The Challenge of Shaping the Way Ahead for the Ready Force and Preparing for Future Threats

Prior to the 26 September 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar which focused on shaping a way ahead for the ready force, I spoke with John Conway to get his perspective on the focus of the seminar.

With four decades experience in the business of air combat across operations and industry, John is identified this way on the foundation website:

John is the Managing Director of Felix, an independent company providing specialist capability development and operational analysis services to Defence since 2017. He was previously a business development and strategy executive with Raytheon Australia specialising in air combat integration, electronic warfare, advanced weapons systems, test and training ranges, and integrated air and missile defence.

John retired from the Royal Air Force as a Group Captain in 2010 having served 24 years in a number flying, staff and senior command roles. His operational experience on F4 Phantom and Tornado F3 aircraft included Cold War Europe, the South Atlantic, the Balkans, and the Middle East. He commanded the United Kingdom’s largest Permanent Joint Operating Base at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus between 2005 and 2008 enabling the airbridge into Iraq and Afghanistan, and supporting strategic ISR operations in the eastern Mediterranean.

Conway underscored that the foundation seminars had most recently focused on the strategic redesign of the government for the ADF. But the future is not yet here, and the question is how lethal and survivable and effective is the ADF now in its operations? How can it be more effective in the near term? And how are the ADF and defence industry focused on doing so?

“For defence leadership, there is a very complex challenge of balancing investments in today’s battles and the future ones. But to understand the challenges for the ready force we need to get outside of the Canberra environment and understand how operational commanders and the ready force are addressing current challenges and shaping a practical way ahead.

“We have threats squeezing the defence force. We have a challenging fiscal environment. Despite starting from a less-than-ideal situation, how do we operate more effectively in the here and now while keeping an eye on the future? How do we get everybody to work together to create outcomes greater than the sum of the parts?”

He then discussed the late Cold War period where the West understood that it was at a disadvantage with the Soviet Union in a number of areas but worked on building its own asymmetric advantages as part of a credible deterrent structure. He argued that we need the same attitude and approach for today’s world as well.

By focusing on our competitive advantages and enhancing them, one can build a pathway to reinforce the ready force and build for the future.

He identified a number of areas for particular attention where activities today can shape the development of the future force.

The first is the sophisticated exploitation of the electromagnetic spectrum in both defensive and offensive counter air missions. Here he discussed the importance of enhancing the resilience and redundancy in our systems and honing a kill web approach which makes the denial of core ADF electromagnetic capabilities very difficult and hence enhancing the overall deterrent effect.

The second was the question of shaping credible ways ahead to build combat mass. Here the focus is upon building and operating within the ready force various types of autonomous collaborative systems and working them in as key enablers of the payloads necessary for a significantly enhanced integrated force.

The third is strengthening the enablers of a kill web, notably in terms of C2 and distributed ISR and the ability to perform effective counter-ISR against the adversary. Central to this is an enterprise approach to mission data management and reprogramming for the integrated force. Work is being done to enable the ready force now and how it is being done is shaping the future force as well.

He concluded with a very important core point about leveraging and building on the ready force and our lessons learned in the Cold War as we build the future force.

“I think going back to some of the traditional ways that we’ve done things in the Cold War and making them more contemporary by the exploitation of new radio frequency technologies and putting the money into the back end of the systems, through the networks, the comms architecture, the mission data environment, and start bringing tempo as well to the way we operate.

“It sounds a little bit more like an evolution rather than a revolution. And I think that’s fair.  We don’t need to destroy everything that we’ve learned in the past. We just need to keep investing in that next stage and accept that the future probably is a smaller available workforce, and this means we need to effectively exploit technology such as autonomous systems for an enhanced ready force.”