Chief Of Army Address To Land Warfare Conference

Chief of Army's Address to Land Warfare Conference 2007 By Lieutenant General Peter Leahy

The Land Force and Urban Warfare - Pervasive, Persistent and Proportionate

I am pleased to be able to join you again for the Land Warfare Conference co-sponsored by Army and DSTO.

Over the years since these conferences began we have collectively made a significant difference to our understanding of how Armies see and react to both current and future problems.

Those who attended the early conferences in Singleton would not recognise what they have become today. The Land Warfare Conference has become a major domestic and international event. It provides a venue where we can exchange ideas and learn from each other. This has been of immense benefit to the Australian Army. Thank you for your support.

Importantly, to me as Chief of Army, it allows Army to propose some of our biggest problems and ask you how we might solve them together. Being able to assemble soldiers, academics, scientists, commercial organizations, industry and other interested individuals and groups in one place and have them focus on a theme is a real opportunity for us.

This has been the strength of these conferences.

Without a doubt you have helped the Australian Army shape our future and your work has helped keep our soldiers alive. Our future looks brighter because of your help and support.

While it is more for you to judge, I certainly would not underestimate the value that you as industry, scientists and academics gain from the interaction that occurs here. The conferences are a busy place in both a commercial and a social sense. I know that whenever I visit the exhibition hall there is a lot going on and I get a clear impression that you learn a lot from each other.

This has of course been one of our aims from the start. I certainly was keen in those early days to develop a strong and vibrant strategic relationship between Army and Industry. I think we have done that. I was also keen to ensure that small Australian firms could get access to the conferences. Thus we have worked to keep the prices low and have moved the conference up and down the East coast. Again I think we have been successful.

All of this could not have been achieved without our tireless organising committee. Thank for your efforts. This conference looks to be better than all the others. Many people have worked enormously long hours to get us to this point. Thank you one and all. Could I especially mention Vinod Puri and Despina Filippidis. They are the King and Queen of the Conference and I think we all owe them a debt of gratitude.

If you look back over recent conferences you can readily see the value they have been to us. The topics have in some cases been prescient and have certainly helped us cope with a rapidly emerging and immensely complex future.

2001 - Future Armies, Future Challenges, Land Warfare in the Information Age

2002 - Future Wars, Futuristic Soldiers

2003 - Projected Forces, Protected Forces

2004 - The Shape of things to Come: Weapons Webs and War Fighters

2005 - New Threats, New Technologies, new Solutions

2006 - Professional Mastery in a Complex War Fighting Environment: Urbanization Complexity and Lethality

One important difference between this conference and these earlier ones is that this one is taking place in an election campaign.

At this time we operate under what are known as caretaker conventions. These conventions require all ADF and public servants to limit our statements to factual issues and matters or administration and to avoid publicly explaining or promoting policies.

My focus here today is therefore very much on matters about how the Army does its own business, and how you can support us in that task.

This year we have picked a topic which is enormously important to us.

Land Forces and Urban Warfare - Pervasive, Persistent and Proportionate - more on this later

Let me first give you an update on where your Army is at right now.

Right now soldiers of the Australian Army are at war. I stress this point on every occasion that I speak in public. We were brutally reminded of this last week when we farewelled Trooper David Pearce, killed in action in Afghanistan.

My first priority as Chief of Army is to ensure that we fully support our soldiers deployed on operations. The Army is focused on ensuring that our soldiers are as well prepared, trained, equipped and led as we can make them.

It is our task to ensure that our every effort is directed towards allowing them to do their job, to do it well, to do it safely and then return home having made us proud.

Every day I want everyone in the Army to ask themselves a fundamental question: what did I do today that supports our soldiers deployed on combat operations? It is important that we do this.

They are our mates and we must focus on their safety and well being.

As the suppliers of our equipment and collaborators in the development of doctrine and concepts you are very important partners in our broader defence family. You too help keep our soldiers alive.

So may I suggest that you ask yourselves the same question and use your answer as the most appropriate bench-mark against which to judge performance?

What did I do today to help an Australian Soldier deployed on operations?

I think it is a bloody good question.

It is a good question because we are currently engaged in many theatres around the world on a variety and scale of operations that we have not seen before in the modern era. Right now we have over 2650 soldiers deployed in 4 active Areas of Operation, 3 UN Operations and 3 Domestic Operations.

There are some friction points which include some trades and skills which are in high demand.

Our operations are not restricted by these friction points but I am very conscious that I am asking an enormous amount from these soldiers and their families. They are responding magnificently and all Australians should be proud of their efforts.

As well as our operational duties there are two other main activities that are occupying the Army. They are growing the Army and modernizing the Army.

We have been directed to grow the Army by approximately 20% over the next decade. This growth is in response to our current operational tempo and the anticipation of continued strategic volatility over the coming years.

Growth is being achieved through two main programs.

First, there is the Hardened and Networked Army program. This program emphasises the fundamental importance of close combat in combined arms teams and the need to maximize firepower, mobility, communications and protection across the Army. Under the HNA program we are equipping a second mechanized infantry battalion and developing a second regular cavalry regiment.

Second, there is the Enhanced Land Force. This program sees the introduction of two additional infantry battalions and their supporting arms and services.

Both programs are going well. All units have been raised or are about to be raised and recruiting is approaching targets. We are in fact achieving more than our infantry targets and I am very confident that our predictions on the operational capability of 5, 7, and 8/9 RAR will be achieved.

I still have some concerns about trade and technical recruiting which reflects community concerns with shortages of people wanting to commit to trades and technical skills. We are looking at internal mechanisms to solve these problems and I am hopeful of a good result.

Modernisation is being achieved largely through the implementation of the 2001 Defence Capability Plan as amended by strategic updates in 2003, 2005 and 2007. Modernisation is being achieved through the introduction of new equipment, changes to our structures, and the development of new doctrine and training regimes.

Another two very important aspects of the changes that are occurring in the Army are the focus on recruiting and retention and the revitalization of the Reserves.

This brings me to the themes for this year's conference -Land Force and Urban Warfare - pervasive, persistent, proportionate. My purpose today is to attempt to stimulate your thoughts about those three 'Ps' and situate them in the context of urban warfare.

When I addressed this conference last year I made the point that the words 'urban' and 'warfare' were becoming inextricably linked for a whole host of reasons.

First and foremost, we are living through the greatest period of urbanization in history - eclipsing even the scale of the flight to the cities which characterized the Industrial Revolution in Europe over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This phenomenon is being driven by the globalization of the world economy and the proliferation of easily accessible communications. Millions of people across the globe are pouring into sprawling cities, the size and complexity of which we have never seen before. They seek economic security and access to services - especially education and health care, which are not available in backward rural regions.

Greater efficiencies in agricultural practices and shrinkage of arable land are also dramatically reducing rural populations. It also appears likely that global warming will further encroach on arable land, render some areas uninhabitable and drive even more urbanization.

The retired British General Rupert Smith has updated Clausewitz for the twenty-first Century by coining the phrase 'War amongst the people.' This notion acknowledges the enduring truth that war is the continuation of politics by violent means, and that the ultimate goal of politics is to shape and influence the conduct of people.

As soldiers we must be prepared to do two tasks, often at the same time. First, deliver with courage and conviction the enduring task of an Army which is to seek out, close with and kill and destroy the enemy. Second, again with courage and conviction, but also with fairness and compassion work as partners within damaged societies to protect, support and persuade the population.

Modern warfare, particularly the Islamic fundamentalist insurgency that occupies us at present, is a competition for the allegiance of people. It does not require logic of Socratic sophistication to recognize that war will be where the people are; and that - increasingly - is in the sprawling cities, of developing countries and failed and failing states.

We have witnessed the so called 'cluttering' of the battlespace over recent decades. Civilians and sensitive infrastructure have been both incidental and direct targets of military forces since the turn of last century. But this has evolved to the point where the term three block war literally means that - most military activities are being conducted on the blocks of cities.

The populations we are attempting to support predominantly occupy cities and villages. Moreover, our adversaries - especially non state actors - intentionally cling to populated areas to try to neutralize our stand off and precision weapons. The First and Second Iraq Wars as well as the initial operations against the Taliban have convinced our irregular opponents that it is suicidal to face Western forces in open terrain. Thus they have reverted to asymmetric war where they confront our weaknesses rather than our strengths. They seek to fight us in our cities where our intelligence, surveillance, manoeuvre and firepower advantages are negated. They are doing well.

To prevail in this environment land forces will, indeed, need to be pervasive, persistent and proportionate.

We need your help in a conceptual, scientific and industrial approach that ensures we are equipped, trained and prepared for this fight. My question to you is, "How can you help us become pervasive, persistent and proportionate?"

Let me deal with each of these notions.

Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have evolved into traditional counter-insurgency operations. We are competing with an adaptive and ruthless enemy for the support of a population in order to confer legitimacy on the Government in each nation.

Central to the legitimacy of each government is its ability to provide protection and security to those who are loyal to it, work for it, and their friends and families. Insurgents employ terror as a tactic to intimidate the population. We saw this in Vietnam and Malaya and the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan have adopted terror as one of their leading tactics.

To be effective in underpinning the legitimacy of allied governments, our forces need to be pervasive in their presence. By that I mean that there must be an enduring all-embracing quality to our operations.

The current surge in Iraq is built around the pervasive presence of land forces. The previous scheme of manoeuvre relied too heavily on our superiority in mobility and firepower. It was based on kinetic effects. This involved attempts to fuse a complex array of human and electronic sensors and identify insurgent targets for direct action.

While there were some spectacular successes - the strike that killed the Jordanian jihadist Al Zaqarwi being a notable example - such operations are not the best way to defeat an insurgency among the people.

Supporting our centre of gravity - namely the respect and loyalty of the people requires a more comprehensive, enduring and nuanced approach.

Counter-insurgency operations are manpower intensive. They require boots on the ground in sufficient concentrations to provide visible reassurance to the supporters of the government whose legitimacy we are underpinning.

Only when the insurgent and the population alike know that we are present can people go about their lives with confidence. No unmanned drone or aircraft can provide this persistent, loitering presence which is vital to protecting the people and isolating the insurgent from them - both physically and emotionally.

Certainly, technical mastery may contribute to pervasive presence. SIGINT and precision targeting are terrific force multipliers. But in operations of this type there is no substitute for a well trained, resolute, decent, compassionate soldier on the ground to provide a sense of security to the civilian population.

Those NCW and RMA advocates who boast of 'pervasive situational awareness' through a network of remote sensors do not grasp the fundamental characteristics of the type of complex, 'three block' operations that we and our allies are now engaged in.

In this type of warfare the best sensor is a soldier on the ground, with language skills and cultural awareness a firm appreciation of the nature of the conflict he is involved in and an appreciation of the strategic aims of the campaign.

He must be capable of gleaning exactly what is going on around him, interpreting it, and responding with gradual escalation to the use of force only if absolutely necessary.

This is a problem of human software rather than computer hardware. Soldiers on the ground will deliver this effect.

We flatter ourselves when we pretend that our technical superiority translates automatically to pervasive situational awareness in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Consider this - our troops in these places patrol in highly visible vehicles and uniforms with distinctive color schemes distinguishing marks and paint jobs; often along familiar routes, through complex urban terrain in which the enemy is indistinguishable from the very people we are trying to help. They report our movements using readily available mobile phones, using a language unfamiliar to most of our troops.

They are the home team. Who do you think enjoys information superiority in this environment?

Persistence is closely related to pervasiveness. It is about providing an enduring presence to support the people - the very people who constitute the centre of gravity in war among the people. To achieve this we need courage, resilience, excellent training and patience.

Time and patience are two things our enemy possesses in far greater abundance than us. This is a major area of asymmetry. Tribal fighters do not experience time the way we do. They work on long memories and a concept of God's time. We do not comprehend time in the way that they do.

It may take years to build trust among the people of a failing or distressed state. That is harder than destroying an Army in the field or even building schools, wells and hospitals. I am keen to hear any ideas on how we build this trust.

If there is one scientific discipline that we need to tap even more than we are it is anthropology. How can we build trust across cultural and linguistic divides? How are our operations perceived among the people of the supported population? How will an enemy respond to particular kinetic and non-kinetic effects? And of course can we maintain and sustain the aim in the face of casualties, and slow progress towards our often faintly articulated objectives?

It is difficult to achieve this quickly. The whole point of an insurgency is to avoid decisive battle. Often victory comes by default - merely by avoiding defeat.

Finally, our operations must be proportionate. To me this encapsulates everything from precision and discrimination to fairness and impartiality. We must not over react and all of our actions must be legal and morally correct. We are helping build a "better legitimate" society and we must be seen as a "force for good". This applies to every single soldier on the battlefield.

We have learnt that the application of kinetic effects can be counter productive if it is not conducted carefully.

Precision ensures that we hit what we are aiming at.

But it is discrimination that ensures that we aim only at the right target at the right time. In complex urban terrain there is a constant risk of striking innocent civilians, or destroying infrastructure of cultural or political significance.

Proportionality is particularly important in complex human terrain among the people. Our enemies deliberately seek to provoke an over-reaction from us in the presence of innocent civilians. This is a clever use of asymmetry against our greater firepower. No doubt you have read the reports of complaints from both the Iraqi and Afghan governments about collateral damage to civilians.

Nothing undermines the credibility of our efforts more than the unintended killing of civilians.

Some of this comes back to training and ensuring that our people have the language and cultural skills to 'read' an ambiguous situation. There are often clues as to potential violence or signs that an attack is impending, such as the absence of women and children from a neighborhood.

In the last analysis there is no substitute for 'eyes on'-providing the eyes are backed by a mind that can pierce the fog of war and the friction of cultural difference.

One area in which we have made valuable progress is in the area of force protection through the HNA initiatives. Being harder to hit provides more scope to discriminate, and to respond to threats proportionately. If you cannot survive a hit you need to hit first and you need to hit hard.

Recent operations have amply demonstrated the importance of pervasive, persistent and proportionate operations by land forces in urban terrain. Bitter experience has also demonstrated the ability of a relatively low-tech enemy to inflict serious casualties upon us while denying us a quick decision.

Importantly, we have learnt that unless we can provide pervasive security without inflicting collateral damage on the supported population our supposed strengths can be turned into glaring weaknesses.

I have focused on some of the ways that I think the abiding presence of well trained troops restores balance against an asymmetrical enemy in the context of an urban insurgency.

However, I do not wish to be interpreted as rejecting the benefits of our high-tech enablers where these are appropriate. The development of the rifle that can shoot around corners is one salient example of this. Likewise, technical assistance in seeing and hearing through walls is essential to urban combat. Such aids enhance proportionality and help us minimize damage to property.

The same can be said of any devices and systems that increase precision targeting in order to assist in separating the insurgent from the population and minimize collateral damage.

My concern is that we are already well served in this area.

Our real limitations lie in the soft –or non-kinetic realm. Technology is part of a system that comprises human beings. If they are flying blind because of lack of HUMINT or a nuanced understanding of our environment, then technical aids cannot redeem the situation.

Ladies and gentlemen I have spent some time talking about the state of the Army and describing to you the type of environment we anticipate will be the battlefield of the future.

Your Army is in good shape but to stay in that condition we need your help in dealing with the urban environment where we find ourselves in a war among the population.

Before I close and invite your questions let me ask you a question. What can you do to help an Australian soldier today?

As always it is a great pleasure to address the Land Warfare Conference.

I am certain that this year's conference will build on our considerable success of the past few years. Our soldiers deserve no less.

I would be happy to take your questions...

ENDS

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