Page 35 - Williams Foundation Air-Sea Integration Seminar

Shaping an Integrated Force in the Extended Battlespace

territory of Australia could be used to shape effective defenses, the more the Air Force and Navy could focus
on extended operations. He characterized this as shaping an Australian anti-access and area denial force.

One development since the last interview was the recent exercise Hamel 2016 which certified First Brigade as
ready to meet the Australian Government’s requirements as the Australian Defence Force’s next ‘ready’
brigade.

According to Brigadier General Mills: “In essence, First Brigade, was challenged by both our conventional
force and a non-conventional arranged force combatant to look at confirming the brigade's ability to conduct
tasks from non-combatant evacuation operations, to operations against a non-conventional foe, to a
conventional against a conventional plus fore, to a combination of all of those occurring at once.

And really that, that's army's high watermark to ensure that we can conduct the spectrums of task required of,
of a small army from our peacekeeping and peace support operations to a conventional war foe.

Exercise Hamel was born out of a concern by army's generals a number of years ago that we had spent too
long just focused on preparing and conducting the foes like in Afghanistan. And for us it had been Timor and
Solomon Islands and having troops supporting coalitions of the willing both in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there
were some growing concerns that for a small army for that level of commitment.

We were eroding the foundational war fighting skills doctrine and capabilities that our army had previously
built as our operational norm. We needed to update those skills for 21st century full spectrum operations.

We need to be able to fight continuously in three timeframes - the timeframe of focusing on recovering from
the last fight while you've got force elements fighting the current fight, while you've got force elements
preparing for the future fight.

And the ability to be able to fight in those three timeframes at once builds tempo. And for a small army like
the Australian Army and the Australian Defense Force, we need to be able to look at technology, tactics,
techniques, and procedures that enables us to fight across those three dimensions; to minimize the time
between transition from the current to the future.

We look to generate combat mass through a rapid tempo or an ability reset or re-tasking capability across
the force in a spectrum of operations.

Question: Major General McLachlan specifically raised the question of the Army’s role in integrated Air
and Missile defense, could you comment on that?

Brigadier General Mills: It's in Australia's interest to be prepared to defend our sea and air lines of
communication to the north. I think the architects of the white paper very much had a view that they expected
more from the army than the past and this includes in air and missile defense

We are looking a system of system’s approach where the Army provides the lower level defense and the Air
Force the medium level defense but under Air Force overall leadership.

We’d very much like to be able to use in-service air force missiles. The same missiles that potentially will be
used on the medium system could be used on the short system.

Integrated air and missile defense capability talked about in the white paper is very much a first for the
Australian Defense Force. The army is acquiring as well a long-range land-based rocket system. You're then
talking of a land-based long range and the shipping missile capability to be acquired by the army in the
foreseeable future.

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