PETER LA FRANCHI / CANBERRA
Air assets will have a key role in meeting the threats facing Australia in the coming decades according to the Army's WinNow 2000 report
Aerospace systems are likely to emerge as a dominant shaping force on land battlefields in the Asia-Pacific by the third decade of this century, according to a future warfare concept report released by the Australian Army.
The regional environment is likely to be rife with new threats, ranging from man-potable air defence systems (MANPADS) to weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The region is also likely to be facing ongoing problems with ethnic diversity and what the Australian Army calls "latent nationalistic influences". The long term forecasts are contained in the Australian Army's WinNow 2000 report, released to defence companies late last year.
In 2025, the Asia-Pacific will consist of "significant resource-rich areas paralleled by many areas that are resource poor. States that emerge from intra-state dissolution will struggle to sustain themselves," says the report. "There will continue to be increasing population flows, and shifting patterns of economic stability, as well as crime and disease. Conflict will be multi-adversarial and create instability broader that the region under dispute."
WMD "percussor technology will proliferate through South-East Asia in the next half-century. Knowledge, delivery systems and targeting mechanisms are becoming more attainable. Nuclear weapons technology will become more available to regional nations and interest groups", the report adds. Percussor technology includes nuclear power stations, "potential sources of fissionable material" or laboratories capable of producing viruses capable of distribution as a weapon.
The Australian Army's Combined Arms Training and Development Centre wrote WinNow 18 months ago. It makes predictions on the very long-term strategic environment, as opposed to the more normal short- and medium-term assessments.
The report is intended to spark debate within the army about its force structure beyond Australia's 10-year capability plan, which ends in 2011. The underlying objective of the report is to "provide a forum to validate concepts, stimulate the hypotheses tested within the Army Experimental Framework, inform Enhanced Combat Force Design, and provide an intellectual direction for Output Development Plans and Output Intent Statements".
The report warns that regional air defence will improve through "developments in low probability of detection multi-spectral sensors. Inexpensive and highly effective MANPADSwill proliferate in the battlespace. Anti-helicopter helicopters and anti-helicopter mines will distribute the threat coverage beyond that posed by current-generation weapons." Aircraft will face a host of non-lethal threats, "such as electronic attack, electromagnetic pulse, dazzle/blinding weapons, chemical, biological, bacterial and fuel contaminants". Lethal electromagnetic or directed energy threats may become reality and overall "suppression of enemy air defences will become increasingly difficult".
Stealth technology
As a result Australia will have to commit to "high-cost stealth technology or the augmentation/replacement of manned combat helicopters with unmanned combat air vehicles [UCAVs] within the Army After Next. The cost of stealth technology will probably negate this option."
Future air platforms need to be considered as providers and users of situation awareness information, the report argues. Raw data will be fused onboard, becoming "immediately useable battlefield information", and on the ground for integration into a wider picture. Information will be shared by airborne reconnaissance assets within other organisations to speed transfer and use of the intelligence.
Australia's next armed reconnaissance helicopter, to replace the Eurocopter Tigers now on order, will not be optimised for surveillance, "however, it will provide cueing or be cued by surveillance assets". It will be employed for reconnaissance or attack as required by the ground force. "The individual soldier and vehicles may become the sensor, or 'hunter', while the armed reconnaissance helicopter willprovide a 'stand-off killer' capability."
Early entry operations will be a key area for air power: "[Air assets] are particularly suitable for the regional environment in which distances and terrain obstacles make air mobility critical for combat manoeuvre. Over-the-horizon projection from a sea base will become increasingly important in littoral manoeuvre operations."
Alikely high-payoff research area will be the development of combat vehicles light enough to be carried by an aircraft yet survivable against the future threat gamut.
Future air vehicles will offer "greater firepower, mobility and speed", says the report, and will be equipped with high precision, direct and indirect fire weapons. At stand-off ranges they will be able to detect, identify and engage multiple targets in a small time period, reducing the exposure to threats. Onboard weapons will be "a range of guided, smart and brilliant weapons". The report says: "Aviation weapon developments may see kinetic and directed-energy options overtake chemical energy weapons as the primary killer."
As technology delivers "more discriminating stand-off targeting",UCAVs will assume manned combat helicopter roles, particularly as the "the cost of manned vehicles becomes prohibitive".
Intelligence systems will need to be given a high priority, the report argues, Australia's regional threat will require "a multidimensional approach to intelligence acquisition". They state: "Significant advances in imagery intelligence and signals intelligence [particularly space-based] will be readily countered by less sophisticated technology and force structuring. Human intelligence will continue to be a critical collection system for land forces.
"Notably, intent in the future battlespace will remain the most difficult aspect of intelligence to infer; the industrial-age model of finding targets and destroying them with lethal force will prove increasingly difficult to pursue in practice. As forces operate in increasingly dispersed modes, with a greater array of capability options, they will need access to their own collection and processing system to meet their situation awareness requirements. This will involve devolution, rather than centralisation, of intelligence collection and processing capability."
Future commanders will require "capability to counter increasingly sophisticated and prevalent adversary ISTAR [intelligence, surveillance, targeting, acquisition and reconnaissance] capabilities. This will require a multi-disciplinary counter-intelligence capability with the ability to counter imagery and signals intelligence; computer network exploitation; and espionage, sabotage, subversion and terrorism activities."
Future Australian ground based air defence systems (GBADS)would have to counter fixed and rotary-wing manned aircraft, UAVs, cruise missiles and, as part of a multi-tiered engagement strategy, tactical ballistic missiles. The report says that "no single weapon system or service" will be able to meet that requirement, which will force a high degree of integration between the air force army and navy.
The report reveals uncertainty about the future of MANPADS within the Australian Army given the likely threat by 2025. They say studies need to be carried out into how such weapons can be linked into integrated air defence architectures. However, MANPADS are also identified as a requirement for early entry forces. Higher level GBADS would require the provision of a local-area, real-time recognised air picture to land force commanders.
Manoeuvre forces GBADS are likely to be mounted on a common wheeled or tracked combat vehicle with a self-sustain operational capability of up to seven days. GBADs' capabilities against indirect fire weapons are also flagged, "enabled by the developing technology related to directed-energy weapon systems".
Source: Flight International
