Australia is confronted with a dynamic strategic environment that is continuously evolving. In meeting the exigencies of that environment, Australia will rely increasingly on the power it derives from networked government agencies and the processes for whole-of-government approaches to threats and problems. These exigencies will arise with little notice, impacting on national interests at home and overseas, and may originate from home soil as much as from another country.
As Australia finds itself engaged in persistent operations, where traditional distinctions blur between peace and war, combatants and non-combatants, and foreign and domestic activities, it will need to be perpetually reassessing any strategic gaps both in its preparedness to act and its actual performance on the day.[111] Accordingly, Australia needs the ability to focus, shape, and guide national effort across its networks. That national effort can no longer be permitted to be fragmented in its organisation and disjointed in its application.[112] Any national effort must incorporate an offensive dimension as well as a defensive one, as well as preventive and responsive policies.[113]
From a military perspective, we are clearly moving into the fourth generation of warfare, a generation we might term ‘net-war’. The first generation involved massed manpower, the second massed firepower, and the third manoeuvre. Net-war will be characterised by antagonists who will fight in the
political, economic, social and military arenas and communicate their messages through a combination of networks and mass media. This generation is likely to be based more on ideas rather than military technology; this is a crucial point. Warfare will not be the relatively clear-cut, high technology ‘stately dance’ of conventional war but rather extremely complex, mainly low-intensity conflicts. In these conflicts it will be hard to differentiate between war and peace, military operations and crimes, front and rear areas, combatants and non-combatants. Fighting will involve an amalgam of military tactics from all four generations and the concepts of ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ will probably cease to exist.[114]
When these pressures are combined with where the ADF is moving with respect to NCW, there are compelling reasons to oversee developments from a single organisational perspective. A Net-war or Cyber-warfare Centre would provide just this—ensuring a joined-up national effort that incorporated offensive, defensive, preventive and responsive strategies, policies and actions while supporting the development and protection of robust networks that underpin the ADF’s NCW capability. Such a Centre would be responsible for all aspects of operational planning, support and training, as well as research and capability development not only for the ADF but across national security agencies as a whole. Moreover, the Centre would have a key role in supporting Australia as network complexity and national, allied and coalition Internet-working increase in the years ahead.
[111] Donald Reed refers to this as the ‘new strategic reality’ in Donald J. Reed, ‘Why Strategy Matters in the War on Terror’, Homeland Security Affairs, vol. II, no. 3, October 2006, p. 5, available at <http://www.hsaj.org/pages/volume2/issue3/ pdfs/2.3.10.pdf>, accessed 3 March 2008.
[112] Reed, ‘Why Strategy Matters in the War on Terror’, Homeland Security Affairs, p. 13. Reed sees this as the essence of strategy going forward.
[113] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 2004, p. 363, available at <http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf>, accessed 3 March 2008.
[114] David Potts (ed.), The Big Issue: Command and Combat in the Information Age, Strategic and Combat Studies Institute Occasional Paper no. 45, CCRP Publication Series, February 2003, pp. 244–45, available at <http://www.dodccrp.org/files/Potts_Big_Issue.pdf>, accessed 3 March 2008.