In ‘Sticking to our guns: A troubled past produces a superb weapon’, the latest volume in ASPI’s series of case studies in defence projects, published today, Chris Masters delivers a cracking read about the ‘funny plastic weapon’ that replaced the Vietnam-era L1A1 assault rifle in the 1980s, the successors to which remain the Australian Defence Force’s primary personal weapon. The following is an excerpt from the book.

Introduction: self-sufficiency

A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war, and afterwards he turns his rifle in at the armory and he believes he’s finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands—love a woman, build a house, change his son’s diaper—his hands remember the rifle and the power it proffered.

—Anthony Swofford, writer and former US Marine

Gun debate can clamour like an angry mob, with noise and passion surging at the forward edge while reason and logic shrink to the rear. This may in part explain the polarity of opinion on Australia’s service rifle, the Austeyr.

According to one of the engineers closely associated with its development, ‘Australia should be proud of the Austeyr. It’s the first time we’ve done a ground up design of a frontline infantry rifle that’s now right up there with the world’s best.’

With equal conviction, a professional instructor at the range at Townsville’s Lavarack Barracks counters: ‘It’s an older weapons system that hasn’t adapted to current needs. It’s just kind of an older system that has been polished and had attachments added to try and fix those issues.’

This running battle about the most important piece of kit in Australia’s defence inventory that has dragged on for the past 30 years isn’t only about the weapon, but the industry it springs from. Central to the argument about the capability of the weapon is its sustainability.

Globalisation doesn’t make the island continent less geographically remote. Nor are the seas and shores less vulnerable. Self-sufficiency in weapons production and maintenance is a goal that’s sensible in peacetime and indispensable in a crisis.

Another critical goal is the alignment of the three main industry groups invested in the project: the designers, builders and users within the Australian defence estate. Producing a state-of-the-art weapon that will suit a range of uses, and for the space of a generation remain relatively futureproof, is the tallest of orders. When aspirations and objectives fall short, as will likely be the case, the key stakeholders tend to turn on one another. So, behind the battle to build a better weapon is another struggle: to harmonise team effort.

Another goal that should be unmasked at the outset is what’s sometimes described as ‘unobtainium’. No matter the expertise and budgetary power applied, there’s no such thing as a perfect weapon. Compromises relating to national capability, general purpose, fleet management and costing will inevitably cast a shadow of disappointment.

And the frowns will be mostly found on the faces of the soldiers—the ones who count the most. With the very fabric of their life invested in the performance of their personal weapon, the soldier understandably has prime leverage.

And, while I’m coming close to choking on my own words, it has to be declared that they don’t always know what they’re talking about. As seen too often, inexperience, personal preference, prejudice, fashion and vanity can come into play.

Meanwhile, the project managers, design engineers and manufacturers are obliged to mediate myriad demands and complaints while maintaining a cold, hard eye on the evidence.

The Austeyr story captures all these highs and lows. While it isn’t always appreciated, the people who have built it care about the product of their labour. Like the men and women in uniform, they contribute to the defence of Australia.

In subsequent chapters, I cover the way the weapon evolved and the arguments about its strengths and weaknesses—I hope without straying too far into a subsuming swamp of detail.

Criticism of the Austeyr will sometimes, I’m sure, be found to be valid and other times to be unfair. As in life, we need to sift nuggets of reality from the mullock of perception.

Like a sniper in a hide contemplating the target, we must measure our breath, advance situational awareness and focus.

An obvious outcome of all that heat generated by all that argument over an individual weapon is an issue of confidence. The Austeyr story isn’t only about barrels and bolts and bullets. It’s also about mindset, expectation management, training and communication.

Citizens of the future will always look back on the past as a period of lost opportunity. While little can be done to prepare for the unknown unknowns, we can be vigilant about lessons learned from modern and deeper history.

As eyes and minds and bottom lines turn to the ADF’s new Small Arms Replacement Program, the story of the last major acquisition and its attendant evolution is both interesting and important, cautionary and enlightening.

At last week’s Land Forces 2018 expo in Adelaide, Strategist defence editor Brendan Nicholson interviewed some of the speakers, including Katja Theodorakis from the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the ANU, Kate Louis of the Australian Industry Group, and Dr Albert Palazzo. In this special podcast you’ll also hear analysis on the event from ASPI’s Marcus Hellyer.

In Australia’s memory of the Great War, the Sinai–Palestine Campaign gets comparatively little thought after Gallipoli and the Western Front. The exception is the Battle of Beersheba, fought on 31 October 1917, which has lodged in the collective memory in a way that no other Australian action in Palestine has. The battle’s comparative fame probably owes much to the fact that it has been twice dramatised in feature films, first in the 1940s in Forty Thousand Horsemen and then again in the 1980s in the The Lighthorsemen. Both films use the dramatic charge by light horse as their centrepiece, and that part of the battle has seemingly become its defining moment. Of course, the battle involved more than just the charge, and as it joins the Great War centenary cavalcade it seems a good moment to give it a more thoughtful appreciation.

At the greatest remove it is useful to remember that this battle was just one episode in an epochal worldwide war that dramatically reshaped the international order. That contest was abundantly apparent in the Middle East, where almost all the great powers were pursuing their ambitions. Indeed, what had started as a defence of the Suez Canal and the ‘Egypt base’ had, by 1917, evolved into a British and French attempt to expand their empires and influence at the expense of their Ottoman opponents, who were in turn trying to expand theirs in the Caucasus.

Bearing this in mind, Britain’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) had, after defeating an Ottoman advance at Romani in August 1916, advanced across the northern Sinai before making two failed attempts to capture Gaza in March and April 1917. With the campaign stalled in southern Palestine, the War Office recalled the EEF’s lacklustre commander and sent out the more dynamic General Sir Edmund Allenby. With him came extra resources, and Allenby recrafted the EEF from a largely ad hoc colonial column into a modern army. His revitalised force was expected to restart the advance and urged to secure Jerusalem.

Hence Allenby opted to attack in southern Palestine by striking at his enemy’s southernmost flank at Beersheba. The water sources there would then facilitate a drive northward, which Allenby hoped would get behind Gaza and encircle the Ottoman garrison. Rather than an end in itself, seizing Beersheba was the first part of a great offensive to drive the enemy out of southern Palestine.

To that end, in the early morning of 31 October the EEF’s XX Corps commenced an artillery barrage and then infantry attack on the defences southwest of the town. Virtually ignored in Australia, this assault was entirely successful, but contested enough that a Victoria Cross was won and the attacking infantry suffered almost 1,200 casualties. In the meantime, the mounted troops of the Desert Mounted Corps, commanded by Australia’s Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Chauvel, had made a long approach march during the night to get into position southeast of the town. Here the first priority was to cut the Beersheba–Hebron road at Tel el Sakati, and seize a large hill known as Tel el Saba. This steep-sided hill had a well-supported Ottoman garrison in terraced trenches that dominated the approach to the town. Taking it was vital.

The 2nd Light Horse Brigade cut the road but had to endure heavy enemy fire for most of the rest of the day. The New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade was sent against Tel el Saba, but using mounted troops like infantry against prepared positions was tricky (despite what is often written and said, the light horse were not mounted infantry, but fulfilled a cavalry role). Lacking the man- or firepower to pound the entrenched enemy, they had to work their way forward until they could launch a final assault. That took hours and as the day marched on Chauvel sent Australian light horse to assist. The hill fell to the New Zealanders at around 3 pm. The route to town was now open but it had to be taken that day and Chauvel agreed to a suggested mounted attack. The 4th Light Horse Brigade was closest and its British divisional commander, Major-General Henry Hodgson, had issued orders several days earlier encouraging mounted attacks in the right circumstances. Two regiments lined up to the southeast of town and supported by artillery galloped in the fading light over the remaining Ottoman defences to capture the town.

It was remarkable feat of arms, but by no means the last cavalry charge, as is often claimed. There were numerous mounted attacks by Australian, British and Indian troops in the remainder of this campaign alone. Nor was Beersheba the ‘turning point’ of the campaign. The Ottomans had been on the back foot since Romani a year earlier and there was still another year’s worth of hard campaigning ahead.

There’s a simple and vital, but easily overlooked, requirement for the advanced equipment being developed for soldiers on the modern battlefield, says Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell.

No matter how marvellous is a piece of new gear, front line soldiers must be able to use it with ‘heads up, eyes on target, hands on weapons’.

A moment’s distraction to look down at a screen can mean opportunities lost, or worse, Campbell tells The Strategist. ‘The point is that as we equip our soldiers we must enable them to do their job through technology, not disable them from doing their job,’ says the first Special Forces officer to command the Army. That must be the driver of the basic technological augmentation of the soldier.

‘When a soldier has to look down, and away from their target, there’s immediately the possibility that soldier is no longer aware of the situation that is changing,’ Campbell says.

Some of a soldier’s new equipment, such as ballistic armour and helmets, is intended to increase his or her survivability. Radios and weapons are all about their capacity to influence the environment in which they’re operating.

‘It’s a reminder that technology should enable, and should never be designed to detract from the basic job of being aware and active on the battlefield.’

Campbell says a prime example of such new technology is the latest version of the Steyr rifle and new sighting systems, with which soldiers very consistently hit targets at 600 metres. ‘That’s at least double what you might normally expect. It’s a better rifle and a better sighting system and an average shot in the Army can consistently put 20 rounds into the centre of a half-metre target at 600 metres.’ This development has just doubled the effective range of influence on the battlefield of an infantry soldier.

Equipment such as tiny drones make soldiers much more aware of the wider environment around them without exposing them to danger, and allows them to develop better plans and to more quickly seize the initiative. ‘They’re incredibly valuable,’ says Campbell. ‘From the smallest unmanned aerial systems to larger vehicles used tactically, we now have our people routinely aware of what’s going on, both to the distance that they can see and then well beyond line of sight.

‘That awareness is in the control of infantry companies or battalions and it’s augmented by the wider awareness that a battalion group or a task force might be feeding into the system. You get complementary layers of awareness starting to emerge.’

Of course, says Campbell, the ADF is not the only force using such technology. ‘It’s quite routinely used by organisations in the Middle-East. Irregular terrorist or insurgent groups, as much as large conventional military forces, are now using a wide range of unmanned aerial systems. War is very actively a competitive environment and if you’re not paying attention to what other people are doing you’re likely to be tactically surprised.’

Armoured technology is another example. ‘Not only are you seeing more effective weapon systems—cannons that are more effective—but you also see different armours, some with active explosive device systems that can knock down incoming rocket propelled grenades. While a vehicle might still be defeated by a tank’s main armament, with the right active protective systems it can be very confident in a battlespace which has historically been dominated by small arms, RPGs and some forms of indirect fire.’

Advanced modern protective systems rely much less on the sheer thickness and weight of solid armour, says Campbell. The more effective those systems become, the more options you have for reducing the weight of your vehicle. At the same time, different forms of lightweight armour are being experimented with. That’s all about how to be protected but far more mobile, and hence more likely to survive on the battlefield.

The ADF’s integrated investment program is designed to progressively upgrade or replace obselete systems.

‘That’s a serious and expensive effort to create an integrated ADF and it needs to be very carefully managed over years to maintain the effectiveness of the total force.’

Campbell says the Army is pursuing three priority projects: ‘One is about networking our equipment and its connectivity to the broader ADF and, when appropriate, coalition networks. That is to enhance the digital awareness of the entire force and the capacity for elements of that force to sense and to transmit and for others to shoot as might be required. Basically to generate a whole greater than the sum of its parts.’

‘That’s nothing new, but we are technologically on the cusp of actually realising it as a total force and we need to ensure that, as we do it, we’re alert to both the security challenge of maintaining the integrity of that network and the signature challenge of the emissions that kind of network can generate that can be detectable. Networking the force makes it more aware and capable.’

A second goal is to provide armoured protection to allow troops to manoeuvre safely on a battlefield. Campbell says the Army lives in a world in which there’s a great deal of military equipment modernisation and it needs to be competitive. ‘At the moment we’re not competitive in ground armoured vehicle capability. ‘It’s well and truly time to phase out of service the M113 armoured personnel carrier and the ASLAV reconnaissance vehicle,’ says Campbell.

Two competing tenders for combat reconnaissance vehicle are being trialled. ‘Those vehicles and infantry fighting vehicles, in combination with tanks and armed reconnaissance helicopters, provide the Army’s punch.’

The third focus is on the ‘combat ensemble’, which not just enhances soldiers’ individual survivability but makes them a more effective and more aware influence on the battlefield.

That’s where, says Campbell, the phrase ‘heads up, eyes on target, hands on weapons’ tries to focus the way in which the Army wants technology to help its soldiers.

Generations of Australians have been told that the Australian Light Horse Regiments, which distinguished themselves from the Sinai to Syria during the Great War, were not Cavalry. They were Mounted Infantry.

Jean Bou, an historian who teaches at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU, addresses this matter of Australian military history and martial culture early in this fine book of which he’s the editor: The AIF in Battle: How the Australian Imperial Force Fought 1914-1918. His conclusion will surprise some. Bou explains:

‘Writing just a few years after the end of the First World War, Henry Gullett, the official historian of Australia’s involvement in the Palestine Campaign wrote of the Light Horse that they “were mounted riflemen, or in other words, mounted infantry, and their horses were intended merely to give them the greatest range of activity as a mobile body.” This brief passage … has proven remarkably durable.’

The major difference between mounted infantry and cavalry of the day was equipping the troops with sword or lance for deployment as shock troops at the charge. At Beersheba, the Light Horse did charge, of course, but the bayonet was the offensive weapon.

Pursuing Ottoman forces into Palestine, the commander of the Australian Mounted Division, Britisher Major-General Henry Hodgson, advocated issuing swords to his troops. Appreciating the success of Indian cavalry with the lance in early 1918, the Desert Mounted Corps commander, Lieutenant-General Harry Chauvel, agreed. Several brigades of the Light Horse then became cavalry, sweeping the enemy back into Syria and contributing substantially to Allenby’s victories.

This is a deceptively impressive book: seemingly far too brief for its aspirations in covering the AIF in European and Middle Eastern theatres, on land and in the air. But Bou’s ambitious editing has crafted a comprehensive guide to the First AIF in the cauldrons of battle, as it struggled to transform from a militia into a force capable of waging war on an industrial scale. And while The AIF in Battle is written primarily for an academic constituency, it repays reading by a far wider audience of those interested in the evolution of Australian arms from 1914-18.

Let’s be clear: from Gallipoli through Pozieres to Mont St Quentin, the soldiers of the First AIF set a standard which is still there to challenge our fighting men and women today. That the First AIF distinguished itself in battle’s not in doubt. The performance of the Australian Corps in 1918 on the Western Front, alone, is testament to the crack nature of our troops.

But Bou and his collaborators range across the vast landscape of the Great War, examining in detail the differing contributions of Australian warriors—from artillery to the air; trench raiding or mining operations; unit structures to the emerging Australian commanders—in a comprehensive assessment of the growth of the Australian military as well: its strengths and weakness and its ultimate battlefront success.

Some stories are already threads in the fabric of our military history. Others such as Aaron Pegram’s account of trench raiding to instil aggression and maintain tactical agility throw new light on Australian small unit discipline in the frustrating and dangerous static warfare of the Western Front.

Similarly,  the origins of close air support are discerned in Michael Molkentin’s chapter, ‘Over the Western Front: Air Power and the AIF’, as the emergence of the Australian Flying Corps, under the command of the Royal Flying Corps, made its presence felt in photographic reconnaissance; close support for Allied armies and as an instrument of strategic destruction. Like Britain’s other dominions, Australia supplied air crew in significant numbers, as we were to do again in 1939-45.  A high price was paid for empire loyalty and commitment.

Molkentin notes: ‘The dominions made a notable contribution to the empire’s effort in the air, with at least one in five of those killed in Britain’s flying services hailing from British settler societies.’

David Horner’s chapter on the Australian commanders is among the best. The pre-war reliance on a defence based primarily on militia units was soon demonstrated to be completely inadequate in modern warfare, something the Americans had learned in the war of 1812. Hard lessons were learned from Gallipoli to Fromelles to Bullecourt. The carnage earned widespread dissatisfaction with a British High Command apparently indifferent to casualty lists.

Pressure from William Morris Hughes’ government saw more Australian commanders promoted and  names such as John Monash, Talbot Hobbs, Charles Rosenthal, and John Gellibrand were at last acknowledged in reports as they assumed higher command posts.

Horner’s final assessment is instructive: ‘The existence of a multitude of competent Australian commanders by 1918 was an outcome that could only have been dreamed about when the AIF had been formed four years earlier. With this reservoir of expertise the 2nd AIF in the Second World War was led by experienced Australian commanders from the first day. Few of them had to learn their trade on the job.’

Unquestionably true and extraordinarily valuable in the defence of Australia a generation later, this truth underlines the cultural significance of the First AIF in the creation of an Australian defence doctrine that endures to the present. Bou and his colleagues are to be commended for an incisive analysis of the First AIF and its finest hours on the battlefield.