REGULAR infantry in the Australian army of the future will need to have skills required in the past only by commandos. The skills and independent ethos of the special forces needed to be spread more widely across the army so other units could be sent to fight the war on terror, Chief of Army Peter Leahy said. Regular and Reserve troops needed not only increased combat and field communication skills, but the training in languages and different cultures that helped special forces blend into hostile territory. Lieutenant-General Leahy told the National Press Club yesterday that Australian soldiers were as likely in the next decade to fight terrorist insurgencies, prop up failing nation states and provide disaster relief as they were to fight a conventional war. "Not only is warfare changing but the range of tasks that the army may be required to perform is also expanding rapidly," Gen Leahy said. "Putting it bluntly, the nation state has lost its near monopoly on the ability to wage war. Now a wide range of actors, from criminal gangs through issue-motivated groups to terrorists with global reach, means violence has proliferated, dispersed and become more deadly."
The army is understood to be examining establishing a second mechanised brigade, which would greatly increase Australia’s ability to send troops overseas. The Army Reserve’s role is likely to be expanded to take on a new role: providing security for the headquarters of deployed forces. Also under consideration is establishing a specialist Reserve unit of "nation builders" involving engineers, architects and aid workers to help rehabilitate communities affected by fighting or regional conflict. The moves already build on the Government’s broader effort to expand the number of special forces by 300 and develop a Reserve Ready Response Force to respond to terrorist attacks and protect infrastructure vulnerable to attack. General Leahy said that too much of the burden of recent deployments, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq, had fallen on a small portion of the land force -- namely the special forces and support combat units. "Our units will need to rapidly transition between civic aid and humanitarian tasks and war fighting," General Leahy said. "This is going to require cultural change of an unprecedented order. The sorts of (skills) that spring to mind are more diverse language and cultural skills, detailed knowledge of the rules of armed conflict and discretion in the use of force. We have already seen the development of the Ready Response Force for domestic security in the war on terror ... in the future I hope to introduce proposals for other units to assist in the reinforcement and rotation of regular units (on deployment)." |