Keeping the nation safe requires the Australian Defence Force to maximise the advantages of closely working on operations with a broad range of government agencies and allies, says the ADF’s new chief, General Angus Campbell.

The ADF moved long ago from just being ‘joint’, in terms of the three services operating closely together, to a norm of tight interagency cooperation, Campbell tells The Strategist.

‘The defence organisation that operates on its own is operating below its true capacity’, he says.

‘I don’t think we’ve been on an operation for decades that didn’t involve other elements of the national security community, our diplomats, our customs service, and our intelligence agencies, embassies and high commissions’, Campbell says.

‘When this whole range of organisations is knitted together with Defence, with the Australian Federal Police and operating collectively, that’s the only way to generate the full measure of Australian capacity to contribute to and, in some circumstances, lead the resolution of problems.’

That is what made Australia effective in calming civil strife in Solomon Islands and Bougainville, for example, the general says.

As chief of the defence force, Campbell is focusing on three key areas: performance on operations, relationships with other nations’ forces, and the handling of the historic $200 billion capability acquisitions.

‘First, the continuing high-level effectiveness of our operational commitments’, he says. ‘Everyone in Australia expects their defence force to be expert at our job, the conduct of operations, the preparation for people to undertake those operations, and the reintegration, redevelopment and the reset of people, equipment and concepts of operation after a deployment.

‘I see a very impressive force doing great work in the world, and we need to continue that, learn from it, and take the right lessons to continue to strengthen that work.’

Such operations have to be innately joint, coalition and networked and secure in terms of both physical and cyber protection, he says.

‘What I see is a very, very impressive organisation across the board, and I see the people in it, not just doing their job well, but being able to discriminate and understand how to innovate, how to determine the right path in those grey circumstances where there’s no black or white answer.’

Campbell says, ‘The second area is building defence-to-defence relationships, the habits of cooperation, the norms of operating together with partners in our near region and in areas where our interests are expressed.

‘This is profoundly important. You’re always stronger when you’re working as a joint team, as an interagency team, and as a coalition team, and that’s something that we have to constantly work on and never make assumptions about.’

The third area, he says, is about respecting the commitment and the trust implicit in the major equipment purchasing program costing about $200 billion.

‘It’s a big, and complex, challenge’, Campbell says. ‘It’s going to take a very considerable effort, not just from our uniformed people and Defence public servants, but also through the relationship between us and local and international industry partners who are fundamental to realising military capability.’

That won’t succeed without the right people and well-resourced, innovative reform of systems and processes to ensure efficiency.

‘Without both people and reform what we’re trying to do can’t be realised.’

Asked what strategic challenges Australia and the ADF are likely to face in the next few years, Campbell says that trying to predict the future is fraught and usually pointless because there are so many challenges, interests and possibilities at play.

‘We need rather to acknowledge that we have changing relationships with the great-power nations—the United States, China, India, Japan, South Korea—particularly in the Pacific, and to take account of the behaviour of nations such as North Korea’, he says.

‘Then there’s the influence of terrorism, which is not just specific to one type or one purpose of terrorism, but rather it’s a reflection of the empowerment that modern technology provides to the individual, and the capacity for disparate individuals to connect and to act.

‘We may well see an ongoing challenge in the terrorist insurgent space, whether it’s in the Middle East, or as we’ve seen in the southern Philippines, or in the movement of fighters between nations coming home or going elsewhere. That challenge will continue but in different forms.’

Campbell says the risk of conflict between nations has not gone away and statecraft is essential to manage issues. The risk needs to be actively mitigated by engagement, by building understanding and by the work that diplomats, military personnel, governments and police agencies and international organisations do every day, he says.

Rapid technological change affecting every aspect of life throughout the region provides great opportunities but also challenges and points of rub and tension. Campbell says Australia wants the continued development of a rules-based international order and recognises the prosperity and opportunity that has emerged for the Indo-Pacific in the last 70 years since the destruction of World War II.

A role the ADF, with almost 60,000 active members, can play in the region was demonstrated when Islamic State–related groups captured the Philippine city of Marawi last year.

With Australia providing training and intelligence support, Marawi showed how the ADF could work with the Armed Forces of the Philippines to build their capacity and improve the security of their country.

‘I think that that assistance was appreciated and it’s been an experience of mutual learning and development’, Campbell says.

‘We’ve further deepened our understanding of the security challenges in the region, of the kinds of operations the Philippine armed forces have been participating in, the particular circumstances of urban warfare in that kind of an environment, as much as we’ve been given the opportunity to help develop the skills of the Philippine armed forces. As long as we’re welcome, I think it’s that right thing a neighbour does to help.’

Campbell says Australia’s military-to-military relationship with Indonesia is good and it’s moving in a very positive direction. He had a very constructive, friendly and enthusiastic meeting with Indonesian National Armed Forces commander Air Chief Marshall Hadi Tjahjanto in Darwin. ‘We talked about developing things we’re doing and new things to do together.’

Campbell visited Indonesian F-16 fighter pilots with their aircraft and ground crew who were in Australia to take part in the Royal Australian Air Force’s Exercise Pitch Black. ‘They were impressive young people, incredibly enthusiastic to be part of the activity and an indicator of our relationship that I think bodes very well for our military-to-military engagement.’

In Campbell’s previous job, as chief of army, this special forces officer banned certain badges and other paraphernalia—including the grim reaper, the skull and crossbones, Spartans, the Phantom and the Punisher—that he considered inappropriate for a democratic nation’s military force.

That’s important, he says, because the ADF is subordinate to the law and the civil authority and dedicated to the protection of the nation. ‘We’re not a force that acts outside the law as a vigilante. Nor do we regard the law as an optional choice.’

‘The symbols we have project a message of who we are to everybody around us’, Campbell says. ‘They reinforce the nature of our service to the nation and dedication to a democratic, lawful society that we protect.

‘In doing that, they project to local communities, villages, people in desperate circumstances, the weak, the wounded and the vulnerable, who are the norm of the operational areas in which we are active, a message that we are Australian, we stand for law, and we stand for the protection of the innocent, and the vulnerable, and indeed, the care for the wounded.

‘We are not seeking in any way to terrorise, and that can be how certain symbols are received by a community in which we are operating.’

Campbell says his intention was to remind ADF members to avoid the unintended but nevertheless influential effect of glorifying death as their purpose.

‘Death is not our purpose. Defence is our purpose. And on occasions, it absolutely requires killing, but it has to be a conscious choice, not an assumption that we as an organisation simply kill without discrimination. I saw the emergence of symbols that were at odds with the relationship between a military and a democratic society which it’s duty-bound to defend.’

It is estimated only about 3% of the army wore such symbols. ‘But left to prosper and propagate, they can be very seductive’, Campbell says, ‘and it can be very easy to get into a comfortable popular-culture norm that’s quite at odds with the responsibilities given to persons who have access to the most lethal weapons systems our nation has ever provided them.’

Since Campbell became CDF, he’s raised that with the service chiefs. ‘We’ve had a discussion and I think that the service chiefs get it.’

The hard part of running the Defence organisation is the trade-offs—lining up capability, strategy and resources to work out what can and can’t be done, says Department of Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty.

‘A challenge I’ve faced, that I think is an essential role of the secretary and the Chief of the ADF, is aligning those three elements,’ says the department head who’s now eight months into the job.

‘A lot of people have views about either defence policy or platforms and it’s good to be able to read, to listen to all of those. But the hard challenge for government is the decisions that I and the CDF, and the senior leadership group in Defence, take to make recommendations to government about shifting resources to respond in an agile way to changing circumstances.’

Moriarty says that’s very difficult work but it’s also incredibly important and rewarding. ‘To think I’d like to be able to do this but I can’t do as much of it, or as quick as I’d like. So how am I going to balance that with a whole range of other work that the government’s asked us to do?

‘The hard part is to bring it together and make really hard choices, and to offer government advice on those trade-offs. I take that responsibility very seriously. And I know the CDF does, as well. They’re hard choices to make.’

With a decades-long $200 billion re-equipment program underway, is the government pushing too hard to get things done too fast?

‘No,’ says Moriarty. ‘The government is ambitious and has set a very demanding timeline. But the institution has also been given the resources to deliver to the timeline and we’re going to deliver as best we can to meet the government’s objectives.’

So is the whole program achievable? ‘It’s achievable but it’s challenging. And it’s putting some pressure on the organisation, but we just have to respond to that.’

Far from coming to the job as a Defence neophyte, Moriarty has spent a lot of time there before. He joined the department in 1986, and in 1988 he graduated with the Sword of Honour and top of his class as an officer in the Army Reserve.

Moriarty spent most of that first decade in the Defence Intelligence Organisation, and in his mid-20s he was sent to Saudi Arabia as an intelligence officer in the headquarters of US Central Command working for General Norman Schwarzkopf during the First Gulf War.

He was part of a DIO detachment and on full-time army service as a uniformed captain during Operation Desert Shield and then Desert Storm as part of a team of ground forces analysts preparing intelligence briefings for General Schwarzkopf and his senior commanders.

‘I was there with outstanding Australian Defence Force personnel, including some who are still serving with the Defence organisation,’ says Moriarty. ‘It was an amazing experience. I greatly admired General Schwarzkopf, who was a very charismatic leader. Everybody who worked on his headquarters was very impressed with his personal dynamism, but also by his strong strategic vision and his view of the importance of allies and partners.’

Defence, security and diplomatic issues have remained the focus of Moriarty’s working life, with key points as ambassador to Iran and to Indonesia, Commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, International and National Security Adviser and chief of staff to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Moriarty was ambassador to Iran from 2005 to 2008. The Americans didn’t have an embassy in Tehran and invited him to Washington to brief President George W. Bush and a small number of his senior advisers.

‘They were very interested in a range of perspectives. We have something to offer through the presence we have in our embassy and people in our system who have deep insights into Iran and the Middle East,’ he says. ‘We benefit from the US information and intelligence picture in so many places globally, so being able to share perspectives with the Americans, I thought, was a useful thing that Australia could do.’

‘US presidents receive a lot of briefings on Iran and the other strategic challenges in the Middle East, and President Bush was interested in our perspective.’

How did such experiences shape the thinking he brings to Defence?

‘When it comes to Australian national power, we need to think more holistically. When the government talks in defence and foreign policy white papers about the need for integrated, coordinated policy approaches, I think that’s absolutely right.’

As a diplomat, he spent considerable time considering how the various elements of Australia’s national power could be used to influence policy outcomes or to convince another country’s government to adopt a position or to accept an Australian view. ‘You have to think about how countries meet the challenge of having their strategic preferences accepted. You need to think about the range of tools that a government has to exercise influence or power.’

‘I thought a lot about Australian power, our economic power, military power, diplomatic capacities. And about how all sorts of things contribute to that—from the standing and the reach of our educational institutions, our universities, to how we are perceived and how our business community is perceived. That includes things like the New Colombo Plan, our students, the reach that we have in the region through our businesses.’

‘Security cooperation and collaboration contribute in a very positive way for Australia,’ he says. The role of the ADF doesn’t simply involve delivering operational outcomes, but also what can be done through exercises, exchanges, and training and development through the defence cooperation program.

‘I have thought about what we do well and what we don’t do well. In the strategic environment that we face, boundaries are blurring between traditional security threats and contemporary security threats. That’s making whole-of-government responses even more compelling.’

A revolution is needed in how the Australian Federal Police fights crime as increasingly tech-savvy criminals and terrorists outstrip the skills of law enforcement agencies, says the force’s commissioner, Andrew Colvin.

‘The environment is changing around us and we’re not adapting quickly enough’, Commissioner Colvin tells The Strategist before making a landmark speech to ASPI.

‘The pace of change in the criminal space is such that the time is long gone where we can allow changes in our policing culture to be evolutionary. We must now think in terms of revolution’, he says.

‘It’s like the frog in hot water. The water’s getting hotter and hotter around Commonwealth policing and we were doing our best to keep up and stay afloat.’

Detailing his push to change policing culture in the 6,500-strong AFP, Colvin says: ‘It’s about transforming to become the organisation we need to become and putting an accelerator onto that.’

There must be a much broader national conversation about policing in the public and in government, he says. There’s more crime now than police can deal with. ‘When you’re talking about cybercrimes affecting people directly, crimes against children, or major drug importations and we’re not able to deal with it all because demand’s too high, then we’ve got to think about doing our job differently.’

Colvin says that terrorism was a game-changer for him because it demonstrated that police could have a great impact by disrupting, dismantling and taking action early. ‘Clearly you can’t wait for a crime to be committed in the terrorism space, but it’s the same with organised crime and transnational crimes. If we can remove the facilitator, then we can have a much bigger impact on organised crime. By removing the profits, I’ll hurt criminals a lot more.’

The future, he says, is not just officers doing police work but an array of multi-discipline teams working together—the Tax Office taking action against a crime syndicate or AUSTRAC shutting down an account rather than waiting for money or drugs to be smuggled in to take out a bikie gang.

Colvin says police have for too long been treating technology as the enemy rather than embracing it. ‘Let’s treat the internet as an advantage for ourselves. We’ve been saying forever that crime is more complex, so why train my officers the way I was trained 28 years ago? I need to train them differently, to make them think differently. I probably need a lawyer sitting next to my fraud and corruption investigators as much as I need another police officer and an accountant sitting alongside them.’

Skills are more important than numbers, Colvin says. ‘The AFP doesn’t need to have just police. There need to be enough to do the police work but with different skill sets and capabilities behind them. ‘We’re turning the model on its head and shifting to a much more capability-based structure. We need a revolution in the type of workforce we have, but first and foremost it’s about how we see ourselves and how we think about problems. That’s a revolution because police are very conservative. We draw comfort from doing things the way we’ve always done them. I’m asking us to think differently about that. If a 2 kilogram seizure means I can disrupt a major organised crime syndicate, then that’s better than a 500 kilogram seizure where I get two students who are the first people to put their hands on the drugs.’

Australians are among the world’s earliest adopters of modern technologies and Colvin says criminals are at the front end of that curve and they’re using it before the police. ‘We realise how big an issue encrypted phones and encrypted over the top applications are when we find we’re going dark on many of our investigations because criminals are using encrypted platforms. As we’re thinking how we’ll catch up, they’re moving on to the next encrypted platform. We all know now there’s the internet and an internet that sits underneath the internet. Criminals were in there using it. We found out about it by following the trail of criminal conduct and landing at a point that was like a dead end until we realised that there’s another whole world under the internet. But we’re now playing catch-up in the dark web.’

He has smart people who are learning very fast—but they’re learning it rather than it being a natural extension of what they do. Now, the AFP is competing for the skills of young people who live and breathe technology and who can follow the chains.

This challenges the AFP’s notions of where it recruits from. ‘We have to accept that some people we want to bring into the organisation, I’m not going to say they have criminal pasts, but they probably played around on the internet in ways that we would ordinarily in policing have said, “We can’t hire you”.  We need to test that and assess if they are still fit for policing. Probably, many of them will be.’

These digital natives might not be police officers. ‘They may not need a badge and a gun. Traditional police officers will still have to do those bits.’ Ideally, staff will have more mobility and be able to move between functions to refresh, retrain and explore different ways of doing business.

‘At the moment, because of our hierarchy, you join the organisation through the same process I went through 28 years ago and you’re largely then asked to do things the way they’ve always been done. A lot of the people we’re recruiting want opportunities to experiment, to do it differently, find better ways to do things.

‘I’ve got to build the culture that allows that and break the culture that stymies it. We are finding resistance to it because I think our culture is one of trying to do things the way they’ve always been done rather than the way we need to do it differently. My younger generation of police officers are very willing to change and have a thirst for it, but people like myself who’ve been in the organisation a long time and my colleagues probably find it difficult to wrap our heads around doing things differently because it involves risk.’