Page 36 - Williams Foundation Air-Sea Integration Seminar

Shaping an Integrated Force in the Extended Battlespace

The collective grouping of the integrated air and missile defense with a new long range land based rocket
system for air and naval defense, will provide a mobile anti-access and area denial capability that’s
significant in terms of the geography to the north of Australia supportive of our national needs and those of
our coalition partners.

And by so doing, we are freeing up Navy and Air Force for other tasks.

Question: How has the air-land discussion proceeded since the Williams seminar earlier this year?

Brigadier General Mills: The concepts we introduced there are being worked in specific ways.

We have visited Williamtown and continued our work with Wedgetail. There are Army officers on board
and see Wedgetail as provided important capabilities for battle management and EW from an Army
perspective. Army officers from Seven Signals EW regiment are regular riders on the Wedgetail. They are
there that we can get the best out of the systems that are available on that jet to support land forces.
Although it’s predominantly designed to support aerial combat, it has functionality that supports the ground
forces as well.

Our vision is for the small group commander to be able to leverage Air Force and Navy fire support as well.
We are working to provide the combat team commander with an evolving capability to tap into Navy and
Air Force firepower to support his operations. That is an ongoing task, which is central to ADF modernization
as well.

We are visiting Air Force and Navy commands to shape an effective way ahead on joint fires, surveillance
and battle management solution sets.

Question: Since we last spoke, the two LHDs are operating and becoming a driving force for change in
Air Force, Navy and Army.

Do you see the LHD as a forcing function for some of the changes, which you are shaping for the Army?

Brigadier General Mills: We see the engagement with Navy as part of our modernization effort.

Next year we are deploying a joint digital system on the ship able to support the force ashore so that the
evolution of the LHD is part of the digital future of the Army as well. In other words, we are putting digital
land C4I system onboard the LHDs.

We’re a small force. We don’t have the luxury of some very large organizations that, that have joint effects
within a single service. We don’t have that. We, we got a small army, a small navy, and a small air force.
We want to achieve large effects. So I think even at the junior officer level, the way we plan and conduct our
exercises, the way operations have been conducted in the last two decades, there is an expectation that joint
isn’t just a word. It’s just how we do things now.

We see the LHD being stood up from the beginning as a joint asset. For example, the Canberra has been
used to move First Brigade to the Hamel exercise area. We see it providing close air support and air mobility
as well for our ground forces.

Second Line of Defense

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