Transcript

(This transcript is partly AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.)

LTGEN Simon Stuart

I've set four strategic priorities for our Army. The central one is trust. It's trust within our own teams within the Army. It's trust with the society that we serve and trust with the government that we serve, the government of the day.

National Security Podcast

You’re listening to The National Security Podcast, the show that brings you expert analysis, insights and opinion on the national security challenges facing Australia and the Indo-Pacific. Produced by the ANU National Security College.

Rory Medcalf

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm Rory Medcalf, Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University. Today's podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people and I pay my respects to their elders, past and present. Today I'm joined by Australia's Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Simon Stuart, for a discussion across a range of key issues facing national security, specifically the role and mission of the Australian Army. In this era of contestation and uncertainty in the international environment, Lieutenant General Stuart assumed command of the Australian Army on the 2nd of July, 2022, following his role as head of land capability in Army headquarters, building on a career over, I think, something like 35 years in Army serving in East Timor, Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel, and of course in many roles across Australia. Welcome to the podcast.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Rory, thank you very much for having me and can I start by congratulating you and your team here at the NSC on this podcast which I listen to regularly but also for the work and the advocacy that the National Security College is doing to develop the discourse and the intellectual capacity in our defence and security community. I think it's a great credit to you and the team and I describe you as the quiet achievers but certainly noticed I think by those of us who are practitioners.

Rory Medcalf

Look that's very kind and we'll see how the volume goes today but look I think it is the mission of the College to contribute to really the uplift of national capability and the quality of debate so good to know that we have the right listeners. Look let's get into the conversation and before I go to a conversation with you really about the role and mission and purpose of Army in Australia today in the 2020s in this era of a contested Indo-Pacific. I'm really interested to help our listeners understand a little bit more about you, you as a leader, the career journey that you've had that gets you to this place, how that's shaped you. So really I'm going to throw the ball back to you and ask how you got here.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Yeah, great question. I suspect it's a fairly uninteresting story. I started as a soldier in 1987. I joined the army because it was a great way of getting out of Perth. We are recording, but go ahead. I love Perth and all my family come from there and are there, but as a young sort 17, 18 year old in the 1980s where we weren't connected digitally, there was a big wide world out there. I had a mate who joined before me and I was getting postcards, if you remember those things, from all these exotic places around the country and around the world. I almost immediately fell in love with service, that connection with a purpose and the amazing people that I got to work with and just a sense of adventure. A couple of years later, I was fortunate enough to be selected to go to the Royal Military College at Duntroon and then a career as an infantry officer after that. then, you know, I think I'm very fortunate to have had the privilege of leading Australian soldiers and over last 20 years soldiers of other countries across a whole range of endeavours and you learn a lot about yourself as a leader and I've been very, very fortunate to have many people, those who worked for me, peers and those I've worked for invest in me over the years.

And I think there's some luck and timing involved when it comes to the most senior positions in the ADF. The stars aligned for me. I again had the privilege of commanding on operations on five occasions and learned a lot and done my best to contribute there.

Rory Medcalf

What was formative, particularly out of the operational experience?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Look, I think your first operational experience is probably the one that sticks in your mind. For me, that was as a company commander during INTERFET in East Timor, 1999, and then I had the opportunity to serve there again in 2001 and then command the International Stabilisation Force in 2010. So seeing, witnessing the journey, I suppose, from a professional perspective, in the post-Vietnam era, that was our first test, if you like. We learned a lot from it, which I think was absolutely vital in the step up to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rory Medcalf

So looking today at the strategic environment, those of us who've worked in national security over many years, still use East Timor as a case study, or we look at the so-called global War on Terror and all of the challenges that brought. But it is a very different strategic environment today. So looking out at our region and the world in October 2024 when we're recording this conversation, what are you seeing as the challenges in the strategic environment for Australia?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Look, I think they've been well chronicled. And in the analysis that underpinned the Defence Strategic Review, back in 2019. And then most recently, the analysis that underpinned the Defence Strategic Review and is now fundamentally the assessment that drives our National Defence Strategy that was released this year. Fundamentally, as you said, completely different environment, but it's not one that's unfamiliar in history. So I remember 20 odd years ago at Staff College, the text du jour was Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and The Last Man, which I don't mean to single him out, but that was the prevailing thought. Yeah, we kind of got that wrong, we? Yeah, anyway. We did indeed. But I think we, as in certainly in the West, were guilty of strategic and historical hubris. And, and those ways of thinking which are ingrained in the lived experience of most Western nations, Australia included, Australia and Australians have not been touched by much of the malady that's occurred in the world since arguably 1945.

Rory

And so you mean in terms of what great power, strategic competition?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Indeed, but not touched by war. So the so-called wars of choice. We're effectively prosecuted by the military element of national power. That's not to diminish the policy contributions, the aid contributions and the like, but in an era of great power competition, defence and security is once again a national endeavour, a societal endeavour and requires national will and obviously a social licence, if you like, between the military element of national power and the society it serves.

Rory Medcalf

So you've been very direct, you've used the word war and of course in a lot of the, for many years in a lot of the ways in which governments have articulated the strategic problem or the security challenges, it's a word they tend to refer not to use but you know I think a number of your statements this year I think speeches that you've given, and I think commentary that you've given certainly internally but also in the public domain you've referred very explicitly to war, to the nature and character of war and the fact that that is something that we need to be prepared for as a nation and a service. It would be useful to get a sense for our listeners of what you see as the nature and character of war, perhaps how it's changing and really how that might apply to what we have to be prepared for in this country.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Indeed, as I think my colleague Hugh Jeffrey, who was on this podcast a little while ago, said, our job in the department and certainly in the ADF is to be pessimists, to imagine the worst, plan for the worst and hope for the best, if you like. The reason that's important in our profession and as a military professional is the stakes are very high. And I'm conscious every day that at the, far from here in the Australian War Memorial, there are 81,746 soldiers' names. That is the consequence of war. So I think it behoves us to speak plainly about these things and the… the dilemma, if you like, or the balance, the tension between war's enduring human nature and its ever-changing character is the business of military professionals. Because if we get those judgments more wrong than we get them right, then the consequence is in the lives of our soldiers, our sailors, and indeed our aviators. So that's the, they're the stakes. The stakes are high. To get to your question about enduring human nature, I think we are seeing that play out in very plain terms. The human cost, the human nature, the visceral nature of war, not just on combatants, but on civilian populations as well. And it's important that as a society in an era of great power competition, I think that we have that, that consciousness and that discourse because we are not used to it across the last couple of generations. It's not been a feature of our lives. So the impacts are still very human and that's why we focus on culture, that's why we focus on the profession. That's why we are using the once in a generation opportunity that the Royal Commission into Defence and Veterans Suicide has presented us in terms of improving our organisation. One that can build and support resilient individuals who are part of well-led cohesive teams. In terms of the ever-changing character of warfare, that is, generally speaking, dominated by technology. And we live in an era where the pace of change in technology is exponential. I think that's the thing that perhaps defines our generation from those who have gone before. In every other respect, think we are, our times are unremarkable if you look at the arc of history. So I take artificial intelligence as an example, because I think we have more questions about that than we have answers.

Rory Medcalf

But we better move fast.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Yeah, I don't think we are moving, to be quite honest with ourselves, I don't think we're moving as quickly as we need to. So I think developing an understanding of that technology and how it might be applied. None of us can predict the future and I'm always wary of people who speak with great certitude about it. But it's our obligation to understand the intersection between technology and the prosecution of warfare, as much as the prosecution of statecraft, which we support. And imagine and develop hypotheses about how things may play out, so that we avoid surprises, if you like. Artificial intelligence, think, is the big thing on our horizon with all of the questions that are associated with it. It's with us here and now. It's being used and applied here and now. And I think a more informed discourse about what it is and what it isn't, and perhaps coming back to the human nature of warfare, an understanding that artificial intelligence is actually generated from human intelligence and therefore it will contain all of our biases, our flaws, our strengths and the like. So one of the big questions in my mind is if that's the case then if you apply or hyperscale AI into the prosecution of warfare are you exacerbating all of the worst aspects of human nature that you see play out in terms of the impact on people and societies?

Rory Medcalf

Of course, another fundamental question is if potential adversaries are doing it, what do we do?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

That's right. And they look at it through a different cultural lens, a different set of rules and regulations that you'd probably characterise as perhaps less restrictive than our own. Ours are restrictive for good reasons because we want to ensure that we apply violence or don't apply violence in a way that is ethical and in absolute lockstep with the values of our society.

Rory Medcalf

And of course we've got some very concrete examples, some very confronting examples of real wars occurring right now, so none of this is hypothetical. So looking at Ukraine, looking at the Middle East, are there any specific lessons you're drawing from those conflicts?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Look, I think they, we're all watching very, very closely. I think the key things are, from my perspective, are number one, national will matters. If you take the war in Ukraine, that's an existential threat. And the mobilisation of Ukrainian society, all aspects, the people, its economy, its production and industrial capacity, its academic capacity and of course all of the elements of civil protection, of its trade situation, its relationship with its neighbours. So will matters, you know, to sort of quote Napoleon, the moral is to the physical three to one. That really matters. And that's a very human aspect. And I think illustrative of the point we were discussing earlier that in an era of great power competition, defence and security are a national endeavour. So I think there's a lot we can learn nationally from what's happening in Ukraine. Operationally, I think it's been absolutely fascinating. In a way, it has confirmed our approach in terms of what we describe as the integrated force. How do you bring together the five domains to create windows of advantage in time and space to further your campaign?

Rory Medcalf

You'd better remind others, what are the five domains?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Sure, so the three traditional physical domains of land, sea and air with space and cyber now. So I think the salient that the Ukrainians have developed in the Kursk region probably gives a good insight. So they are physically able to exploit to the extent to which they were able to maintain an electronic warfare overmatch or bubble if you like, as well as to defend the airspace from an air and missile defence perspective. I think our concept of an integrated force, the sum being more than its parts, is emblematic of lessons that we're learning there and have learned throughout history. Operationally and tactically, you can see a rapid adaptation on both sides, both the Ukrainians and the Russians. And for me, it's really emphasised the need for that tight relationship between soldiers, academics, and industrialists, because we need to be adapting at the speed of relevance. And one perhaps useful lens of looking at warfare through is it's a race to see who can adapt the fastest.

Rory Medcalf

And they're racing under wartime, under actual war conditions, but of course if the worlds in an era of strategic confrontation or competition, what pressure do you feel that puts on the system here in Australia to adapt quickly?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Look, I think it's… I think the need to adapt quickly is recognised. In fact, it's clearly articulated in terms of the, you know, the previous concept of warning time is no longer relevant, nor indeed is the safety afforded by our geography. So I think that's well understood. But in terms of how do we get match fit, you know, as a nation, is taking us some time and you would, that's quite a reasonable thing. So from my perspective, yes, we're up against the clock and perhaps our systems and processes, which again are highlighted and directed in the strategic review and the NDS, the National Defence Strategy. The challenge for us is how quickly and effectively can we adapt.

Rory Medcalf

The role of Army in all this, I know that the challenge that you spoke on is a whole of nation challenge. is only part of that. But let's go specifically to the Australian context now and just get a sense from you of how you see, how you define the role and mission of Army in Australia with Australia. What is Army for?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Sure. Look, the way I conceive of our Army is as a national institution, profession and a fighting force. So that's the context. We are part of the integrated force and the theory about it of course is that the sum is more than its parts. And it makes a lot of sense in terms of bringing together the effects across those five domains we discussed. If you look at our region, the Indo-Pacific region, that vast swathe of the Earth's surface and the amazing sort of diversity of countries and people and geography. Existing in that is what Colleague General Charlie Flynn, Commanding General of the United States Army in Pacific calls the land power network. Most of the countries in our region have armies, some of them the largest armies in the world, and in most cases their armies or their land forces are the greater part of their services, their defence force or their militaries. We, the Australian Army, has had a relationship, both through our conventional and special forces, with the vast majority of those nations over decades. So there are the institutional relationships, there are the personal leader-to-leader relationships and we're doing more together than we've ever done before. So that land power network affords, I think, a great strength and a foundation upon which we can grow the work that we need to do in the region with our ally and partners. In terms of what does the Australian Army contribute to the Chief of Joint Operations’ Theatre Campaign Plan. I describe it in five principles, if you like. So what's the, in other words, what's the value proposition of land power in the Indo-Pacific in the 21st century? The first is presence. Today, we have Australian soldiers in 35 locations in the region. And that presence means that we are working alongside allies and partners. We understand the geography, the human terrain. We work toward placement and access. And we are far more adept at understanding what changes in the environment mean. But we're there. We're present. That presence brings with it a persistence that it is, which is a marked difference or distinction and advantage that land forces bring. We're always there, as we say in the infantry, regardless of season, weather or terrain.

Rory Medcalf

You know from experience.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Indeed, yeah. So the worst workplace agreement ever negotiated. But that persistence is particularly important when you consider the degrading effects of weather, geography, climate, and those sorts of things on systems, electro-optics and the like, and the complex terrain that exists in our region, whether that's close country jungle or whether that's the increasingly urbanised population centres on the coastlines around the region. So that ability to be present, to understand, to... to sense and make sense of the environment and then to be there persistently both to sense and make sense but also to be able to create confidence amongst populations, confidence amongst allies and partners and be there potentially to defend either our own forces or our allies and partners forces or to ensure that any potential adversary isn't able to dominate the strategic choke points or what we would describe as the key terrain in the region. The third of the five aspects of the value proposition is asymmetry. Put simply, I never want to put our soldiers into a fair fight. It is the lesson of history that the defence is generally a stronger form than the offence.

Rory Medcalf

And we don't have the mass.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

We do not have mass. We seek to offset with technology. But the value of incumbency, if I can put it that way, then confers upon any potential adversary the requirement to generate force ratios of, you know, three, five, eight, ten to one. And that changes the dynamic, it changes the risk calculus, it changes the apportionment of resources and then causes one to question whether the juice is worth the squeeze. If you look at the complex A2AD systems...

Rory Medcalf

Can we translate that into English?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Yeah, sure. Anti-Access and Area Denial systems. So things like the air defence systems, the missile systems, the sea mining systems and all those kinds of things that have been developed in the seas to the north. That complex system has been designed specifically to defeat effectively US air and maritime assets and this was one of the key principles behind the transformation of the United States Marine Corps to develop stand-in forces, the smaller many that are well armed, maneuverable and sustainable. So there's an ability to generate an asymmetry in that context as well from land forces. The final two, the first one is, or fourth one is versatility. You can take pretty much any army unit and it can do pretty much any job from humanitarian assistance and disaster relief through to combat operations. So there's an inherent versatility which is important in a region where the distances you need to move are vast. And then finally, value. In relative terms, a modest investment, you get a lot of bang for buck out of an army, out of a marine force, out of a special operations investment.

Rory Medcalf

And look, to deliver all of this, to really achieve these operational and strategic objectives, army needs a relationship with the nation. It defends the nation, it represents the nation, advances interests of the nation. What, in your sense is the relationship between Army and society in Australia at the moment and you know how would you like to see that change if change is needed?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

It's a great question. First thing I'd say is that I've set four strategic priorities for our Army. The central one is trust. It's trust within our own teams within the Army. It's trust with the society that we serve and trust with the government that we serve, the government of the day. And to be quite frank, what I describe as the long shadow of the Afghanistan war has had an impact, negative impact on that trust. So we don't ever take trust for granted. It can be quickly lost and takes a long time to rebuild. We are in the business of building and maintaining the trust of the society we serve every day. We are drawn from the society. We are in 157 locations around our country, in our communities. I've had the great privilege of seeing most of our Army in the last six months in the places they live and work and engage in many of the communities that they are part of. Overwhelmingly, our people are trusted. Overwhelmingly, they are well regarded in the communities that they are part of. Where I think we've got more work to do is to tell our story better, to explain what our role is, how we do it and why it's important. But I'm very, very confident that at the individual level, the soldier level, they're doing a wonderful job of building trust every day and creating a personal lived experience among our community who can say, well, listen, I've met some of these people and they're great Australians, they're committed. They've chosen to step up and to serve and they're fundamentally good people that are motivated by purpose and have good values. Of course, institutionally, I'm responsible for the level of trust with the society that we serve. And that continues to be a focus and a work in progress. It matters little what we say. It matters a lot in terms of what we do and ensuring that there isn't a gap between what we say and what we do.

Rory Medcalf

And of course, perception matters when it comes to ensuring that Army has the people it needs to do the job. So I'd be interested if you can share with us some thoughts about how that's going. There are obvious challenges to recruitment that have been very clear over recent years. Army needs to not only represent the nation and reflect the nation, but you need the human capital, if I can put it that way, to do the job. What's the story there?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Yeah, it's a great question and it gets to the heart of an issue. It's not a risk anymore, it's been realised it's an issue and it's the most important issue for me and for my colleagues and indeed for the department. There's recruiting and there's retention. And I would just describe our efforts in terms of retention as actually being quite successful. So since 2022, we have reduced the separation rate 2.2 % from a height of around 13 and a half percent. It's now down to a level that's actually low, the historical –

Rory Medcalf

This is an annual separation.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Correct. An annual separation, called a rolling average separation rate. So that tells us that the efforts we're making are actually effective. When it comes to recruiting, we've just got, I think, the last quarter's statistics. The interest, you know, the expressions of interest to join the ADF, including the Army, have actually increased, I think in the order of 12 to 15 % over the last quarter.

Rory Medcalf

Do you have a reason you can attribute for that?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Look, I don't. I have some theories, but you really need to rely on the data and the evidence here. So I won't hazard a guess. That work is underway. But those expressions of interest are not being converted into soldiers at the rate that we require. So we're falling short in terms of our annual requirements. So last year, for example, we achieved just over 50 % of the target that we needed. That has obviously an effect this year, but then has a bubble effect over the coming years. But the good news, if you like, is we know what the challenges are, where the things that need to be fixed are in that recruiting pipeline. So my colleague, Lieutenant General Natasha Fox, the Chief of Personnel, and her team are doing a phenomenal amount of work, and I think their analysis of where the… the sticking points in the system are quite good. So there are things that can be fixed. All of three services are leaning in to try and assist with medical professionals to get through medicals or psych assessments or to make sure we've got the right people, uniform people alongside the contractors in the system. So how long that takes to resolve, I don't know what that is, but it's a challenge, but I think it's a solvable challenge. All of that exists in a much broader context. There are sort of, I say three reasons why people serve pay, purpose and people. Pay is really about the conditions of service. I think there's been some great work done there in terms of lifting all boats and increasing the value proposition, if you like. I think we've got some more work to do in terms of how do we best support our families, and particularly through an Army lens, where we're asking more of our families to serve in the north of the country. How do we make sure we're providing the right support for them? I think, and I... We've been trying in Army to focus a lot more attention on the intrinsic motivations for service, which are purpose and people. So being part of something that's bigger than oneself, that the nature of service is putting mission and mates before oneself. I think there's a very strong intrinsic motivators there. And then people, I mean, you get to work with alongside and, in my own case, most of my closest friends are people I’ve served with. And the reason for that, you think about it, is because you can trust them. You need to be able to trust them with your life. So I think those two intrinsic motivations, purpose and people, something we are trying to do a better job to communicate.

Rory Medcalf

What about recruitment of other nationalities? I mean, I think there's been movement in that direction recently for the ADF. Can you update us on that?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Yeah, so there's been lateral recruitment programs in place for 10, 15 years. I think it's scaling them and broadening them.

Rory Medcalf

And that's from effectively other five eyes countries or some of them.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Yeah, so I think UK in particular, the recent changes –

Rory Medcalf

With New Zealand.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Yeah. And then we've got... You know, quite a diverse sort of population out there in our army. You know, including from some of our neighbours and teammates in the Southwest Pacific, Fiji for example. So look at this scope there. There's work underway to figure out how we best do that. And of course we're very conscious, and I know the government's very conscious to make sure that we're not, you know, contributing to the brain drain if you like.

Rory Medcalf

Poaching, poaching the talent.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Yeah. The how matters. So how do we do that in a way that's mutually beneficial.

Rory Medcalf

Let's move to the other side of capability of course and you, I think you talked earlier about lifting all boats and of course I think when people think army they don't automatically think boats but of course now in this maritime environment being able to operate at sea or across the sort of archipelagos and islands has become a really serious objective for Army. How is that going, sort of, the marinising of the Australian Army?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

You're exactly right. So my mission out of the Defence Strategic Review and the NDS National Defence Strategy was to optimise the entire Army for the tour manoeuvre and generate a long-range strike capability. I'm directed to deliver the means, the capital program, so the 26 ships, watercraft, the long-range strike or the tranche of that and the combined arms fighting system simultaneously. Because we fight as one. As you, I think correctly identified, most people when you think of littoral manoeuvre, you think of the ship, the watercraft, and they're very important. But actually, littoral manoeuvre is about an operating concept. It's one where we seek to elevate the value that army provides for the other elements of the integrated force. How do we...use the parts of the Earth's surface, the Latorre rules, for tactical operational positional advantage to support maritime air, space and cyber manoeuvre. So effectively what we're doing is we're expanding exponentially our capacity for manoeuvre, for positional advantage and then being able to access the interior of, whether it's Northern Australia or in our region, through the waterways, the estuaries, the rivers and those kinds of things. And that immediately expands options exponentially.

Rory Medcalf

This isn't just about getting platforms right, it's going to require very serious sort of training and really changing in a way the, you know, some aspects of the the operational culture of the Army, isn't it?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Absolutely, and we've actually been on this journey for about the last four to five years. I'll give you some great examples. we've effectively turned… So let me take a step back. Last week was the 24th of October, 18 months since the Defence Strategic Review was released on the 24th of April, 2023. In that 18 months, we have redefined the land domain concept, our operating concept, the doctrine, the tactics, techniques and procedures that are required to generate an electoral manoeuvre capability. We have changed Army's commanding control, including my headquarters, to ensure it's better aligned with its war fighting function. We have elevated the unit of action back to the division level, so the first division, the second division, and special operations command. They are all aligned to the Chief of Joint Operations theatre missions. We have redesigned and reorganised forces command, so it's the part of the army that is responsible for training: individual training, collective training, scaling the Army and our contribution to mobilisation and being able to do that out of contact, so to speak. So while those, the divisions and special operations command are committed to operations. We've made a whole range of other changes in terms of the way we're organised, the way we're equipped, the capital programmes to deliver the watercraft, the long-range fires systems and indeed the combined armed fighting system and a land C4 system to stitch all that together and integrate us with the rest of the force. So I guess what the message I'm trying to get across is we haven't been standing still. We've flipped the army on its head, done it very, very quickly. I couldn't be more proud of what our teams have achieved. We've got a hell of a lot more right then we've got wrong and we're quite agile in terms of continuing to adapt. We just stood up based on the first armoured regiment, tech-scale battle group. That's our way of fast-tracking the application of new and emerging technology and then exploiting it across the rest of the army. The last thing that I'll be able to do is actually drop in the watercraft.

Rory Medcalf

But you’ll ready.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

We'll be ready. We've been working with partners in the United States Army Pacific, Marine Rotational Forces, we've at least hired civilian stern landing vessels and we've had the means to get out there and practice.

Rory Medcalf

And this is a timeline, I mean, the next three to four years. What's the timeline for the watercraft coming into service?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

First of the 18 medium watercraft which will be built in Western Australia by Austal. The first of them is due in the water at the end of 2026. The first of the heavies is due in the water at the end of 2028.

Rory Medcalf

So we're recording this on the, I think it's the, if I'm not mistaken, it's the 30th of October 2024. And the reason I timestamped it there is that I think the Defence Industry Minister, Pat Conroy, gave a speech today at the National Press Club, focused particularly on strike on the GUEO, the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance enterprise missiles. And we'll wrap up in a moment, but I just wanted to come back to strike before we do because we won't just see an Australian Army that's operating in the littoral environment, we'll see an Australian Army that has strike capabilities at a range it's never had before. Can you just very briefly articulate what that means?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Indeed, so the concept of being able to strike is, at a direct, extended distances, operationally and strategically relevant distances across our army, our navy, our air force, is a key response to the fact that geography is no longer the protective factor that it once was. And the idea is that we want to ensure that in all domains, we have the capacity to strike at operationally and strategically relevant ranges. So that's part of Army's transformation.

Rory Medcalf

What sort of ranges are we talking about here?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

We're looking at the, know, beyond 500 kilometres and then in the thousands of kilometres in due course. But the key point from an Army perspective is we're able to make that contribution to support our teammates in Navy and Air Force and of course other allies and partners. People tend to focus on the effector, the bit that goes bang if you like, but actually it's emblematic of a system which in military parlance these days is called a kill web, but it effectively has a range of functions that need to be performed simultaneously, connected digitally. And we need the ability to share data at machine speed to ensure that that web is able to effectively operate. So that's consuming quite a lot of all of our time these days. Those functions are quite simple. There's the strike bit, but before that there's the sense and make sense. Whenever you strike, you want to be shielding at the same time. So offence and defence, and then you need to sustain as well. So it's all of those functions that we're developing in an organisational sense. Our lead trace there is the 10th Brigade, which we stood up in Adelaide last year. And that already has our integrated air and missile defence system, our NASAMS system. It will have the two regiments of HIMARS and their launch system. We've been involved in a cooperative development program with the United States on the precision strike missile, which will have increments with extended ranges and capabilities over time. So we’re also building the sustainment function and importantly the intelligence and the communication functions that connect us in and help us to contribute to the ADF’s system and then to be able to connect in with allies and partners.

Rory Medcalf

Before we close, I just wanted to, I guess, give you the opportunity to talk a little bit about partnership. for everything that you've articulated today, I don't think there's an expectation that, you the Australian Army is going to be the be-all and end-all for our security, and Australia does rely very heavily on a range of partners, not just the alliance with the United States. Are there any examples you can share of where you either have seen great progress in partnerships for Australia, for Army and the region, or where you, I think, have very high aspirations?

LTGEN Simon Stuart

I would say that the growth in multilateral activities in our region over the last two years, dusting three years, has been exponential. Whereas I may have met with my regional counterparts maybe once during a term, I've seen many of them five, six or seven times in a year. I'll give you a great example. In 2022 in Indonesia, the Indonesian government and the TNI hosted exercise Super Garuda Shield. It was based on what was previously a bilateral activity between Indonesia and the United States. And there are a whole range of US bilateral activities. In 2022, Australia was invited to participate, were there along, there were 14 flags represented. It was held in South Sumatra at the Bataraja training area, proximate to the Ntuna Shoals. It rehearsed demonstrated forced entry operations from the air and the sea, synchronised combat operations, combined arms operations, and it was effectively a very strong expression of collective capability that gave expression to collective will. And you now see right around the region exactly that sort of thing. We'll host Talisman Sabre here in Australia next year. That's another example of what was previously a bilateral exercise with the US. Now is a demonstration of our capacity to implement collective will.

Rory Medcalf

Simon, it's been a fantastic conversation. I think you have a very challenging job ahead of you, but I think it's been really useful for our listeners to understand the role and the direction of the Australian Army. So Lieutenant General Simon Stuart, thank you very much for joining us on the National Security Podcast today.

LTGEN Simon Stuart

Thank you. It's a real privilege to be here. Thank you.