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dated 12 April 2019,
Australia could lose the next war
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In the conflict of the future, Australia could find itself fighting an adversary we don’t even realise we are at war with until we’ve mostly lost.
The adversary of the future could be a mix of state and non-state actors armed with lethal modern weaponry, fighting in a crowded city environment and exploiting the same technology which has traditionally provided the West with competitive advantage - GPS and the internet.

The conflict of the future could involve a mix of integrated kinetic and cyber operations, delivering a one-two punch.

And for the first time in Australia’s history, our major trading partner is not the same as our strategic ally, and both exist in an environment where they may end up fighting each other in our region.

At the Future Warfare Conference in Canberra on Monday, UNSW Professor David Kilcullen, a former Australian Army officer and counter-insurgency advisor to the US military and State Department, said that would be an incredibly dangerous situation for Australia.

But it was also a really significant opportunity for Australia to play a much more active independent and self-reliant role in our own region, he said.

All these themes of future warfare have been demonstrated in recent conflicts. In Syria and Iraq, insurgents used Google Earth and IPad apps to target mortars, and in Crimea, Russian social media and cyber shaping operations paved the way before the tanks arrived.

Professor Kilcullen said China had adopted “pseudo-conventional salami slicing” in the South China Sea, gradually encroaching through changing the real estate to achieve a military advantage.

Conflict of the future could involve similar ambiguous tactics on the edge.

“By the time the first tank rolls, an adversary has already won. In fact, if they haven’t won through social media and electronic propaganda and all the shaping activity, they don’t even roll the tanks,” he said.

Professor Kilcullen said we might may be dealing with adversaries who have a much broader definition of war than we do.

“On the one hand they can be engaging in what they consider to be absolute war and we are blithely unaware of that - so that by the time we realise we are in a conflict, we have already lost,” he said.

That presents another risk - we could be undertaking normal peacetime interactions that an enemy interprets as acts of war, leading to an unintended conflict. Examples include routine naval freedom of navigations activities or even military exercises.

Professor Kilcullen also said the conflict of the future could produce task saturation – so much going on in the same places that we don’t know what to deal with first – and overstretch, with so many different simultaneous missions or advisory tasks.

“We simply lose our freedom of manoeuvre and are not able to respond when the big one happens,” he said.

According to Professor Kilcullen, the challenge for military planners and those thinking about the future of war was how to get out of a defensive crouch.

“How do we think about leveraging our competitive advantages in things like unconventional warfare, remote observation, cyber warfare, unconventional operations, networked attack so we don’t sit back passively and wait for the hammer blow?” he asked.

“Rather, we can get out there ourselves and start shaping the environment decisively to our own advantage.”
 
oops,
Cultural clashes dividing French, Australian officials working on $50 billion 'attack class' submarine program
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After securing the so-called "contract of the century", the French company chosen to build Australia's future submarines has conceded it's having cultural clashes with its $50 billion customer, with lunch and meeting times proving problematic.

In 2016, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced
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, beating rival bids from Germany's TKMS and the Japanese Government.

Since that time the ABC has been told of numerous difficulties and frustrations between French and Australian officials, although a
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was finally signed earlier this year.

In a series of candid interviews with the defence industry publication SLDInfo.com, Naval Group officials have now offered insights into the problems the French company is facing in dealing with Australia.

"Not everyone thinks like the French," explained Jean-Michel Billig, Naval Group's program director for the project to build 12 new "attack class" submarines.

He cited the barbecue as an example of Australian culture, which is an important part of fostering good work relations, but said there was a reciprocal need for Australians to understand the French sanctity of the lunch break — not just a sandwich snatched at the screen.

Mr Billig also suggested the submarine project needed to be organised so that French translations were not just into English, but Australian English, and for employees "to speak a common language in cultural terms".

According to SLDInfo.com, Naval Group is now "implementing a change in employee communications and behaviour, in a bid to smooth out cultural differences between French and Australian staff".

Former French nuclear submarine commander Yvan Goalou, who is now Naval Group's institutional relationship manager, was quoted as saying there was also a need for listening and humility.

"Based on discussions, there is a willingness to know the qualities and faults of each other, not to use them but to converge, to find common points so we can work together, so we can deliver," he said.

"There is search for openness and sharing."

Courses and workshops planned to stop conflicts
Another example of the cultural gap between both sides was highlighted when Naval Group CEO Hervé Guillou wrote to staff and referred to "la rentrée", a term describing the time when staff go back to work in September after a company closes down throughout August for the traditional French holiday.

"Stunned" Australian staff reportedly had to be educated about the one-month holiday, while the French were also apparently surprised to see their colleagues' insistence on punctuality, meaning "a meeting scheduled for an hour meant just that, not an extra 15 minutes".

In France, according to SLDInfo.com, there is the concept of a "diplomatic 15 minutes", indicating that one is not considered to be late if the tardiness is a quarter of an hour.

Naval Group's global human resources business partner Marion Accary said the company was also developing tools for "intercultural courses" for French staff being posted to Australia, which include two-hour seminars and one-day workshops.

These aim to prepare French expatriates and their families "how to behave, how to understand and decode".

"Personnel will also be encouraged to take distance from situations which might seem to be conflictual due to misunderstanding."

Earlier this month, the ABC revealed Australians working on the future submarine program in France were
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, because local classes are not taught in English.

The first of the new French-designed submarines are not due to be in service until the mid-2030s.

The Chief of Navy has signalled Australia's
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before the French-built replacements are ready.
 

Yazzinra

New Member
Registered Member
$50 billion deal

Imagine that

Plus French sold LHD to Egypt

They are good at naval exports of big ticket items

You mean the US taxpayer bought Egypt a pair of LHDs after the French broke their contract with the Russians and got stuck with them.

Still think the Aussies should have gone with the Japanese boats, but good luck to them.
 

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
Yeah I also think the Japanese submarines would have made much more sense for Australia. It was one of those WTF moments to me.
Is there some kind of anti-Japanese bias or something in Australia? The Japanese submarines would have been ideal, while in this case the French will have to basically custom design a submarine for them. It is not that they can't do it, but necessarily it will be expensive and take substantial time.

With regards to summer vacations, given Australia is in the southern hemisphere, it makes sense people there don't do their vacations at the same time.
 

asif iqbal

Lieutenant General
You mean the US taxpayer bought Egypt a pair of LHDs after the French broke their contract with the Russians and got stuck with them.

Still think the Aussies should have gone with the Japanese boats, but good luck to them.

US pressure resulted in France breaking the contract only right they should pay
 

Brumby

Major
This reads like Monty python.
This can't be serious.
I have no doubt these issues are real and will eventually result in an overbudget and behind schedule program. History is just repeating as with the AWD project. As the saying goes :The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history". I remember one of the reason given why the AWD project had so many issues was because the manuals were written in Spanish. History already tells us the Aussies cannot build boats at competitive best practice. It is a jobs program driven by politics.
 
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