12 September 2024
The Honourable Natalie Hutchins MP, the Minister for State and Industry.
The Honourable Gayle Tierney MP, the Minister for Skills and TAFE.
The Honourable Paul Papalia MP, the Western Australian Minister for Police.
The Honourable Joe Szakacs MP, the South Australian Minister for Trade and Investment.
Ambassadors and High Commissioners, distinguished guests, friends and colleagues.
To the great American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is attributed a recipe for the perfect oration. His advice was to adhere to the “Three Bs”.
Be sincere. Be brief. Be seated.
I shall do my best to implement that guidance this evening, not merely because of the eminence of its source.
It has been a terrific week. We have heard from an exceptional range of speakers and have had the opportunity to share perspectives on emerging technologies and their implications for land operations.
This week has been incredibly affirming to me as the Chief of the Army.
To see and experience the immense goodwill towards our Army has been both humbling and energising.
So, as we reflect on what we have learnt this week, I would like to issue a short parting call-to-arms for your help in navigating our ongoing adaptation.
Our Army is at an inflection point in its history.
We are rapidly executing the government’s direction to optimise for littoral operations, and to develop a long-range strike capability.
This is part of an ADF-wide adaptation to our new strategic reality.
One might argue that defence industry – both domestic and global – is also at a commensurate inflection point.
The National Defence Strategy is right that, in this era of great power competition, we need a coordinated, whole-of-government, and whole-of-nation approach to meet the strategic challenges we face.
The ADF may be able to win the battles, but it is defence industry that will lend credibility to our deterrence, and will sustain us in conflict.
The NDS accurately highlights ‘industry resilience’ and ‘supply chain resilience’ as two vital pillars of national defence.
This week has shown just how fast industry is adapting to meet this new era.
But with speed of adaptation comes risk. The risk that we will pull apart rather than together, or be contradictory rather than complementary.
Many of you will know from your reading of the National Defence Strategy that it envisages the ADF transforming into what it calls an ‘integrated, focused force’.
This represents a real opportunity for alignment.
When we talk about being ‘focused’, what we really mean is being focused for warfighting operations in the Indo-Pacific region: our primary area of military interest.
This implies some profound changes.
Consider this. Since the DSR we have re-established the Division as our key unit of action.
Now, the Division in traditional land warfare control a frontage of 50 to 70 kilometres. Divisions in Ukraine – in the Kursk salient for example – are operating along similar fronts.
But an Australian Division in the Indo-Pacific must be capable of distributed archipelagic operations spanning hundreds if not thousands of kilometres.
During the Second World War the Australian Army’s frontage stretched from Borneo to Bougainville. That is greater than the distance from Sydney to Perth or roughly equivalent to the distance between the beaches of Normandy and the Persian Gulf.
The Australian Army has never been able to rely on mass.
Now more than ever we must rely on asymmetric effects, delivered by distributed force elements across the vast stretch of archipelagic terrain.
We need your help to focus our adaptation into this environment.
So, if you are going to consider contemporary lessons, for example, I ask that you consider them through the lens of warfighting in the Indo-Pacific.
The application of land-based long-range fires and autonomous systems by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to destroy very capable surface ships are excellent examples.
It is not difficult to imagine how we can apply these lessons to our region, conferring calculus-changing asymmetric capabilities on our land forces.
We need your best thinking and innovation to devise and to adapt our current capabilities to meet these challenges.
In addition to being ‘focused’, we are also to be ‘integrated’. But what does this mean?
To me, it means that we must go beyond ‘joint’.
It is no longer sufficient for ADF forces to converge in execution, and then to generate joint effects. This will not create the orchestration or asymmetry we need.
We must instead be integrated and employed across domains, and by design … in development and in application.
This will require the development and application of new and emerging technologies of the day: challenges that will only be solved by enabling our soldiers.
It will entail both cultural and material transformation.
The design of the combined arms team capable of fighting and surviving in this new environment, relying on multi-domain ISR capabilities is both an exciting and daunting challenge.
It will extend well beyond my tenure as Chief of the Army.
And again, we need you to accomplish this profound change.
We need you to be integrating by design, examining how the Army will support, enhance and enable the other domains from the land, and vice versa.
Indeed, the entire concept of “National Defence” implies that every element of our national power and ingenuity is applied in pursuit of our collective aim and to our collective benefit.
The AUKUS agreement has ignited the national discussion about defence capability, and its deep reliance on our industry base and those of our ally and partners.
We must seize the opportunity that this has created to re-imagine defence industry collaboration with our ADF.
This has been a stimulating week. I will regard it as successful if it assists us in framing the right questions as much as providing answers.
Finally, I would like to end by expressing my gratitude.
Thank you to AMDA, for all that you do to keep this industry vibrant and connected.
Thank you to the Victorian Government, and the State of Victoria, who have overcome many barriers to make sure this event can run … and run smoothly.
A special thanks to the Victorian Police (and those who have come interstate) for their extraordinary efforts to make it all possible.
Sincere thanks to the sponsors of Land Forces, and specifically the sponsors for this dinner, without whom neither event could happen.
To the major industry sponsors: BAE Systems, CEA Technologies, and L3 Harris.
The platinum dinner sponsor, Toll.
And the dinner sponsors: Blackwoods, Built Australia, CGI, Hexagon, Indiana Economic Development Corp, and Nous.
The sponsors, and you all, are part of an industry vital to our national defence.
When I look around this room, I know that we truly are an Army for the nation. An Army in the community.
Thank you.