Sea Power 2010: Amphibiosity - a work in progress | ADM Apr 2010
The short answer is - cautiously.
Gregor Ferguson | Sydney
An amphibious force resembles a blunt instrument, at first glance - lots of soldiers, landing craft and helicopters crammed into big ships, with warships escorting them.
But it is actually a subtle, sophisticated organism which relies for its effect not just on mass, movement and firepower, but also on mastery of the art of command and of the complex junction between three operating environments.
Developing an effective amphibious capability involves more than just acquiring amphibious landing ships, landing craft and helicopters.
It requires close cooperation between Army and Navy at the basic procedural level - mastering the mechanics of embarking and disembarking under tactical conditions - and at the command level: understanding threats, operating environments and the sometimes-fluid interface between command responsibilities at sea and ashore.
The Spanish Infanteria de Marina have been doing this for 470 years, the French marines for nearly 400 years, the Royal Marines and Royal Netherlands Marine Corps for nearly 350 years, the US Marine Corps for over 200 years, and the ADF, intermittently and rarely with overall mission command responsibility, since 1914.
Now the ADF is playing catch-up, developing a permanent amphibious capability based upon the Navy's two Canberra-class LHDs which are due to enter service from 2014.
This year's Sea Power Conference had as its theme ‘Combined and Joint Operations from the Sea'.
In his keynote address to the conference, the Chief of Navy, VADM Russ Crane, noted the 2009 Defence White Paper's focus on enhancing Australia's maritime capabilities.
"However, it is wrong to conclude that this major new direction is just about enhancing the Navy - it is very much about the ADF as a whole," he told delegates.
"Our capacity to project force will be stronger, larger and more sustainable, we will do so when required as a joint expeditionary force and, because we live in a geostrategic environment dominated by the oceans, we will do so in a maritime environment.
"Put very simply, the ADF is going to be operating over, on, and from the sea."
How, exactly?
The ADF's description of this new capability is telling - the term Amphibious Deployment and Sustainment System (ADAS) reflects the complexities and the joint nature of amphibious warfare.
Joint capability
The future ADF amphibious capability will be a truly joint capability, Crane emphasised, reinforcing his point by inviting the Chiefs of the other two services to deliver keynotes at the Sea Power Conference.
The ADF must develop a joint command and control organisation that is capable of transitioning to an amphibious staff in a joint task force headquarters, linking the Maritime and Land Component Commanders, he said.
"These are uncharted waters for Australia, and we are also working to develop a joint system of evaluating and certifying operational readiness," Crane told the conference.
"Army and Navy both have well established single service training regimes...[but]...There is currently no formal assessment process to determine the readiness and/or preparedness of our amphibious capability, and there needs to be."
The ADF has been working towards a networked force for sometime and its emergent amphibious capability has provided focus for this work.
"The development of an Amphibious Warfare Command Support System and a Common Operating Picture which takes input from the various environmentally based operating systems will be a significant milestone to ensure the LHD's joint operations room will be able to support operations from the sea and sea basing," according to Crane.
The clear implication is that the ADF's Network Centric Warfare Roadmap will shape the Army's equipment proposals and choices over the period the LHDs are entering service.
"These will ensure that full connectivity can be established between the landing force and the LCC afloat," says Crane.
Chief of Army, LTGEN Ken Gillespie, told delegates the ADF has set itself ambitious goals, and the most recent edition of the Army's Future Land Operating Concept, Adaptive Campaigning, provides the conceptual and philosophical framework, as well as the force modernization guidance, to contribute to achieving this common ambition.
"In platform terms, the LHDs will allow the ADF to achieve world's best amphibious practice and increase our interoperability with our allies," Gillespie said.
"We will be capable of projecting military force beyond Australian shores without the requirement for coalition key force projection enablers."
Army viewpoint
The Army's amphibious doctrine is a component of Australia's wider Amphibious Concept, which sets out the range of amphibious operations that Army can contribute to.
But this amphibious doctrine this needs to be reviewed, Gillespie said, "especially when analysed against emerging Coalition doctrine.
"This work is currently being conducted by the Modernisation and Strategic Planning staff at Army Headquarters."
This is where the biggest difference between the ADF and its allies becomes obvious: most countries' Marine Corps form part of that country's Navy with integrated doctrine and a coherent joint policy of command and staff appointments.
"The Australian Army has no standing Commander Landing Forces, while Australia's coalition partners have standing Landing and Amphibious command organisations that are generally co-located and plan together for exercises and operations," Gillespie noted.
"The USMC and the USN, and the UK's RM and RN, maintain these standing arrangements and respectively share the specialist amphibious capability role in their nations' inventories - they provide forces permanently structured to achieve effects on land, operating from the sea.
"A Commander Land Force organisation embedded in the formation that will conduct the amphibious operation, and co- located with the Commander Amphibious Task Force, would appear to be a natural fit," he added.
"While the RAN will base the LHD at Fleet Base East, in Sydney, it may be that a potential location of any CLF/CATF HQ is in Brisbane.
"Brisbane would allow for co-location with HQ 1 Div, our DJFHQ.
"Such co- location would provide a COMAUSATG, bolstered with additional Army staff, as a sound C2 solution while we mature our amphibious capability."
What about the embarked landing force?
The Forces Command Landing Force Concept of Employment acknowledges a key challenge for developing an sustaining force readiness and preparedness: "amphibious-related individual and collective training requirements exceed baseline infantry skills, as the landing force requires exposure to the maritime environment of surface and air assault," Gillespie said.
"Additionally, the Concept appreciates that contemporary amphibious warfare is about being able to operate congested flight decks, hazardous well docks, operating a range of vehicles on and off moving platforms and over beaches through surf," he added.
"It recognises our need to tailor logistic support requirements, manage the joint battle space, support joint fires and command from a Joint Operations Room afloat without recourse to operating ashore."
The Operational Concept Document for JP2048, the LHD program, defines Army's Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) as an all-arms battle group incorporating armour, medium artillery, aviation, engineers and logistics.
The ARG will be approximately 2,200 strong, and reflect the USMC and RM models.
However, with only three amphibious ships in the RAN there will be insufficient capacity to generate 10 amphibiously-trained Battle Groups within the Army.
The Royal Marines has three Battle Groups, with one ‘on-line', with slightly greater Royal Navy ship availability than the RAN can expect, Gillespie points out.
The Army is currently studying how it can best achieve the ARG construct, he said: "I think that we need to focus on providing one ‘on-line' battle group for the conduct of amphibious operations, at the same certification level as our coalition partners.
"Also important, is the requirement for exposure to sea-lift and follow-on operations for the remainder of the Army."
Options
The possible permutations are endless, but Gillespie highlighted three which cover the full spectrum of achievable capability levels:
• Option One: nominating one Battle Group as the specialist amphibious battalion, with dedicated group enablers, such as fires, comms and logistics assets in support.
This option would allow a high level of capability to be achieved, certifiable to US and UK standards.
"This option would however introduce significant force rotation and sustainment issues for Army, especially with our current operational commitments," noted Gillespie.
• Option Two: Similar to the USMC MEUs and the UK's 3 Commando Brigade, an Australian Brigade, grouped as a combined arms task force, may be best placed to be the Army's amphibious specialist, securing a point of entry for heavier follow-on forces after to the amphibious operation.
This would provide capability comparable to US and UK certification levels.
• Option Three: Similar to the French model where, until recently, annual changeovers occurred between battle groups; this would permit Army's 10 Battle Groups exposure to amphibious capability.
This would allow capability development to be broad but would potentially not achieve US and UK certification standards.
"Emerging amphibious doctrine, such as Ship To Objective Manoeuvre (STOM), Distributed Manoeuvre and Sea Basing highlights that this capability is beyond just delivering Army to the Amphibious Objective Area," Gillespie points out.
"It's clear to me that Army needs to learn how to live, deploy, operate in, and operate from the LHDs to maximise Government's investment in this capability."
This has critical implications for training and education as well as for logistics and materiel maintenance planning.
CAPT Stephen Woodall, Commander Australian Amphibious Task Group (COMAUSTAG) at Fleet HQ, advocates allocating the amphibious role to a specific Army Brigade which can provide a landing force ranging from a combat team to a reinforced battle group.
The Brigade's HQ would provide the Commander Landing Force (CLF) and staff which, in turn, would need to work closely with an established and experienced joint amphibious staff "in order to mitigate the limited experience levels in the participating force elements."
Woodall told the conference that while the ADF's amphibious doctrine and strategic guidance papers are sound, the wider ADF needs to be better educated about joint amphibious doctrine and procedures, and the ADF Warfare Centre isn't sufficiently resourced to provide more than a very low-level ‘introductory' course on amphibiosity.
More training
"The current level of individual training and education will not support the future amphibious capability," he warned.
"This has been recognised and is being addressed in the Amphibious Warfare Competencies Project that was undertaken this year.
"Education is the key and...until the ADF has the capacity to deliver its own amphibious training, overseas education combined with careful career management will be necessary to develop the pool of ADF personnel with amphibious training and experience."
However, he notes that his own permanent staff consists of eight personnel, including a RAAF officer and US Navy liaison officer, compared with the Royal Navy's 30-strong equivalent Commander Amphibious Task Group (COMATG) organisation, which is augmented by a further 24 reservists.
"A key lesson learned from recent exercises is that current staff numbers are insufficient to support specific tasks while planning and executing combined and joint Raise, Train and Sustain (RTS) amphibious exercises," he points out, drily.
While the British model - 3 Commando Brigade, Royal Marines, and the RN's COMATG - best fits the ADF's resource and personnel constraints, the Australian Army does not want to be called a Marine Corps, a force that is trained, configured and optimised to conduct operations over the land but launched from the sea, said LTGEN Gillespie.
But because of its size and structure it needs to train, look and fight like one.
"Army must prepare for an era that will see battle groups operating in the wider Joint operating arena, spending frequent and sometimes extended periods at sea."
Endorsing this view, CAPT Steve Woodall advocates a relatively highly integrated amphibious task force which can embark and train at sea and from ships for extended periods in order to develop the foundation skill of living and operating from a ship and build the necessary professional relationships and trust between the Army and Navy.
There's nothing like a deadline to concentrate the mind.
In order to maximise the inherent capabilities of the future amphibious system, Gillespie says, Army needs to prepare itself for the arrival of the first LHD in March 2014.
"These requirements generate several issues for Army, which include: selecting a formation with attached enablers as the amphibious specialists; introducing an appropriate C2 structure for amphibious operations; interoperability with allies; and implementing a robust logistic capability to deal in the amphibious arena."