Williams Foundation Integrated Force Design Seminar
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Designing the Integrated Force: How to Define and Meet the Challenge? By Dr. Robbin F. Laird 5/8/17 In this report, the major presentations and discussions at the Williams Foundation seminar on integrated force design held on April 11, 2017 in Canberra, Australia are highlighted along with interviews conducted before, during and after the seminar as well. Interviews with the Army, Navy, and Air Force have been woven into the evolving narrative of shaping and designing an integrated force. Designing the Integrated Force: How to Define and Meet the Challenge? Designing the Integrated Force: How to Define and Meet the Challenge? BY DR. ROBBIN F. LAIRD The Seminar Approach and Program .................................................................................................... 2 The Seminar and the Way Ahead for the Integrated Combat Force ...................................................... 4 The Need for a Strategic Approach .................................................................................................................. 5 The Perspective of VADM Ray Griggs ............................................................................................................. 6 The Perspective of the Force Design Division .................................................................................................. 8 The Perspectives of the Services on Forging an Integrated Force .................................................................... 9 How do you fight with the force you have while you pursue development of a more integrated force? ..... 12 Shaping a Way Ahead – The Perspective of Air Vice Marshal (Retired) Blackburn ....................................... 16 Reshaping the Industrial-Government Working Relationship to Enable Integrated Force Design ...... 19 Integrated Force Design: The Service Perspectives .............................................................................. 27 Focusing on the Joint Effect: Air Marshal Leo Davies and the Way Ahead for the RAAF ............................. 27 How to fight with the Fleet you have today and Prepare for the Fleet of the Future? The Perspective of Vice Admiral Tim Barrett ........................................................................................................................................ 29 The Challenge of Shaping Future Capabilities Informing the Evolving Force: The Perspective of Air Commodore Chipman .................................................................................................................................... 32 The Point of the Joint Effect: A More Lethal and Survivable Force ................................................................ 35 Australian Army Modernization: An Update from Brigadier General Mills .................................................. 38 Platforms, Capabilities and Shaping the Joint Effect .......................................................................... 43 An Update on the Australian Wedgetail and Its Evolution: A Discussion with Wing Commander Stuart Bellingham ..................................................................................................................................................... 43 Building Tanker 2.0: The Aussie Perspective ................................................................................................. 46 Group Captain Braz and the Coming of the Growler to the Australian Defence Force .................................. 49 Shaping Cultural and Generational Change in the RAAF: The Perspective of Air Commodore “Zed” Roberton ........................................................................................................................................................ 52 Air Combat Group develops improved training methodology and new approaches to re-role program for fast jet pilots .......................................................................................................................................................................... 55 Proud fast jet pilots graduate to fly F/A 18A/B Hornets ............................................................................................ 56 Transitioning to the F-35: The Aussies and the F-35 Global Enterprise ......................................................... 58 Standing Up the P-8/Triton Maritime Domain Strike Enterprise in Australia: Visiting RAAF Edinburgh ........ 63 Conclusion: Shaping a Way Ahead .................................................................................................... 68 Second Line of Defense Page 1 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: Page 2 Designing the Integrated Force: How to Define and Meet the Challenge? Second Line of Defense Page 3 Designing the Integrated Force: How to Define and Meet the Challenge? THE SEMINAR AND THE WAY AHEAD FOR THE INTEGRATED COMBAT FORCE The program featured a number of the key officials involved in building the integrated force within the Department of Defence along with industrial stakeholders as well in the redirection of DoD design efforts. The focus of the day was to have an honest set of presentations and debates about what was realistic, and what was not; what key drivers of change required more jointness, as well as the importance of domain competence as the force is reconfigured for more joint effect. It was an unusual seminar in that were more questions than answers; but what was clear was that the notion of reshaping the force for greater joint effect was a vector of change and not simply implementing a set of abstract principles. But what did emerge was a fairly clear sense of the core realities and requirements needed to move to this next step – namely designing the force for greater joint effect. The ADF is in the throes of significant modernization as new platforms are acquired and new approaches adopted. And the ADF is working to provide the extended defense of Australian territory, which by its very nature needs to see significant integration among, ground, air, maritime, space and cyber domains. The legacy approach has been to acquire platforms and then to cobble together linkages among the platforms to create a “joint force.” But this is simply after market linkages rather than thinking through how to integrate more effectively from the ground up as new platforms are acquired or legacy systems modernized. The key shift being envisaged is to move from the project approach to a program and stream approach. The project approach is centered on platforms and linear acquisition within a fixed budget as the main trajectory. A program approach considers several projects in their interconnection to get the kind of effect one would want form synergy. And the stream approach introduced in the first principles review is seen as a key element of how to more effectively bundle individual efforts into a more synergistic whole. In the first principles review, several streams or functions were identified to which platforms,