11 September 2024
The Honourable Stephen Mulligan MP, the Minister for Defence and Space Industries.
The Honourable Phillip Thomson MP, the Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence, Defence Industry and Defence Personnel.
International Ambassadors and High Commissioners.
Lieutenant General (Retired) Ken Gillespie, convenor of Land Forces 2024.
Board members of the AMDA Foundation, and the CEO, Mr Justin Giddings.
Distinguished international guests.
Respected senior leaders and colleagues from across government, the military, academia, and defence industry.
We meet today on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin, and I offer my respects to elders past, present and emerging.
It is my absolute pleasure to welcome you all to Land Forces 2024 on behalf of the Australian Army and the wider Australian Defence Force.
As ever, it is best to start by thanking those who have come furthest. I would like to express my gratitude to the 25 national delegations joining us in beautiful Melbourne.
Your presence here is vital, an expression of our collective will and the warmth of often long-standing relationships.
My friend General Charlie Flynn spoke at LANPAC of the value of the ‘strategic land power network’. I see it laid out before us in this room.
I am proud to consider all of you as colleagues, and many of you as friends. I hope to leave here with more friends than colleagues.
Thank you to the AMDA Foundation for creating the platform that has brought us all together. Events such as this would be impossible without organisations like AMDA, and the Australian Army are very proud to be associated with Land Forces. Indeed it is a signature event in our calendar.
Thank you to the Victorian Government and the State of Victoria for hosting this event, and for your determination to make it happen.
In the same vein, it would be remiss of me not to mention and thank the officers of the Victorian Police, and those who have come from interstate, who are standing watch diligently to make sure this event is secure and safe. We are deeply appreciative of their efforts.
And finally, thank you to the wide range of conference partners and sponsors who are invested in this event.
You represent the industrial foundations that underpin our common purpose – the maintenance of a secure, stable and prosperous global community, where the use of political violence is the exception, not the norm.
I particularly note and welcome the presence of the wide range of smaller Australian companies joining us at this year’s exposition. I find these companies are a catalyst wherever they go, adding energy and vibrancy to the community.
This energy is key in realising the ideas of ‘national defence’ outlined in the recent National Defence Strategy, where the whole nation comes together to assure our collective future.
We gather this week with even more gravity than the last time we met, just two short years ago.
Both the global and regional security situations have continued to decline since then.
A conventional, inter-state war is now entrenched in Europe in the form of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, with estimates of over half a million dead across the conflict and no signs of resolution.
The situation in the broader Middle East is precarious, with the sense that the wrong spark might have catastrophic consequences.
Wider tensions are clearly growing, with all the capacity for miscalculation and misadventure that has characterised international relations for millennia. The ‘holiday from history’ seems to be over, with little sign that it will return imminently.
We are once again in an era defined by great power competition.
The Australian Government has responded to this declining situation. An audience as well informed as this one needs no introduction to the Defence Strategic Review released less than 18 months ago on 24th April 23.
I believe this policy is a profound one. I joined the Army as a soldier in 1987, the same year that the Government published the Defence of Australia white paper, informed by the ‘Dibb Report’ of Professor Paul Dibb.
The 1987 white paper influenced my entire career of nearly forty years, from the uniforms I wore, to the equipment I employed, and to the deployment and operations I undertook.
The 2023 DSR will be of similar gravity. I believe it will shape the entire careers, for example, of the 212 newest Australian Army officers who marched out of Duntroon last month.
It represents a profound inflection point in how we will collectively defend the nation … a ‘call to arms’ and a first-principals, foundational review of what it defines as our ‘national defence’.
We are transforming the Australian Army for this new reality. We have achieved much, but these remain the early steps of a profound adaptation journey.
This year we have decided to embed the Chief of Army Symposium into Land Forces. This is a good step, and represents an important opportunity. Let me explain.
It is my firm belief that the fundamental challenge for all military professionals today is to judge the balance between the ever changing character of war, and its enduring nature.
Again, I don’t need to persuade this audience that accelerating technology is having a profound effect on warfare, as it is in every facet of life.
From the battlefields of Ukraine to the Red Sea, militaries and armed groups are invested in an ‘action, re-action, counteraction’ battle of technological evolution that is proceeding at a remarkable rate.
And yet the nature of war is timeless. Two and a half millenia ago, Thucydides famously outlined the three motivators for war: fear, honour, and interest. The experiences of the last two years suggest that little has changed.
From the Donbas to the Bab al-Mandab Strait, and from Gaza to the Second Thomas Shoal, we see the same drivers play out. Fear. Honour. Interest.
War remains an intrinsically human activity, beset by all the frailties and complexities of our nature. Like war itself, humans remain uncertain and unpredictable.
We defy the logic, order, and comforting sense of certainty that is so attractive about the algorithms and datasets that we seek to apply.
So, a balance must be found between nature and character. We have designed this week as an opportunity to take a step back, and to examine this challenge from a broad lens.
Land Forces will allow us to see the very best of the evolving technology of warfare. We will see it across the exhibits you have all worked to contribute, and we will especially see it at both the Army Innovation Day and the Quantum Technology Challenge.
The Quantum Challenge felt like a place of futurists when we first started it just a few years ago … but no more. It is now about delivering quantum technology tools into the hands of soldiers today: a remarkable example of how fast technology is accelerating.
We will see the changing character of warfare this week with unusual clarity. It is clear that we must continually seize the technological edge. Now is not the time to be a luddite, and such cutting edge capabilities are vital in achieving the ADF’s Strategy of Denial.
But I have deliberately chosen to focus CAS not on technology, but on the ‘human face of battle’.
In a short but hopefully profound day we will look deeply into how the enduring nature of war is reflecting in the conflicts of today.
We are very lucky to have with us as keynote speakers Dr Jack Watling from the Royal United Services Institute in London, and General David Berger, who until recently served as the 38th commandant of the United States Marine Corps.
Dr Watling was recently described by my friend General Patrick Sanders as a ‘national treasure’ in the UK.
He is what I would call an applied academic, with extensive field experience in Rwanda, Mali, Yemen, Iraq and most recently (in terms of last month) in Ukraine.
Jack is at the leading edge of analysis on the future of land power. I am delighted to recognise him publicly as the holder of the Australian Army’s Keogh Chair in Military Thought, and we are very lucky to have him here with us this week.
General David’s offering to us at CAS is obvious. He brings with him over four decades of warfighting experience, from Desert Storm in 1991, to Fallujah in 2005, then Kosovo, and finally to Divisional command in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
As commandant of the Marine Corps, he initiated and led one of the most fundamental adaptations of a US military service in decades, one that sought to explicitly balance the enduring nature and changing character within a maritime strategy.
He has seen the ‘human face of battle’ first hand, and we are very grateful for him giving his time. I know that with the likes of Doctor Jack and General David we will have a packed hall on Thursday.
Before closing, I would like to make one final acknowledgement, which relates directly to the ‘human face of battle’.
Two days ago the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide delivered its findings to the Australian Government.
As the Chief of the Army I welcome these findings, and I thank the Royal Commissioners for their determination, diligence and resilience.
Their work represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reduce suicide and suicidality amongst our community.
The Australian Army will seize this opportunity, one that sits at the heart of our professional obligation … at the centre of everything we hold dear.
We can – and we must – do more to ensure that we do not leave our mates behind, fallen on their own personal battlefield. Our efforts have already begun in earnest, to create resilient soldiers and cohesive teams as part of a better Army.
It is therefore with great pleasure that I formally open Land Forces 2024. It is both a pleasure and an honour to have you all here.
The urgency of our gathering has not been greater for a generation, and I look forward to us working together to secure our nations, our shared region, and our collective interests.
Thank you.