Page 196 - Australian Defence Magazine September 2018

FROM THE SOURCE
LTGEN RICK BURR
“We came up with a framework of ‘Army
in Motion’ with four supporting command themes (Preparedness, People, Profession and Potential) and then link that to a forthcoming Army Futures statement.”
Continued from page 189
ADM: How urgent though would you characterise that ongoing effort? BURR: It is important that Army and Navy work together to fully understand our joint needs and any limitations going forward. For now we validated our capabilities on Talisman Sabre last year; we can get our vehicles ashore. Good old Aussie ingenuity and innovation has allowed us to take what we’ve got and make it work.
We have the LCM-8, a highly capable, well-proven platform. We are comfortable with where we are but understand that we need to continue to refine and enhance our joint amphibious system and make sure that we can deliver that capability ashore safely and effectively.
ADM: We spoke a bit before about Army’s digitisation journey and that’s obviously been a long and winding road. How would you char- acterise where you are now and where you want to be?
BURR: We’re never far enough down the track, of course. We know that we are where we are and we have a clear eye on where we need to be and Phase 3 of Land 200 (see P92 for more on this pro- gram) is the next tranche. We’ll work at getting that through to get us close to concluding that project but I think we have the digital spine for our network in place.
We need to build the network and then everything becomes a node on that net- work. Changing the way we think of how
Army's use of the Black Hornet nano UAS system has been a good experience for users in the field.
capability comes together is a fundamen- tal part of this process.
It’s cultural, it’s procedural, designing networks will be core business for our Army in the future. This is a critical step.
It’s vital for our future that we are an in- tegrated, connected, fully networked force with improved speeds of decision-making.
As we introduce new more advanced capabilities such as our air defence sys- tems under Land 19 Phase 7B (see P100 for more on this program), as well as long range fires, this becomes funda- mental to all capability, both within Army as well as the Joint Force.
We need the ability to operate more ef- fectively across all domains; networking and our digital systems will act as the forc- ing function in this regard. We are well on that path. I feel that we have a good plan to go forward.
ADM: How are UAVs changing how you fight?
BURR: UAVs are very exciting and in many ways represent the broader incorpo- ration of emerging technology into Army. We currently have the Wasp which is a great capability at the sub-unit level as well as the micro and nano UAVs such as the Black Hornet for our tactical commanders.
190 | September 2018 | www.australiandefence.com.au
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