Page 3 - Williams Foundation Integrated Force Design Seminar

Designing the Integrated Force: How to Define and Meet the Challenge?

THE SEMINAR APPROACH AND PROGRAM

The Williams Foundation has been a thought leader in bringing together the key players in the Australian
military as well as allies to shape a way ahead for the integrated force.

The Foundation hosted a conference on April 11, 2017 in Canberra which explicitly addressed the key
challenge of how to develop such an integrated force with a key case study being the way ahead to build an
integrated missile defense capability built into the force.

Since March 2014, the Williams Foundation has conducted a series of Seminars that explored the
opportunities and challenges afforded by the introduction of next generation combat capabilities.

Topics that have been explored prior to the latest seminar included:

• Air Combat Operations – 2025 and Beyond
• Battlespace Awareness – The Joint Edge
• Integrating Innovative Airpower (held in Copenhagen)
• Training for an Integrated ADF: Live, Virtual and Constructive Design-Led Innovation
• New Thinking on Air-Land
• New Thinking on Air-Sea

The hypotheses examined at the Force Design Seminar were as follows:

We must operate as an integrated team from the design, through delivery to the operation of the force;
failure to act as such will incur unacceptable risk in future operations.

If we don’t “design” the integrated force we are committed to “after-market” integration.
We can’t build and operate an integrated force using business models developed for acquiring stand-alone,
stove-piped capabilities.

“Design” is about more than just platforms and systems … it is about how we design, acquire, operate and
sustain an integrated force in a more complex interconnected global context.

If we over-complicate the “design” process we will stall our efforts and get the same results we have had over
the past 20 years; i.e. stove-piped capabilities.

We must recognise that the task load of the three Services in their raise, train, sustain and Capability
Manager roles means that simply delivering a large volume of Force Design guidance to the three Services at
once will not work; we must be cognizant of the realties of the Service’s existing tasks and loadings when
seeking to transform to an integrated force model.

In preparation for the Seminar, the Williams Foundation ran a six month IAMD Study, exploring the challenges
of the IAMD program and the concept of integrated force design, as one example of the forty programs that
the Department of Defence has embarked upon. The IAMD Study Report was launched at the seminar.
The seminar program for the day was as follows:

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