Posted on 07/04/2008 4:40:08 PM PDT by naturalman1975
WHEN Peter Leahy joined the Australian Army 37 years ago, our soldiers were highly proficient in counterinsurgency warfare. Coming out of the New Guinea campaign in World War II, the army had been engaged continuously in unconventional conflict, including the Malayan emergency in the 1950s and confrontation with Indonesia in the early 1960s, followed by Vietnam.
Nearly four decades on, the army is back in the counterinsurgency game in Afghanistan, acquiring new war-fighting skills. Army planners are now writing a new counterinsurgency doctrine that embraces a wholly different battlefield to that experienced in the jungles of South Vietnam.
Lieutenant-General Leahy, 55, retired from the army on Thursday as the longest serving army chief since Harry Chauvel 80 years ago.
But unlike Chauvel, who stepped down in 1930 at the onset of the Depression, leaving a budget-starved permanent land force of barely 1500 men, Leahy is leaving when the army is flourishing and in the middle of a 10-year, $10 billion rebuilding program.
During his six years as army chief, Leahy has presided over the most radical transformation in the land force since Vietnam. The 21st-century Australian army has undergone significant changes in its combat formations and acquired new equipment worth billions of dollars, including tanks, armoured fighting vehicles, sophisticated satellite communications and armed reconnaissance helicopters.
The new hardware has been accompanied by a thorough overhaul of training and war-fighting doctrine, as well as the army reserve. During the Leahy era the army has been fully stretched by a broad range of overseas operations, including combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and stabilisation missions in East Timor and Solomon Islands.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
Handgun in the pocket?
“Tomorrow’s wars will not be fought by men, but by robots - in fields, in the mountains, and even possibly, in space.
And remember that it will be your duty to control, service and maintain those robots.”
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