Post-crisis force: A harder, faster and sharper Australian Army

In the 1999 science fiction masterpiece The Matrix, protagonist Neo asks his new mentor Morpheus, “Why do my eyes hurt?” to which Laurence Fishburne’s character calmly responds, “You’ve never used them before”.

For the Australian government of the day, this film interaction becomes the new lived reality in the aftermath of either of the two scenarios here, which means our world, and that of the post-Second World War economic, political and strategic order the nation has flourished under, has been effectively slain.

Albeit in a less dramatic but equally transformative manner comparable to the Fall of Singapore in 1942, Australia’s “great and powerful friend” in the United States has been dealt a devastating, but not irrecoverable blow, hindering its ability to maintain global security.

America’s bloody nose and black eye, in terms of military capability, being taken out of action either for repair, maintenance or scrapping as a result of battle damage or through attrition losses has had a dramatic impact on the global balance of power, emboldening other revisionist and rival powers around the world, taking the globe back to an era of hotly contested multipolarity.

The Australian economy has been ravaged as our primary trading partner becomes a clear strategic adversary that poses a direct and measurable threat to the nation having brought the kinetic, cognitive and economic war home to everyday Australians and our interests in the Indo-Pacific.

Meanwhile, the global economy is still reeling from an unprecedented wave of cyber attacks on the New York Stock exchange, US economic interests globally and the unforeseen impact of global maritime insurers rescinding insurance for commercial shipping in high-risk areas now spreading to parts of the Red Sea and Horn of Africa, bringing sea-borne trade to a snail’s pace.

This combination of events has been a long time coming, with successive Australian governments, going as far back as 2009, warning that the Indo-Pacific was becoming an increasingly more dangerous place and that the assumptions that had formed the basis of our national strategic and defence policy planning could no longer be trusted to inform future responses.

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We were treated with terms like “Strategic Warning Time”, “Pacific Step Up”, “Strategy of Denial” and “Impactful Projection”, yet most of the “mass” and game-changing platforms, while on their way, have not arrived in time to fight this opening salvo, raising the collective anxiety levels of the Australian public and shattering their view of a largely benevolent world.

Now for many Australians, their eyes are beginning to hurt.

In response, a growing chorus of the Australian people demand answers and action from the government of the day, not only to reinforce and recapitalise our nation’s defence capabilities but to also restore confidence in and rebuild the national economy following the devastation wrought during Beijing’s somewhat successful attempts to economically undermine and coerce the nation.

So, we will begin by discussing the post-crisis force challenges and options for the Australian Army.

Mass, wonder weapons and a lean, mean, fighting machine

One of the key takeaways from the scenarios is that Australia’s shift away from a “balanced force” towards an “integrated, focused force”, as championed by the Albanese government’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review and the supporting 2024 National Defence Strategy and supporting Integrated Investment Program, failed to account for the nation’s need for both mass and balance in its force structure.

That isn’t to say that we shift away from the spirit of the term “integrated, focused force”, rather, we need to balance the force, the structure and capabilities for our post-crisis force as a whole, with Army to see significant restructuring to better meet these missions.

Rather, Australia has sought to emphasise and invest in the promise of “Wunderwaffe” or wonder weapons like HIMARS and the proliferation of small, simple and often commercially available uncrewed systems, like the recently announced Switchblade loitering munitions acquisition to account for Australia’s lack of “mass” and provide us with a tactical and at a push, strategic advantage.

In doing so, this has meant Australia is failing to learn the costly lessons of Ukraine, or as former British Chief of the General Staff (CGS), General Sir Patrick Sanders stated in mid-2023, “Ukraine has reminded us that success can only be achieved with a secure land industrial base together with the stockpiles to sustain the fight. That mass is still indispensable. That we need to plan to reinforce and regenerate the force, for to only focus on the first echelon – i.e. those troops that we will put into battle at the start of a war – is to prepare for failure.”

Going further, the saveur du jour or flavour of the day emphasis on small and numerous armed uncrewed systems fails to account for the development of countermeasures and the rapid proliferation of technologies to mitigate their capability to affect tactical and strategic outcomes, something French Army Chief of Staff, General Pierre Schill explained in detail at the 2024 Eurosatory Defense Expo in Paris, who issued a warning, “The life of impunity of small, very simple drones over the battlefield is a snapshot in time ... Right now it’s being exploited, that’s clear, and we have to protect ourselves. Today, the sword, in the sense of the aerial drone, is powerful, more powerful than the shield. The shield is going to grow.”

That isn’t to say that we need to abandon the acquisition and introduction of these platforms at all, rather, it is an opportunity for us to course correct and balance our response to the challenges presented by a true peer competitor within the context of a great power competition.

Equally to clarify, “mass” as explained by General Sanders doesn’t mean creating a bloated, cumbersome bureaucratic organisation that limits the combat power of the force, something declining recruitment and retention rates seem to indicate.

Greens senator David Shoebridge highlighted this in late-2023 following detailed research into the “tremendously top-heavy Australian Defence Force with the number of flag officers almost doubling since 2003 from 119 to 219"”.

Concerningly, Senator Shoebridge’s research revealed Australia has a “one-star” level officer for every 260 full-time other officers and enlisted members of the Australian Defence Force, by comparison, in the case of the United States Armed Forces, for every “one-star” level officer, there are 1,526 other officers and enlisted members, and for further context, the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces, for every “one-star” level officer, there are 1,252 other officers and enlisted personnel.

“The ADF has a whole lot of people with gold braid bossing around a shrinking group of enlisted members in khaki, blues, and whites. It is like the Vatican with dozens of popes running around decked out in the fanciest regalia for a few hundred priests. It is no wonder the military is struggling to find new recruits when there is this bloated and unaccountable leadership class searching for relevance in a shrinking Defence force,” Senator Shoebridge said.

Resolving the issue of bloat is critical particularly as the Australian uniformed workforce is expected to grow to 80,000 personnel by 2040 (timeline issues aside), lest we face the same recruitment and retention challenges we face today.

Equally critical is removing the default approach of both Defence and government, for that matter, to create a new senior military or public service position when seeking to solve a problem. Although there is positive intent behind it, whether to lend credibility to a “special project” or troubled program or solve a new challenge, the increased administrative demands of significant additional senior personnel as well as the expectation of solving the problem in order to continue career advancement creates skills emphasis which are not the primary role of the ADF, namely, fighting and winning a conflict.

So what does all of this mean for the force structure and capability of Army as it is recalibrated in the post-crisis world?

Becoming a hybrid Marine Corps and ‘big’ Army

As we have previously established, the shift away from a “balanced force” towards the “integrated, focused force”, with Army set to become almost a solely amphibious or littoral manoeuvre focused force, seeks in part to emulate the US Marine Corps and deliver “a fully enabled, integrated amphibious-capable combined-arms land system”.

But this amphibious focus is only part of the role Army will be required to play in the post-crisis world, with some degree of “big army” required to provide policymakers with a scalable force capable of providing bespoke solutions en masse to a range of tactical and strategic considerations without detracting from its core mission of fighting and winning.

Beginning with the core of Australia’s amphibious focused force, the 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (2RAR) which as part of Plan Beersheba launched in 2011 sought to reorganise the Army’s three brigades (1st, 3rd and 7th Brigades of mechanised, motorised and light infantry) into three similar combined-arms multi-role combat brigades (MCBs) comprised of two standard infantry battalions (SIBs), an armoured cavalry regiment (ACR) with organic armoured, cavalry and mounted combat lift capabilities along with the usual supporting elements of artillery, signals, combat engineers and combat service support units.

This would allow for a 36-month ready-readying-reset cycle in which one brigade is constantly ready for operations, another readying to replace it, and the third in reset after its ready cycle while effectively leaving the Army and, by extension, our policymakers with limited options to fall back upon should the need arise.

As part of the broader review and restructuring process announced following the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, Army would undergo a further restructuring to establish a number of specialist combat brigades, in this case, 1st Brigade was to become a light combat brigade, the Townsville-based 3rd Brigade would become an armoured combat brigade while the Brisbane-based 7th Brigade was set to become a motorised combat brigade and finally, the 10th Brigade to become the Army’s long-range fires brigade.

Despite these latest changes, it still doesn’t leave a lot of mass or, for that matter, cohesion for decisionmakers to fall back upon should it be required. So what am I proposing instead?

First, from an amphibious perspective, my first suggestion would be to form a small division-sized force (in this case, 1st Division) to be comprised of three brigade-sized formations of approximately 3,500–4,000 personnel (in this case, the 1st, 3rd and 7th Brigades) to be based in Darwin, Townsville, and Rockingham, respectively, providing coverage across the three “theatres” of Australia’s primary area of interest.

These units would organically incorporate command, infantry, armoured, cavalry (for example amphibious variants of the Boxer Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles), artillery, cyber, logistics, engineering, air support, defence and lift capabilities to provide a scalable force package that can be tailored and concurrently deployed in response to contingencies ranging from humanitarian and disaster relief to high-intensity, island-hopping operations through Southeast Asia.

To provide the amphibious mobility and sealift capability, these force elements would be attached to co-located elements of Navy’s new Littoral Ready Groups (incorporating Army’s new littoral manoeuvre vessels, both medium and heavy) and further supported by the creation of a new Military Sealift Command as part of the Navy (more on both of those new concepts in the Navy piece) to provide a bespoke and scalable amphibious force.

Now for the sustainable, follow-on “mass”.

As promised, the proposed force is about striking a balance between being flexible and also packing the necessary capability and “mass” to deliver the desired effects on the battlefield, while credibly contributing to the nation’s overall deterrence and defence capability.

To deliver this, we will be forming a second but NATO-standard division-sized force (in this case, 2nd Division – reraised to regular status as it was during the Second World War) centred around three independent Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) of approximately 6,500–7,000 personnel to be based in Singleton, Townsville, and Edinburgh.

Like their smaller amphibious-focused counterparts, these independent force elements would incorporate their own organic command, infantry, armoured, cavalry (in this case, our new Redback infantry fighting vehicles), artillery (both traditional gun, rocket and mechanised), cyber, air support, defence and lift, logistics and support capabilities.

Such a structure, in effect, creates what the US Army terms a “division in miniature” and allows for higher levels of unit cohesion, capability, retention and readiness through longer posting times, on average of approximately three years, further enhanced by a high degree of commonality and a host of capabilities that can be tailored to respond to a range of contingencies with confidence.

This balance of amphibious focused forces and “big army” style force structure would theoretically provide a “combat force” of between 30,000 and 35,000 “regulars” growing to approximately 37,500–40,000 (at an extreme push) including the broader administrative elements, including the standard recruit training and specialised training commands, and Army’s strategic level command apparatus.

Still, a far cry from the mass capable of being deployed by potential adversaries I hear you say, and yes, you’re correct, which is where the standardisation and use of novel concepts come in, including manned-unmanned teaming through the integration of platforms to support and enhance the capabilities provided by “traditional” crewed platforms.

This includes the wide-scale testing and fielding of scalable autonomous ground vehicles, serving in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, direct combat, communications, engineering support, logistics and other support roles – think the Milrem Robotics THeMIS and Textron Systems Ripsaw M5. This would be further enhanced by the adoption of both commercially available and specialised man-portable and large-scale autonomous aerial vehicles to serve in similar roles to their ground-based cousins.

Finally, this brings us to the final element of “mass” emphasised by General Sanders, consumables and perishables ranging from uniforms to small arms, fuel, munitions (bullets, long-range rockets, tank rounds and artillery shells) through to cyber-resilient command, control and communications systems and medical supplies (but more about that in the piece on the nation’s post-crisis industrial and economic base).

Final thoughts

Australia’s response to a range of crisis scenarios where our “great and powerful friend” and primary strategic benefactor, the United States, is severely hindered from maintaining the global and regional balance of power and stability will require a dramatic shift in the nation’s posture, status and capacity to independently act in a contested, multipolar world order.

Ultimately, our response to this approach will require that the individual sum of our “whole-of-nation” parts will be as capable, competitive and resilient as can be developed as we will only be as strong as the sum of our parts.

Army, as the Australian government’s workhorse service, will play a central role in the nation’s response to the deteriorating regional and global geopolitical and strategic environment, whether it is responding to humanitarian and disaster relief goodwill missions, strategic stabilisation operations or deterrence-focused missions in our primary sphere of influence.

Accordingly, getting the balance right for Army and the future force will be a necessity if the nation is to survive and thrive in the era of unrestricted multipolarity and geopolitical competition. Only our capacity to deploy to defend and support our regional partners and in defence of our interests through “impactful presence” will ensure that Australia’s interests remain unmolested in the era of great power competition.

In the next part of this series, we will discuss Australia’s post-crisis Navy and some ideas around that.

Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..