When technology fails
Reading Time: 3 minutes Technology has become ubiquitous within the modern world, in particular with communication systems. There are few people in Australia today who do […]
Category: Top Post
Entry Interviews: A New Way of Thinking about Platoon Commander Notebooks
Reading Time: 4 minutes Marching in to my first unit as a Lieutenant (LT) and Platoon Commander (PLCOMD), one of the first tasks I was told […]
Tiny Leadership Tales: ‘You Can Be Right And Be A Jerk’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bite sized leadership lessons, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words To be right, or nice? I have asked myself […]
Five Elements of Campaigning
Reading Time: 23 minutes As a nation – and as an important regional leader in the global community – Australia is experiencing significant changes to our […]
Tiny Leadership Tales: ‘Right Wheel, Continue The Wheel’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bite sized leadership lessons, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words Most days we pounded the hot pavement seemingly only […]
Lessons from Air-Land Integration in the Burma Campaign
Reading Time: 6 minutes “…in Burma our Armies are advancing on the wings of the Allied Air Forces.” – Air Chief Marshal Keith Park Introduction The […]
The David Kilcullen Interview: Serving in a Peacetime Army
Reading Time: 5 minutes This is Part II of an interview with David Kilcullen. Find Part I here. David Kilcullen is Professor of International and Political Studies […]
Hir’aeth: The Australian Army, Training, and the Nostalgia of the Past
Reading Time: 5 minutes Editor’s Note: This is Grounded Curiosity’s 2nd most read article of all time. One of the most useful phrases to emerge from […]
Failure at Fromelles
Reading Time: 20 minutes Failure at Fromelles, 19-20 July 1916: Examining failures against the nine tactical considerations for the attack Fail: c. 1200, ‘be unsuccessful in […]
An Interview with James Kidd: Defence Advisor at the Australian High Commission in Port Moresby
Reading Time: 3 minutes Samuel Cox (SC): What does the role of a Defence Advisor (DA) in a High Commission entail? James Kidd (JK): I consider the High […]
The only woman in the room
Reading Time: 4 minutes Propel Her – Defence Women’s Leadership Series spotlights Air Force Pilot and Commanding Officer, Wing Commander Marija ‘Maz’ Jovanovich as she shares her insights […]
The Importance of Remote Autonomous Systems for the Future of the ADF
Reading Time: 5 minutes In his speech for the launch of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Prime Minister Scott Morrison expressed to the audience: “We must […]
Leading at Every Level: Contesting the Army Leadership Levels
Reading Time: 3 minutes I must admit to being taken aback by the appearance of the ‘Australian Army Leadership Levels’ (‘the Levels’) as published in Army […]
The other complexities of the urban fight (Part VII of a series)
Reading Time: 7 minutes This is the seventh and final article of a series on the Twelve Urban Challenges. You can access the series here. Previous articles have introduced […]
The Future of Unconventional Warfare (2035 – 2050)
Reading Time: 3 minutes Women in Future Operations Holds Its First Working Group What do you see when you conceptualise the future of unconventional warfare? What […]
Readiness Posture: “Move now, out”
Reading Time: 6 minutes A ‘notice to move’, or as it is known by its military acronym ‘NTM’, serves as a useful planning tool to manage expectations for both force elements and commanders. But in dynamic, unpredictable circumstances, a notice to move can sometimes be the source of confusion and friction between various levels of command. This needn’t be so.
Understanding Mission Command
Reading Time: 7 minutes Mission command is a philosophy for command and a system for conducting operations that is widely understood within the Australian Army to […]
Avoiding Army Modernization Pitfalls
Reading Time: 5 minutes Why is the U.S. Army so bad at delivering new weapon systems? Is this merely a function of excessive ambition, budgetary friction, or changes to the operational environment? The likely culprit is a system designed to minimize risk to users, risk to mission, risk to budget, and risk to industry.
Tactical Fighting System: Section Contact Narrative, Part 1
Reading Time: 8 minutes This narrative is designed to explore the difference that robotics, artificial intelligence, autonomy and augmented reality spatial computing could achieve with technologies […]
Military Experimentation Part II: Continuous War-Gaming
Reading Time: 5 minutes This article is the second in a two part series that seeks to generate discussion and debate on military experimentation. Part 2, […]
The Future is Now: A Path Forward in Manned-Unmanned Teaming
Reading Time: 5 minutes The future of Australian Army Aviation lies in its ability to successfully integrate manned and unmanned aerial vehicles in the tactical and […]
Directed Energy Weapons: A Defence Against Emerging Threats
Reading Time: 4 minutes The technological advantage currently enjoyed by western militaries will likely decline in the near future as the spread of information and goods […]
What is a Warfighting Culture?
Reading Time: 5 minutes For the past 14 months I have been privileged to serve as an exchange officer with the United States Marine Corps. During […]
Army Air Defence: Forget the Missiles
Reading Time: 12 minutes Following decades of relative relegation resulting from uncontested airspace, growing trends have invigorated a renewed emphasis on Air Defence as an essential […]
Commander Combat Training Centre’s ‘Fast Five’
Reading Time: 3 minutes The following is based upon my experience over the last five years as a Commanding Officer and Commander of the Combat Training […]
Close Infantry Assault
Reading Time: 4 minutes The key to Army’s success on our next battlefield will be ensuring we pay adequate attention now, and applying enough resources to […]
Australian Tactical Design: Development and Use of Decisive Events
Reading Time: 21 minutes War is a science covered with shadows in whose obscurity one cannot move with an assured step. Routine and prejudice, the natural […]
Social Media in the Military: Opportunities, Perils and a Safe Middle Path
Reading Time: 11 minutes Editor’s Note: This is Grounded Curiosity’s most read article of all time. Knowledge is generated anew from connections that weren’t there before. […]
Redefining ‘Mountains of Steel’: The Utility of Disaggregated CSS in Contemporary Warfare
Reading Time: 12 minutes Army’s logisticians have operated under an obsolescent doctrine for decades that is out of touch with a rapidly accelerating technological arms race between […]
Junior Leadership in the Australian Army
Reading Time: 4 minutes Do we know why it works or are we doing what we’ve always done? The current Australian Army leadership model is an […]