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Dr Alan Stephens 'On Target: The Firebug Flight Lieutenant Bill Newton, VC ' in Australian Aviation August 2018, p 105 Flight Lieutenant William Ellis “Bill” Newton was the only RAAF winner of the Victoria Cross in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. Born in St Kilda in 1919, Newton was educated at Melbourne Grammar School. A big man, he was a fine AFL player and also played cricket (alongside fellow RAAF wartime pilot and legendary Australian cricketer Keith Miller) for the Victorian Second XI. His schoolmasters regarded him as a future community leader. Newton resigned his job with a Melbourne silk warehouse on the outbreak of war to enlist in the RAAF, graduating as a pilot in June 1940. After employment as a flying instructor, he went on operations in New Guinea in May 1942 flying Boston light bombers with No. 22 Squadron. Throughout his fifty-two operational sorties, ninety per cent of which were flown through anti-aircraft fire, Newton consistently displayed great courage and a remarkable determination to inflict the utmost damage on the enemy. Disdaining evasive tactics even when under heavy attack, he always “went straight at his objective” to try to achieve maximum accuracy with his weapons. He carried out many daring machine gun attacks on enemy positions, flying low through intense and sustained anti-aircraft fire to ensure “devastating accuracy”. On one such occasion his aircraft’s starboard engine failed over the target but Newton completed the attack and then flew two hundred and sixty kilometres back to base. His exploits earned him the nickname of “The Firebug” - wherever he flew he left a trail of fire. While leading an attack against a target near Salamaua on 16 March 1943, Newton dived through intense shell fire. Although his aircraft was hit repeatedly, he held his course and bombed the target from low-level, destroying many buildings and supply dumps, including two 180,000 litre fuel installations. Newton’s aircraft was severely damaged, its fuselage and wings torn, engines hit, fuel tanks pierced and one tyre punctured, but he once again managed to nurse the machine home. Two days later Newton returned to the same locality for another strike. This time his target was a single building, which he attacked through a barrage of fire. At the instant Newton’s bombs scored a direct hit his aircraft burst into flames. With great skill he brought his blazing machine down in the sea. Two of the three crew members were seen by squadron colleagues to escape from the Boston and swim ashore. For his extraordinary fearlessness, courageous leadership and successful operations against the enemy under the most hazardous circumstances, Newton was awarded the VC. Tragically the award was posthumous for, although Newton had been one of the two men to survive the crash landing, he had been captured and beheaded by the Japanese eleven days later. The details of Newton’s murder were subsequently revealed in a captured Japanese diary and deeply shocked Australians when newspapers reported the atrocity. The eyewitness account of his death makes deeply emotional reading; his courage and dignity affecting even his executioners: “We assembled in front of the Headquarters at 1500 hours. One of the two crew members of the Douglas which was shot down on the 18th has been returned to Salamaua. The Commanding Officer of the Komai Tai was to decapitate him with his favourite sword. “The time has come. The prisoner-of-war totters forward with his arms tied. I feel he suspects what is afoot; but he is more composed than I thought he would be. He is put on the truck and taken to the place of execution. The noise of the engine echoes along the road in the hush of twilight. The sun has set. Dusk has descended all around. I glance up at the prisoner and he seems to be prepared. He gazes at the grass, now at the mountains, and the sea. “We arrive at the execution ground. The Komai Tai Commander faces the prisoner and says ‘You are to die. I am going to kill you with this Japanese sword, according to the Samurai Code’. The Tai Commander says he will allow the [pilot] two or three minutes to prepare himself for death. The prisoner-of-war remains unshaken to the last. “The Commander draws his sword, the famous Osamune. The sight of the glittering blade sends cold shivers down the spine. First he touches the prisoner’s neck lightly … Then he raises the sword overhead. His arm muscles bulge. The prisoner closes his eyes for a second, and at once the sword sweeps down. “The body falls forward. ‘Sh … Sh …’ The dark blood gushes from the trunk. All is over. There lies the head like a white doll. There is not a drop of blood left in the man’s body. “The wind blows mournfully and the scene prints itself on my mind. We set off back. Darkness descends. “[Written] at Salamaua observation post, 30 March 1943, 0110 hours, to the sound of midnight waves.” Download pdf

Dr Alan Stephens 'On Target: Devotion to duty - Pilot Officer Rawdon Middleton, VC' in Australian Aviation July 2018 p. 108 The 11,500 men of the RAAF who fought as part of the RAF’s Bomber Command in World War II comprised only 2 per cent of all Australians who enlisted, but accounted for 20 per cent of all combat deaths. It seems extraordinary that only one of those airmen, Pilot Officer Rawdon Hume Middleton, was awarded a VC. Modest and reserved, Middleton worked as a jackeroo before enlisting in the RAAF in October 1940. Following training in Australia and Canada, he was posted to fly Stirling bombers with the RAF’s No. 149 Squadron. On 29 November 1942, Middleton - known to his crew as ‘Ron’ - was tasked to attack the Fiat works at Turin in Italy. The quiet Australian was so highly regarded that three gunners had stayed on with him even though they had completed their tours. By the time Middleton’s Stirling ‘H’ for Harry had climbed to 3660 metres to cross the Alps, it was using an excessive amount of fuel. Weaving through the mountains and unsure of his position, Middleton was on the verge of abandoning the mission when the front gunner called out, ‘[Turin’s] there, look to starboard’. Far to the right the crew could see the city, illuminated by flares and bomb bursts. Aware that pressing on might leave insufficient fuel to get back to England, Middleton nevertheless told his crew, ‘We’re going down’. Flying through heavy flak, Middleton had just identified the target when a shell burst in the cockpit, wounding both pilots. The bomber plunged into a dive, its wings and fuselage continually hit by shrapnel. As the co-pilot pulled the aircraft out of the dive only metres from the ground, Middleton recovered consciousness. He resumed control, pressed on with the bombing run, and successfully attacked the target. Despite dreadful injuries - his right eye had been shot away leaving the bone completely exposed, and his lower body was severely wounded - Middleton remained at the controls while the co-pilot’s wounds were dressed. Middleton considered diverting to North Africa to avoid the return climb over the Alps, but he was determined to get his men back to England and instructed them to jettison everything they could: armour plating, camera, oxygen bottles, ammunition, flares, seats, fire extinguishers, sextant. The navigator used an axe to chop off anything which was not essential and could be thrown overboard. The smashed windscreen exposed both seriously wounded pilots to an icy blast. Standing between them, the front gunner kept a lookout and set the compass. Other crew members checked the dinghies, uncertain whether they would even reach the Channel. Middleton asked the crew not to talk to him unless it was essential, as it was desperately painful for him to reply. Once the plain of France had been reached the crew could have bailed out but Middleton was determined to keep his men out of German hands. ‘H’ for Harry battled on towards England. Still there was no respite: over northern France the Stirling was suddenly coned by twelve searchlights and light flak hit the wings. Although severely weakened by his injuries Middleton threw the aircraft into violent evasive manoeuvres. At last the French coast came into view; simultaneously, the engineer told Middleton he could guarantee five minutes of fuel but not ten. In a voice thick with pain and exhaustion, Middleton instructed his crew to prepare to bail out and asked for his own parachute to be passed to him: in retrospect, his wireless operator believed that that was ‘no more than a gesture to reassure us’ as Middleton must have known that he was ‘too far gone’ to get out himself. Against the odds the Stirling made it over the Channel. As the aircraft crossed the coast of England five of the crew bailed out while two stayed behind to help their grievously wounded captain. Middleton turned the Stirling back over the Channel in an attempt to ditch. The aircraft crashed into the sea, killing all three men. The bodies of the nose-gunner and flight engineer were recovered the following day but Middleton had been incapable of escaping and his remains were not found. Two months later his body was washed ashore near Dover. As the wireless operator later recounted, ‘No-one will ever know what was going on in Middleton’s mind in those last few moments ... During the return home there were many opportunities for us to abandon the aircraft and for Middleton to live. But he preferred that we, his crew, should not fall into enemy hands. That was the kind of man he was’. Middleton was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. The citation concluded with an inspiring valedictory: ‘His devotion to duty in the face of overwhelming odds is unsurpassed in the annals of the Royal Air Force’. Download pdf

Dr Alan Stephens 'On Target: The Greatest Lost Battle on the German Side: The RAAF in Bomber Command' in Australian Aviation June 2018 p. 109 Street names at the Australian Defence Force Academy honour notable wartime actions. While every one of those actions was a matter of life or death for the men involved, when measured against the broader sweep of history some scarcely merit the description “battle”. It might seem curious, therefore, that three of the greatest battles in which Australians have fought are not acknowledged. Those three battles all took place in the skies over Germany during World War II and were fought by the men of the RAF’s Bomber Command, some 11,500 of whom were members of the RAAF. The first was the Battle of the Ruhr from March to July 1943, the second the Battle of Hamburg from 24 July to 3 August 1943, and the third the Battle of Berlin from November 1943 to March 1944. Statistics can never tell a story by themselves, but the figures from those three epic clashes reveal a fearful truth. No Bomber Command aircrew who fought in them could expect to survive. An operational tour on heavy bombers consisted of thirty missions. Crews were then rested for about six months, usually instructing at a training unit. (That ‘rest’ was, however, in name only, as more than 8000 men were killed in flying accidents at bomber conversion units.) They might then volunteer for, or be assigned to, a second operational tour of twenty missions. Over the course of the war the odds of surviving a first tour were exactly one-in-two – the classic toss of a coin. When the second tour was added the odds slipped further, to one-in-three. And during the battles of the Ruhr, Hamburg, and Berlin the figures became even more terrible, with the loss rates for each mission flown averaging 4.7 per cent, 2.8 per cent and 5.2 per cent respectively, making it statistically impossible to live through thirty missions. No other sustained campaign in which Australians have ever been involved can compare with the air war over Germany in terms of individual danger. The men of the RAAF who fought for Bomber Command amounted to less than 2 per cent of all Australians who enlisted in World War II, yet the 3486 who died accounted for almost 20 per cent of all deaths in combat. The RAAF’s most distinguished heavy bomber unit, No. 460 Squadron, alone lost 1018 aircrew, meaning that, in effect, the entire squadron was wiped out five times. It was far more dangerous to fight in Bomber Command than in the infantry. The argument is often made that the bombing of Germany was of limited military utility, and that it stiffened rather than undermined German morale. That argument is stronger in polemic than logic. According to the Nazis’ minister of war production, Albert Speer, following the Hamburg raids he “reported for the first time to the Fuehrer that if these serial attacks continued a rapid end of the war might be the consequence”. And the official United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded in September 1945 that air power had been “decisive in the war in Western Europe ... It brought the [German] economy ... to virtual collapse”. As a direct result of allied bombing, during 1944, the Nazis’ production schedules for tanks, aircraft and trucks were reduced by 35 per cent, 31 per cent and 42 per cent respectively. Additionally, an enormous amount of resources which might have been used to equip front-line troops had to be diverted to air defence. By 1944, the anti-aircraft system was absorbing 20 per cent of all ammunition produced and between half to two-thirds of all radar and signals equipment. More than one million German troops were engaged in the air defence of the Reich, using about 74 per cent of all heavy weapons and 55 per cent of all automatic weapons. Physical destruction and the massive diversion of resources was accompanied by psychological demoralisation. Contrary to conventional wisdom that the bombing boosted morale, the sustained campaign had a crushing effect on people’s mental state. Post-war surveys found that workers became tired, highly-strung and listless. Absenteeism because of bombing reached 25 per cent in some factories in the Ruhr for the whole of 1944, a rate which drastically reduced output and undermined production schedules. When asked to identify the single most difficult thing they had to cope with during the war, 91 per cent of German civilians nominated bombing. The men of the RAAF who flew with Bomber Command made the major contribution of any Australians to the defeat of Germany and, therefore, to victory in World War II. They alone opened a second front in Germany, four years before D-Day; and they alone inflicted decisive damage on the German war economy. As Albert Speer later lamented, Bomber Command’s victory represented “the greatest lost battle on the German side”. Download pdf

Dr Alan Stephens 'On Target: Eighty to nil: Israel and the first networked air war' in Australian Aviation May 2018 p. 111 “Network-centric” warfare has become something of a cliché in advanced defence forces, especially for today’s “fifth-generation” era of capabilities. Put simply, the term implies knowledge dominance, real-time command and control, and the immediate provision of tactical information to the fighter who needs it now. The prototype was revealed by the Israeli Air Force overhead Syria’s Bekaa Valley during the First Lebanon War in 1982. The war started on 5/6 June when the Israel Defence Force invaded southern Lebanon. While the ground war was to end badly for all concerned, including the Israelis, the air war in the Bekaa Valley, site of the Damascus to Beirut highway, was a triumph for the Israeli Air Force. Network-centric operations were the key. As the aphorism has it, time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted. The IAF had been caught off-guard by its Egyptian and Syrian enemies in the October 1973 War, but this time it had done its homework. In addition to collecting information from fixed-wing reconnaissance flights and US satellite imagery, the IAF made skilful use of its new remotely piloted vehicles (RPV). In the months preceding the war, RPV flights into the Bekaa Valley were used to trigger Syrian air-defense radars, enabling the Israelis to plot the position of surface-to-air missile batteries and compile a library of electronic data from which countermeasures (such as jamming) could be constructed. Meticulous planning characterised every aspect of the IAF’s campaign. A pleasing feature for military strategists was the extensive use of deception. At around 2:00 pm on 9 June, Syrian radar operators detected large formations of enemy aircraft at various locations around Lebanon. Immediately, however, a blanket of electronic-countermeasures was thrown over Syria’s command and control network. More confusion was created by Israeli decoy RPVs, which panicked Syrian air defence operators into making wasted SAM launches. The opening strikes against Syria’s SAMs were made by some twenty-four F-4 Phantoms, launching television-guided high-explosive bombs from a range of thirty kilometres. With the Syrian system in disarray, the main IAF strike force of about forty aircraft arrived and attacked SAMs, AAA, radars, and headquarters buildings. Orbiting at a safe distance from the battlespace, E-2 Hawkeye AEW aircraft coordinated the many components of the IAF’s integrated force; while EW B-707s jammed command and control services. As soon as the attack had finished, the IAF flew battle-damage assessment missions to determine the results and, if necessary, redefine reference points for the next phase. The Syrians’ reaction was fascinating. Prior to the IAF strike, Syrian Arab Air Force fighters had been flying combat air patrols in the area. A customary response would have been to direct those pilots to engage the Israelis. Instead, they were ordered to withdraw, apparently with the intention of creating a free-fire zone in which Syria’s SAMs and AAA would be able to shoot at anything they saw without having to identify it. This decision indicated that the Syrian commanders either doubted their fighter pilots, or were confident in their ground-based air defences. If it were the latter then their confidence was misplaced. Within two hours, all SAM batteries had been either destroyed or badly damaged, and Syria’s strategy had been shattered. The question now was whether SyAAF fighters would be called-up to try to regain control of the air over the Bekaa Valley. Several factors indicated that they were likely to struggle. Israel’s fighter pilots were the equal of any in the world and were flying leading-edge F-15s and F-16s and very good Kfirs, armed with advanced air-to-air missiles. They were operating as one component of a networked system featuring centralised command and control, real-time battlespace management, ECM superiority, and information dominance. By contrast, the Syrians’ standards were modest, their MiG-21s and -23s were obsolescent, and they were effectively fighting blind because of the destruction of their early-warning radars and communications, and the inadequacies of their network. The air war was personally managed by the IAF’s chief, General David Ivri, from his command post in Tel Aviv, some 300 kilometres away. Although the IAF had about ninety aircraft committed to the fight, Ivri preferred to vector separate waves of four-ship formations into the combat zone, where engagements with courageous but confused Syrian pilots would generally last only a minute or two. While the battlespace may have been small, General Ivri and his staff managed an extremely complex situation with a degree of real-time control never before achieved in air warfare. Ivri later provided a neat musical analogy: rather than “playing” a set of individual instruments that more or less supported each other, he was “conducting” the full orchestra. By the end of the first day almost thirty SyAAF fighters had been shot-down for no IAF losses; by the time a cease-fire was called six days later, the ratio had increased to eighty to nil. The IAF had, among other things, shown air forces everywhere the power of networked warfare. Download pdf

The Requirements of High Intensity Warfare 22 March 2018 Final Report Dr Robbin Laird, Second Line of Defense, Final Report: The Strategic Shift from Counter-Insurgency and Stability Operations: High Tempo Ops, High Intensity Operations and Deterrence Since 2014, the Williams Foundation has held a series of seminars, which have looked at the nature of military transformation enabled by new platforms, new technologies and new approaches. Now, the Foundation is focusing on the new strategic context within which this force will operate and the kinds of further changes necessary for Australia and allied forces in facing the challenges posed by peer competitors. On March 22, 2018, the Williams Foundation hosted a seminar which began the process of examining these key questions. This report is based on that seminar. This enhanced version of the report includes the interviews conducted prior to, during and after the seminar. We have published on defense.info, a version with just the seminar report itself. A report overview can be viewed at Defense.info Download pdf

Dr Alan Stephens 'On Target: Powerful friends: Surviving high-intensity warfare' in Australian Aviation April 2018 p. 114 It was the 19th century British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, who famously remarked that in international relations there are “no eternal allies … only interests”. Palmerston’s hard-headed world view has particular relevance for small- and medium-nations that find themselves drawn into high-intensity warfare. The October 1973 war in the Middle East and the 1982 war in the Falklands illustrate the point. The 1973 war began on 6 October when Egypt and Syria launched a sudden attack against Israel. Over-confident Israeli commanders were shocked when their previously dominant air force found itself unprepared for the quality and tactical disposition of the Arabs’ ground-based air defence system. The IAF started the war with about 290 frontline F-4 and A-4 strike/fighters and within days some fifty had been shot-down. It was an unsustainable loss rate. A week later, as the war in the air began to turn and the Israelis started to assert their expected dominance, it was the Arabs’ turn to experience unsustainable losses. Now, both protagonists faced the same urgent problem: neither had the reserves nor the local capacity to rapidly reinforce their fighting units. There is a limit to how much a nation can spend on otherwise non-productive war industries and stockpiles. Governments have to make fine judgments regarding how many weapons – which represent stranded assets until they are used – they can afford to have parked on ramps or stored in warehouses against the possibility of a contingency that might never arise. That economic imperative is especially pronounced in the war in the air, in which platforms and weapons are exceedingly expensive. And in high-intensity fighting, extreme unit costs are accompanied by extreme loss and usage rates. Thus, during the nineteen days of the October War, the Israelis lost 102 strike/fighters and the Arabs 433, and the Arabs fired 9000 surface-to-air missiles. Those numbers alone amounted to thirty aircraft and $560 million per day. What that meant was that neither the Israelis nor the Arabs was capable of fighting a high-intensity air war for more than about a week without direct assistance from their American and Soviet sponsors. And that’s precisely what happened. On 9 October, the Soviets started a massive airlift to resupply the Egyptians and Syrians with missiles, ammunition, SAM components, radars, and much more; shortly afterwards, the US did the same for Israel. The US also made good the IAF’s aircraft losses by flying-in about 100 F-4s, A-4s and C-130s, some of which arrived still carrying USAF markings. Without that resupply, Israel and the Arab states could not have sustained such a high-intensity conflict. This point bears emphasis. Israel was far superior militarily to the Arab states, and its excellent indigenous industry enabled it to develop important capabilities (such as electronic warfare counter-measures) during the conflict. Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to suggest that, had Egypt and Syria been resupplied and Israel had not, the war would have ended differently. Sustainment in the form of aid from an external source was again crucial during the 1982 Falklands War between the United Kingdom and Argentina. The UK’s armed forces are among the world’s very best, and the nation is one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful. Argentina in 1982 was a dysfunctional, second-world nation led by an incompetent cabal of military dictators. Yet, according to both the key foreign affairs advisor to prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Lord Charles Powell, and the assistant US defense secretary, Richard Perle, “Britain probably would have lost the war without American assistance”. That assistance extended to providing vital intelligence, and to “stripping part of the frontline US air forces” of the latest version of the Sidewinder air-to-air missile. Argentina, by contrast, found itself the dismayed subject of Lord Palmerston’s unsentimental definition of alliances, when it was abandoned by two nations which, until the day the shooting started, it had believed were its friends. The first, the US, cut-off intelligence and diplomatic assistance; and the second, France, which had sold the Argentine Navy Super-Etendard strike fighters and Exocet missiles, withdrew the technical support needed to make that capability fully effective. In the event, the Argentines managed to fire five Exocets, sinking two ships from the British war convoy as it approached the Falklands, and severely damaging a third. It is feasible that, with better targeting information and only a half-dozen more operational missiles, the Argentines might have inflicted sufficient damage on the convoy to have compelled it to turn back before it got within 100 kilometres of the Falklands. Should Australia become involved in a high-intensity conflict in the next ten years, we can confidently expect that our air power would be well-trained and well-equipped. Those attributes would be insufficient in themselves, however, if they were not under-written by a strong and reliable alliance. Download pdf

Dr Alan Stephens 'On Target: Disrupting air supremacy: Emerging technologies threaten the West’s command of the air' in Australian Aviation, March 2018 p. 109 Air supremacy has been the essential start-point of every Western-led military campaign from the end of World War II up to today. The West’s politicians and generals have been safe in assuming that their armies and navies would be able to operate free from enemy air attack, and that their own air forces would exploit the skies to apply overwhelming force, gather information, rapidly resupply, and so on. The West’s model of air supremacy has been founded on the classic “dog-fighting” approach to aerial combat, in which superior pilots equipped with superior platforms, information, weapons, and command and control systems, have dominated their enemies. It seems possible, however, that a combination of emerging strike technologies and the spread of advanced ground-based air defence systems could disrupt that model. Emerging strike technologies include long-range threats, typified by North Korea’s nuclear-armed intercontinental missiles (whose speed of development has caught US analysts off-guard); while short-range threats are typified by swarms of hundreds of drones, whose inherent characteristics - cheap, minimal infrastructure, “pop-up” from anywhere, sheer numbers, variety of weapons, etc - will pose novel challenges to a model based on pilots who cost $10 million each to train and who fly strike/fighters that cost $100 million each to build. Turning to the spread of advanced GBAD, Russia reportedly is prepared to export its S-400 “Triumf” surface-to-air missile system, with Turkey and Saudi Arabia as potential customers; while Israel may sell its anti-rocket Iron Dome system to the Saudis. Tactical innovation will be critical in countering these disruptive threats. Although Western fighter pilots have shot-down a handful of unmanned aerial vehicles in the Middle East, it is early days in the fight against drones, and a great deal more thinking on the subject is required. GBAD systems, by contrast, have been around for over a century, ranging from the anti-aircraft batteries of World War I to the S-400 in Syria today. Some of the more interesting tactical thinking within this domain occurred during the October 1973 war between Egypt and Syria, and Israel. Arab air power had been utterly crushed by the Israeli Air force during the 1967 Six-Day War. Egyptian and Syrian planners consequently decided that in any future conflict they would try to fight the IAF on their terms, rather than the Israelis’. Specifically, this meant avoiding air-to-air engagements and instead relying on GBAD. In the interval between 1967 and 1973, the Egyptians constructed a radar-, missile- and gun-based defensive system along the Suez Canal-Cairo axis, while the Syrians did the same in the Golan Heights. Constructed with Soviet help and incorporating advanced SA-6 and -7 missiles and rapid-firing ZSU-23-4 AAA, those defensive barriers were as intense as any in the world. The war began on 6 October when Egypt and Syria launched a sudden attack against Israel, catching their over-confident enemy off-guard. Israeli commanders were shocked when their previously dominant Air Force found itself unprepared for the quality and tactical disposition of the Arabs’ GBAD. The IAF started the war with 290 frontline F-4 and A-4 strike/fighters; within days, some fifty had been shot-down. It was an unsustainable loss rate. Unable to breach the GBAD, the IAF was in serious trouble. Unexpectedly, the breakthrough in the critical battle to control the air overhead the Suez Canal came not from fighter pilots, but from tank crews and infantry. Prior to the war, Egypt’s generals had (sensibly) concluded that their ground forces should not move beyond the protective umbrella of their GBAD. However, excited by early success, they decided to extend their army’s advance. It was the worst tactical decision of the war. Lacking control of the air, the Egyptian Army was exposed to the classic Israeli combination of fast-moving armour, infantry, and attack aircraft, and rapidly lost the initiative. On 15 October, by-now charging Israeli armoured formations and paratroopers crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt, where they destroyed scores of SAM and AAA sites, thus opening-up a gap in the GBAD system through which the IAF could operate safely. In other words, the Israeli Army had established control of the air. The notion that land forces can win control of the air should not be surprising. In World War II, Allied armies did precisely that as they rolled-up scores of Luftwaffe air bases and air defence systems during their march from France and the USSR into Germany; while during the American war in Vietnam, Viet Cong soldiers (who never even had an air force) regularly asserted local control of the air for specific periods using heavy machine guns and medium AAA. The point to take away here is less about October 1973, and more about alternative thinking in the face of disruptive threats. Download pdf

On 21 March the Williams Foundation was proud to welcome Dr Robbin Laird as a Williams Foundation Fellow. The Board thanks Dr Laird for his continued contribution to the core goal of the Williams Foundation; to promote the development and effective implementation of national security and defense policies as they impact on Australia’s ability to generate air power appropriate to its unique geopolitical environment and values. The Board and members of the Foundation greatly value the support Dr Laird has provided in the past and looks forward to continuing your involvement in future Williams Foundation programs. For bios of our Research Fellows, AVM John Blackburn AO (Retd), Dr Alan Stephens and Dr Robbin Laird visit our webpage. Also see link Second Line of Defence

Welcome to 2018! As forecast in our 2017 wrap-up post, The Central Blue is collaborating with From Balloons to Drones on a series of posts on high intensity warfare, ahead of a Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar on ‘The Requirements of High Intensity Warfare’ on 22 March 2018. Keen to get involved? Read on… Since the end of the Cold War, the West’s militaries have been engaged in a series of protracted and persistent low-intensity counterinsurgency campaigns. For air forces, this has broadly meant involvement in campaigns where there have been few serious challenges to control of the air and air dominance was assumed. However, as we move further into the twenty-first century, that scenario is likely to change with the likelihood of peer-on-peer high-intensity conflict increasing. In such conflicts, air dominance will have to be fought for, and maintained, to utilise the full spectrum of capabilities afforded by the exploitation of the air domain. As such, The Central Blue and From Balloons to Drones seeks to commission a series of articles that examine critical themes related to the challenge of preparing modern air forces for the possibility of high-intensity conflict as they transform into fifth-generation forces. As well as informing broader discussions on the future of conflict, these articles will provide the intellectual underpinnings for a Williams Foundation seminar on the subject of the requirements of high-intensity conflict to be held in Canberra, Australia in March 2018. The editors seek contributions that provide a variety of perspectives on the following key themes: Strategy and Theory | Future Roles | Emerging Threats Air Force Culture | Force Structure | Technology and Capabilities Ethical and Moral Challenges | Doctrinal Trends | Education | Training Articles can range from historical discussions of the above themes through to contemporary perspectives. Perspectives can also come from a number of related disciplines including history, strategic studies, international relations, law, and ethics. Articles framed around one of the above themes should be 1000-2000 words. Submissions should be submitted in Word format and emailed to the addresses below with ‘SUBMISSION – HIGH-INTENSITY WARFARE’ in the subject line. Also, please include a 50-100-word biography with your submission. Please be careful to explain any jargon. Publication will be entirely at the discretion of the editors. These articles will be published from mid-February and will appear on the websites of The Central Blue and From Balloons to Drones simultaneously. For more information, please contact Wing Commander Travis Hallen (Co-editor, The Central Blue – centralblue@williamsfoundation.org.au) or Dr Ross Mahoney (Editor, From Balloons to Drones – airpowerstudies@gmail.com). #futureconcepts #futurewarfare #AirPower #technology #highintensity #AirForce

Brian Weston 'On Target 'Function over Geography: The End of Area Commands: Combat Power through Organisation – Part 2' in Australian Aviation November 2017 p.2 The October On Target column in Australian Aviation discussed the importance of organisation as a discriminating factor between the combat power of air forces and outlined the evolution of RAAF organisational policy up until the end of World War II. The column noted the introduction of the operational air group structure by the RAAF, in the South-West Pacific theatre, as a seminal step in the evolution of Australian air power. Following the conclusion of World War II, it was therefore not surprising the RAAF included the notion of an operational air group in its post-war plan; comprising a force of 16 squadrons organised into five “home defence” area commands and a “mobile air task force” comprising fighter, bomber and transport wings, a reconnaissance squadron, an operational wing headquarters and organic maintenance support. But with government prioritising a massive post-war demobilization which saw the RAAF downsize from 191,337 personnel in August 1945, to 7,897 personnel at the end of 1948, the RAAF had neither the resources nor personnel to implement its plans. The RAAF mobile air task force remained unfunded and the organisational concept of five area commands became the basis of post-war air force organisation. In 1952, the RAAF signalled a small departure from its RAF heritage by designating its “stations” as “bases”, stations being an RAF term. But subsequently, and perhaps with a touch of irony, it was an RAF officer who went on to implement fundamental change in RAAF post-war organisation. Air Marshal Sir Donald Hardman, an RAF officer of high regard, was appointed Chief of Air Staff of the RAAF following the 12 year tenure of Sir George Jones, and it was Hardman who set about organising the RAAF on a functional basis, rather than on a geographic basis; the change taking place on 1 October 1953. The changes, which coincided with the abolition of Air Force Headquarters and the establishment of the Department of Air ‒ a Department of State of the Commonwealth ‒ saw the five area commands folded into a Home Command under one commander. Two further functional commands were established: Training Command and Maintenance Command which were soon merged into a single command: Support Command. Later, Home Command was retitled Operational Command. But the organisational concept of the World War II operational air group had been lost as, at base level, the principle of functional command had not been adopted. On Operational Command bases the mobile wings and squadrons of the RAAF reported to the officers commanding of their respective bases. The RAAF attempted to remove any notion of a geographic restriction on commanders by titling the base officer commanding as a “Formation Officer Commanding”, such as “OC RAAF Williamtown” rather than as a “Base Officer Commanding”, such as “OC RAAF Base Williamtown”. But with fighter squadrons at Butterworth and Williamtown, and maritime squadrons at Townsville and Richmond, all reporting through their respective “formation officers commanding”, it was clear there was no single commander oversighting either the RAAF fighter force or the RAAF maritime force. A further command discontinuity occurred when a flying squadron deployed and the command chain varied from the officer commanding of the squadron’s home base to the officer commanding the squadron’s deployment base ‒ “chopped”, in the jargon of the day. For example, if No 1 Squadron deployed from Amberley to Darwin, CO 1SQN would report to AOC Operational Command through OC RAAF Darwin, not OC RAAF Amberley. This could result in CO 1SQN reporting through a commander who may not have flown a jet aircraft, let alone an F-111C. In an attempt to simplify command chains and save resources, the RAAF also disestablished its operational wings with commanding officers of flying squadrons reporting directly to a “formation OC”. But the group captain, who was previously an “OC Wing”, remained on the RAAF bases and morphed into the Air Staff Officer (ASO). But, now as a staff officer, although the ASO reported to the “formation OC”, the ASO had no command authority over the units the “Formation OC” commanded (staff officers are not commanders). The RAAF now had a “staff versus command” issue as ASOs, officers generally of group captain rank, were effectively interposed between the “formation OC” and the various “squadron COs”. ASOs and squadron COs worked through this “staff versus command” issue in various ways but it was often messy; especially as “formation OCs” often delegated differing degrees of authority to their respective ASOs. Clarity of command, and command accountability issues, at RAAF bases were not uncommon. The introduction of functional chains of command by Sir Donald Hardman was a seminal change in RAAF organisation although, the principle of functional command did not flow down to RAAF bases and their operational units thereon, until the concept of the “Force Element Group” was introduced. Next month, On Target will discuss the evolution of RAAF Bases into RAAF Force Element groups, introduced on a trial basis, on 1 February 1987. Air-Vice Marshal Brian Weston (Retd) was CO No 75 Squadron in 1980, CO Base Squadron Richmond in 1986, OC Base Support Wing Richmond in 1987, and CDR Tactical Fighter Group from July 1990 to July 1993. Brian is a Board Member of the Williams Foundation and this On Target article appears in Australian Aviation magazine. Download pdf

Brian Weston 'On Target 'Structuring Air Power: Combat Power through Organisation – Part 1' in Australian Aviation' October 2017 p.2 Recent On Target columns in Australian Aviation have focused on the aeroplane and its evolution from airborne platforms to airborne weapons systems, an evolution which has seen lessening incremental gains in platform performance but huge leaps in weapons system capabilities. Unsurprisingly, these advances in the combat capability of airborne platforms have become the focus of much interest, and often debate. But there is much more to air combat power than just airborne platforms and systems, with even the seemingly mundane subject of organisation becoming a discriminating combat factor between air forces. As one of the world’s oldest air forces, the RAAF has some interesting history in how it has organised its elements of air power. Initially, as a very small air force developing within the sphere of influence of the British Empire, the RAAF simply took what was RAF organisational policy and adopted it as RAAF policy. It was a practical option, especially in its first 20 years when the fledgling air force was under-resourced and struggling for institutional survival. It also allowed Sir Richard Williams, the founding father of the RAAF, to allocate the scarce resources he could secure from government, to the building of several stations – as the RAF called its bases – upon which Australia’s small air force could consolidate and develop. What a shrewd move that was, for when World War II came the RAAF was able to use its combination of “area commands” and “stations” as the foundation upon which it could execute its prodigious expansion; not so much as a combat air force but as a training air force, a role determined by government which fed Australian airmen into RAF combat organisations in Britain and North Africa. When the Japanese entered World War II, with ferocity and success, the RAAF had to evolve its organisational model into something more appropriate for combat operations in the vast theatre of the South-West Pacific. But the speed of events in the Pacific war quickly overtook the capacity of the RAAF to respond and, given Australia’s dire military situation, the Curtin government soon handed over the command of all Australian combat operations in the South-West Pacific to General Douglas MacArthur, with RAAF combat units falling under the operational command of General George Kenney, US Army Air Forces (USAAF). RAAF combat units were grouped into a command called RAAF Command, commanded by Air Vice-Marshal William Bostock who reported to General Kenney, Commander, 5th Air Force USAAF. But Kenney had underlying concerns about the organisation of units within RAAF Command, especially their leadership, mobility, coordination, flexibility and effectiveness. Largely in response to Kenney’s concerns, the RAAF established No 9 Operational Group on 15 June 1943. The group, then located on Goodenough Island, was re-organized on a functional basis comprising two operational wings, one works wing, and one radio location (radar) wing. Air Commodore Joe Hewitt was appointed commander of No 9 Operational Group with a charter to better coordinate and concentrate the assets of the group to meet the demands of the theatre. It was noteworthy the change substantially reflected USAAF practice. A second operational group, No 10 Operational Group, under the command of Air Commodore Scherger, was soon formed. In November 1943, No 10 Operational Group evolved into the RAAF First Tactical Air Force; an operational entity still smaller than a USAAF “numbered air force”, but nevertheless a large, powerful and mobile fighting air force. These seemingly minor World War II organisational changes were significant changes in RAAF organisational policy for three reasons. First, the South-West Pacific theatre provided the main opportunities for senior RAAF officers to command large operational entities as, in the European and North African theatres where RAAF personnel were dispersed among RAF operational entities, few senior RAAF officers were granted command at levels higher than that of a squadron commanding officer – a tactical level command. Second, the South‒West Pacific theatre exposed senior RAAF officers to the functional operational command model employed by the USAAF. Third, the performance of RAAF commanders in the South-West Pacific generally demonstrated the RAAF had, within its ranks, officers with the ability to command large aggregate groupings of operational units. Given General MacArthur generally chose not to use Australian operational units in his advance to the Philippines, the RAAF did not have too many more opportunities to gain further experience at the operational level of war. Hence, the decision to structure RAAF tactical units into operational groups in the South-West Pacific, was a significant milestone in RAAF organisational policy in that it added to the depth of experience the RAAF was gaining as it matured into a more credible and more powerful air force. The question was; how would the air force translate this operational experience into the post-World War II air force? Air-Vice Marshal Brian Weston (Retd) was CO No 75 Squadron in 1980, CO Base Squadron Richmond in 1986, OC Base Support Wing Richmond in 1987, and CDR Tactical Fighter Group from July 1990 to July 1993. Brian is a Board Member of the Williams Foundation and this On Target article appears in Australian Aviation magazine. Download pdf

Dr Robbin Laird, Second Line of Defense The Future of Electronic Warfare 23 August 2017 Final Report Dr Robbin Laird, Second Line of Defense The Future of Electonic Warfare Final Report: A New Approach and Attitude to Electronic Warfare in Australia, 15 September 2017 In this report, the major presentations at the Williams Foundation seminar on the evolution of electronic warfare, notably from the standpoint of shaping an integrated force, are outlined and discussed. The seminar was held on August 23, 2017 in Canberra, Australia. Additional materials provided during interviews prior to or during the seminar are included as well as relevant background and analytical materials building out key themes introduced and discussed in the seminar. Download Pdf 08/26/2017 Robbin Laird The Williams Foundation Seminar on Electronic Warfare