt. Nicholas Filip
86th Airlift Wing/Public Affairs
By Robbin Laird
The CH-53k is moving forward as the US Navy has signed a contract for LRIP Lot 4. Germany punted on its heavy lift solution, but the CH-53K remains a core solution for the projection of German forces into the Baltic and adjacent neighbors in supporting enhanced defense capabilities for the region.
After the Abraham Accords, Israel is focused on enhanced relevant defense capabilities to work with its new allies in the region with the key challenge being dealing with Iranian power projection in the region, along with ensuring a nuclear free Iran, which does not necessarily need negotiations to achieve.
As the U.S. Navy and the USMC rework their approach to integration, it is clear that a new heavy lift aircraft is part of the solution set, notably with regard to how to deliver expeditionary basing. That point was driven home in visits to MAWTS-1 in September and to 2nd Marine Air Wing in December 2020.
Reworking new ways to deliver an integrated assault capability for the USMC was highlighted this summer in the 2nd MAW sponsored Deep Water exercise. A visit to 2nd MAW, enabled a discussion with the leadership of the team which managed the exercise, and look to shape a way ahead for new ways to integrate assault forces.
The CH-53K as a digital aircraft clearly is part of the future. And the CH-53K is so different from the CH-53E it can be argued that it should receive a whole new numbering to something like a CH-55.
All of these issues have been explored over the past few months, and articles we have published to highlight that exploration are included in this report.
This is the latest CH-53K update reports.
For an e-book version of the report, see below:
The featured photo: The CH-53K King Stallion successfully plugs into a funnel-shaped drogue towed behind a KC-130J during aerial refueling wake testing over the Chesapeake Bay. Photo by Dane Wiedmann.
The previous report can be found here:
70km demonstration video of the ERCA/Excalibur. Produced by Yuma Proving Ground PAO.
01.04.2021
Army Futures Command
By Robbin Laird
During a visit to Naval Air Station, Fallon in November 2020, I had a chance to visit the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center (NAWDC).
My visit occurred as the US Navy was hosting the 3rd iteration of a relatively new exercise called Resolute Hunter which is being designed to shape a new paradigm for how 21st century Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities can be worked to provide for enhanced mission execution.
Much like how NAWDC has added two new warfighting competencies to its program, namely, dynamic targeting and Maritime ISR (MISR), Resolute Hunter is complementing Air Wing Fallon (AWF) for the U.S. Navy and the Red Flag exercise series for the US Air Force, but in some important ways launching a new paradigm for the ISR forces to provide a more significant and leading role for the combat forces.
With the significant upsurge in the capabilities of sensor networks, and the importance of shaping better capabilities to leverage those networks to shape an effective mission, the role of the ISR platforms and integratable forces are of greater significance going forward in force development and evolving concepts of operations.
Rather than being just collectors of data and providing that data to the C2 decision makers, or to specific shooters, the ISR force is becoming the fusers of information to provide for decisions distributed in the battlespace to deliver the right combat effect in a timely manner.
When I returned to the East Coast, I had a chance to discuss with Rear Admiral Meier, Naval Air Force Atlantic, how Resolute Hunter was different from Red Flag and AWF.
“The origins of Red Flag and of TOP GUN were largely tactically focused. Resolute Hunter is focused on shaping an evolving operational approach leveraging the sensor networks in order to best shape and determine the operational employment of our forces and the delivery of the desired combat effect.”
The exercise was shaped around a crisis management scenario. In a fluid political and combat contested area, where friendly and hostile forces were operating, ISR assets were deployed to provide proactive capabilities to assess that fluid situation. A number of U.S. Navy and USAF assets were deployed along with USMC Intelligence capabilities to operate in the situation.
The assets were working together to assess the fluid situation, but the focus was on fusion in the battlespace by assets operating as decision nodes, not simply as collectors for decision makers elsewhere in the battlespace.
What the exercise was working was the importance of assets being used in a broader ISR lead role which evolving sensor networks can provide, as well as training the operators to both work the networks as well as to consolidate what these asset operators judged to be happening in a fluid battlespace.
It was about how ISR and C2 are evolving within a fluid battlespace with the ISR assets moving from a subordinate role to hierarchical decision making to becoming key members of the overall tactical process itself.
The joint and coalition aspect of this exercise is a key one. Because of COVID-19 neither the Brits nor the Aussies were there but will be at the next one. This exercise will provide a key input to the Brits working their “integrated operating concept” and the Aussies their fifth-generation warfare approach.
The Marines were there in terms of an expeditionary Intelligence unit operating with their core equipment which had been delivered by a KC-130J. The package which was deployed could be delivered by CH-53s as well, notably by the new CH-53Ks. 1st MEF was part of the pre-planning process and will be there for the next iteration of Resolute Hunter.
Clearly, part of what the organizers have in mind is working USN and USMC integration. When I had a chance to discuss Resolute Hunter with the head of NAWDC, Rear Admiral Brophy, he underscored how significant he viewed USMC participation in the exercise, which will expand as the exercise series plays out.
And next iteration is a key point really.
This is a walk, run and sprint exercise approach but rooted in the clear understanding that the role of ISR in an integrated distributed force is significantly changing, now and accelerating in the future as a diversity of sensor networks are deployed to the battlespace, notably through the expansion of maritime and air remote systems.
Not surprisingly, this is MISR-led exercise. Frankly, until I went to San Diego this past February, I had never heard of MISR Weapons and Tactics Instructors (WTI). And looking at the web, it is apparent that I am not alone. But now NAWDC is training MISR WTIs and they have their own warfighting patch as well.
The importance of MISR cannot be understated. As Vice Admiral Miller, the recently retired Navy Air Boss has put it: “The next war will be won or lost by the purple shirts. You need to take MISR seriously, because the next fight is an ISR-led and enabled fight.”
CDR Pete “Two Times” Salvaggio is the head of the MISR Weapons School (MISRWS), and in charge of the Resolute Hunter exercise.
MISR prides itself in being both platform and sensor agnostic, along with employing an effects-based tasking and tactics approach that allows for shaping the ISR domain knowledge which a task force or fleet needs to be fully combat effective. What is most impressive is that CDR Salvaggio has been present at the creation and is a key part of shaping the way ahead in a time of significant change in what the fleet is being asked to do in both a joint and coalition operational environment.
What is entailed in “Two Times” perspective is a cultural shift. “We need a paradigm shift: The Navy needs to focus on the left side of the kill chain.”
The kill chain is described as find, fix, track, target, engage and assess (F2T2EA). For the U.S. Navy, the weight of effort has been upon target and engage. As “Two Times” puts it “But if you cannot find, fix or track something, you never get to target.”
There is another challenge as well: in a crisis, knowing what to hit and what to avoid is crucial to crisis management. This clearly requires the kind of ISR management skills to inform the appropriate decision makers as well.
The ISR piece is particularly challenging as one operates across a multi-domain battlespace to be able to identify the best ISR information, even if it is not contained within the ISR assets and sensors within your organic task force.
And the training side of this is very challenging. That challenge might be put this way: How does one build the skills in the Navy to do what you want to do with regard to managed ISR data and deliver it in the correct but timely manner and how to get the command level to understand the absolute centrality of having such skill sets?
“Two Times” identified a number of key parameters of change with the coming of MISR.
“We are finally breaking the old mindset; it is only now that the department heads at NAWDC are embracing the new role for ISR in the fight.”
“We are a unique weapons school organization at NAWDC for we are not attached to a particular platform like Top Gun with the F-18 and F-35. The MISR school has both officers and enlisted WTIs in the team. We are not all aviators; we have intel specialists, we have cryptologists, pilots, aircrew-men etc.”
“Aviators follow a more rapid pace of actions by the mere nature of how fast the aircraft we are in physically move; non-aviators do not necessarily have the same pace of working rapidly within chaos. Our goal at MISR is to be comfortable to work in chaos.”
In my discussion with “Two Times” in his office during my November 202 visit as he sat down during various swirls of activity underway in the exercise, “This is the only place within the Navy where we are able to pull all of these ISR assets together to work the collaborative assessment and determination space.”
I would add that this about the whole question of ISR-led and enabled, which is focused on how to leverage sensor networks to accelerate the decision cycle.
New ISR/C2 capabilities are clearly coming to the force, but as he put it: “We need to take what we have today and make it work more effectively in a collaborative ISR effort.”
But to underscore the shift from being the collectors and delivering data to the decision makers, he referred to the goal of the training embodied in the exercise as making the operators in airborne ISR, “puzzle solvers.” Rather than looking at these airborne teams as the human managers of airborne sensors, “we are training future Jedi Knights.”
And to be clear, all of the assets used in the exercise are not normally thought of as ISR platforms but are platforms that have significant sensor capabilities.
It really was about focusing on sensor networks and sorting through how these platform/networks could best shape an understanding of the evolving mission and paths to mission effectiveness.
With AWF and Red Flag experiences preceding it with many years, one could think of Resolute Hunter in terms of training for the left side of the kill chain, in which find, fix, track (F2T) are key elements with target and engage being the right side of the kill chain with a shared overlap between the left and right side of the kill chain with regard to assess.
But this is not quite right.
For the ISR role is expanding beyond such an approach and such an understanding. In one sense, the ISR sensor networks with men in the loop can deliver decisions with regard to the nature of the evolving tactical situation, and the kinds of decisions which need to be made in the fluid combat environment. It may be to kill or to adjust judgements about what that battlespace actually signifies in terms of what needs to be done.
And given the speed with which kill decisions need to be made with regards to certain classes of weapons, the ISR/C2 network will operate as the key element of a strike auction.
Which shooter needs to do what at which point in time to degrade the target?
How best to determine which element of the shoot sequence – not the kill chain — needs to do what in a timely manner, when fighting at the speed of light?
The evolving role of ISR in a contested fluid battlespace also raises the question of rules of engagement. In the legacy land wars, the rules of engagement were shaped around a certain understanding of the OODA loop which allowed for the OODLA loop, with the lawyers entering the cycle to determine the validity of a targeting sequence.
With ISR systems determining the where and nature of how to execute a mission in a rapidly unfolding battlespace, the need to think through information engagement really pulls apart the inherited notion of rules of engagement as well.
Put another way, there is not going to be a carefully constructed common operating picture for the political-military commanders located far away from the moment of decision with regard to the dynamically unfolding contested battlespace. What the ISR capabilities can deliver are “moments of clarity” with regard to decisive actions.
This is how one Marine Corps general put it recently: “We believe that speed matters. Because in this next fight, if data is the currency of this war fight, we believe that speed matters. And it’s not the big that eat the small, it’s the fast that eat the slow.”
“We do not expect a persistent common operational picture (COP) in the future. Rather, in a contested operational environment, where we know that our adversaries are getting good and perhaps better than us, some days as systems confrontation, we know that we have to learn to provide moments of clarity on demand as opposed to that persistent COP.
“Domains like aviation or air supremacy, where in the past we would mark a good day by sortie generation, perhaps in the future we think that might be replaced by the ability to enable long-range precision fires as a measure of air superiority. And that’s going to require robust ISR, over the horizon communications, and the ability to enable sensor to shooter operations.”
In effect, the Resolute Hunter exercise can train Jedi Knights who can master operating in such combat situations. At a minimum, the ISR teams are shifting from providing information for someone else to make a decision to being able to deconstruct the battlefield decision to craft real time understanding of the situation and the targeting options and priorities,
But what is an effective metric of performance?
At AWF and Red Flag the measure is to make kills and avoid getting killed, With Resolute Hunter what are the metrics?
Clearly one is the speed to deconstruct the combat situation and determine actionable decisions. It is the speed to the kill enabled by the right information delivered to the right shooter at the right time. The speed function is complex in that it is not about simply determining for a particular platform a simple targeting solution; it is about situational determination, not simply awareness.
Perhaps one might put it this way. The evolving role of the C2/sensor networks are redefining the role of ISR. And that role is shaping domain knowledge of the extended battlespace and determining and detecting priority targets and then auctioning off in the battlespace to the platforms best positioned with the right payloads for rapid and timely kills.
This is a good definition of what a kill web certainly is. So, in my terms, Resolute Hunter is about shaping new capabilities, skill sets, and training for the evolving kill web fighting navy, one embedded in and capable of leading the joint force.
It is a question of evolving the relevant skill sets by the ISR teams of operators and decision makers and not some automated network. And a key part of the challenge facing the ISR teams is to understand adversary intent and not mis-reading the red side’s ISR actions or chess moves with weapons into the engagement area.
With USAF, USMC, USN, and allied participation, the challenge will be to be able to work together as collaborative teams operating in the battlespace to shape appropriate “moments of clarity” for combat decisions and mission effectiveness.
Clearly, Resolute Hunter is opening up the pathways to a new paradigm for the ISR world.
Editor’s Note: The USAF at Nellis has evolved as well and has shaped its U.S. Air Force Weapons School Integration(WSINT) exercises to include cyber, space, ISR and strike within evolving combat con-ops approaches, notably with the coming of the F-35 as well.
Also, see the following:
Also see our forthcoming book, to be published in February 2021 on the strategic shift in training:
By 2nd Lt. Nicolle E. Mathison, 57th Wing Public Affairs
NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. (AFNS) — While the U.S. Air Force Weapons School Integration, or WSINT, has not deviated much from its original training model, today’s training approach has taken a new form.
WSINT is not only the capstone event students must pass to complete the U.S. Air Force Weapons School Weapons Instructor Course, but it is perhaps the most multi-faceted. WSINT generates capable leaders who can not only plan, integrate and dominate in any tactical setting but can also lead any spectrum of teams, who are ready to deliver strategic transformational change.
WSINT’s focus has shifted from simulating conflict with fictitious countries to simulating conflict with great power competitors.
In the past, instructors led student-devised oppositional forces during warfare exercises. But from Nov. 19 to Dec. 9, students will go head-to-head against one another simulating near-peer adversaries such as Russia and China, imbedding themselves in each other’s skirmishes. Instructors will rate and evaluate the engagements from the planning phases all the way to execution.
“Weapons School Integration is the capstone event for our Weapons School students before they graduate,” said Brig. Gen. Michael Drowley, 57th Wing commander. “We still want to present to them challenging problem sets that force them to integrate, critically think and lead, but now we are trying to create an even stronger connection to the Great Power Competition, so they are armed and ready for any potential conflict or adversary.”
The U.S. Air Force Weapons School’s mission is to train tactical experts and leaders to control and exploit air, space and cyber on behalf of the joint force. The mission of the 57th Wing is to train, instruct and lead the Air Force by ensuring it can win any conflict now.
WSINT is an educational event that exposes students to a series of practical examinations. All examinations must be completed with a passing grade. The examinations test and refine each student’s ability to plan simulated conflict scenarios that will then be executed and evaluated immediately upon its completion.
“We’ve learned over time that our adversaries model their training after our own tactics as executed in theater. So, if we are training to win, we must learn how to defeat ourselves. We are our greatest competition,” said Col. Jack Arthaud, U.S. Air Force Weapons School commandant.
“Weapons School Integration prepares you for leadership and command in a number of ways,” Drowley said. “You’re presented with an incredibly challenging problem set. The only way to be successful is to harness the capabilities of your team and integrate them successfully.”
Published November 30, 2020
Sailors aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD 1) give a video tour of the well deck and related operations.
NORFOLK, VA,
10.29.2020