The future of the ADF is ‘fifth generation’, or at least the Chiefs of Army, Navy and Air Force think so. It might’ve been just a passing fad, given that the term originated as a company marketing slogan selling a long-delayed fast jet. But in recent years the expression has morphed into a useful buzzword encapsulating several deeper concepts. At its core, ‘fifth generation’ is all about ideas, about how we conceive of waging tomorrow’s wars—and preparing for them. It encompasses four major approaches:
- Networks. Modern war uses extensive digital networks. Conceptually, four interconnected and interdependent virtual grids—information, sensing, effects and command—overlie the operational theatre. The various force elements are interacting nodes on the grids that can each receive, act on and pass forward data.
- Combat cloud. Working together, the grids can form a virtual combat cloud—akin to commercial cloud computing—that allows users to pull and add data as necessary. The result is longer-range tactical engagements. It’s no more, ‘Fire when you see the whites of their eyes’, but rather, ‘Engage when a symbol labelled “adversary” appears on a shared display’.
- Multi-domain battle. There are five operational domains: land, sea, air, space and cyber. The key animating idea is cross-domain synergy, where force is applied across two or more domains in a complementary manner (PDF) to achieve an operational advantage.
- Fusion warfare. The fusion warfare concept addresses command and control concerns arising from additional information flows, software incompatibilities and intrinsic vulnerabilities to attack and deception.
The order of these approaches mostly reflects the sequence in which they’ve been incorporated into the concept of fifth-generation warfare. The oldest is network-centric warfare, dating from the mid-1990s; the others have become increasingly prominent over the last several years. The progression highlights that commercial information technology has often led military developments in the fifth generation. Cloud computing, for example, was initially implemented in the mid-2000s but it was not until the mid-2010s that the concept was embraced by military thinkers.
Please click here to read the full “Five fifth generation warfare dilemmas” article published at The Strategist, written by Griffith Asia Institute Visiting Fellow, Dr Peter Layton.
