On Military Grammar: The Australian Army beyond Afghanistan

This analysis of the future of the Australian Army takes as its rationale the proposition advanced by the military scholar Peter Paret, that the most important problem facing armed forces is never equipment, weapons acquisition or capability development, but the intellectual mastery of current and future military concepts. 1 In terms of intellectual mastery, the Australian Army—like its peers in the United States and Britain—has been forced to ponder its future in the midst of protracted combat and stabilisation operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite intense operational pressures, the Army has made a considerable progress over the last decade. Innovative doctrine based on Manoeuvre Operations in the Littoral Environment (MOLE) and Complex Warfighting has been developed; the Hardened and Networked Army (HNA) initiative has redressed the Army‟s most serious deficiencies in combined arms and protected mobility; and the 2009 Adaptive Army initiative has brought about the biggest organisational restructure of the land force since the 1970s. 2