The success of the Chief of Army’s 2007 Seminar, “Warfighting in a Contemporary Environment”, reinforces Army’s role as a learning organisation, says Chief of Army MAJGEN Lou Gardiner.

The seminar was organised by the Army’s Military Studies Institute and Massey University’s Centre for Defence Studies, and held at Massey University 29-30 August. It was attended by over 220 personnel, including a large number of senior Army officers and warrant officers, personnel from Navy and Air Force, and academics, students, and representatives of other government agencies.

The objectives of the seminar were to increase attendees’ awareness of current strategic issues and trends, explore emerging trends in warfighting theory such as the Three Block War concept and Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW ), and discuss the implications of these developments for warfighting in the New Zealand Army today and in the future.

Speakers included the Minister of Defence, Hon Phil Goff; Chief of Defence Force, LTGEN Jerry Mateparae; and a range of academics and military personnel from New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Major General Jim Molan of the Australian Army spoke about emerging war fighting concepts from his experience in Iraq as Chief of Operations of the Multi-National Force in Iraq in 2004/2005.

Colonel (Rtd) Thomas Hammes, the author of The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st century, spoke about the concept, generated in the late 1980s, that a fourth generation of war (4GW ) had evolved that allowed the weak to defeat the strong. He provided an overview of 4GW , and spoke about how it had evolved in the last twenty years.

LTCOL Omer Lavoie spoke about the Canadian Army’s experiences in light armoured vehicle (LAV ) operations in Khandahar, Afghanistan. His paper, which was well supported by video footage and graphics, was particularly well received. “Tactics are always interesting to military officers, and LTCOL Lavoie was a passionate speaker who canvassed a number of issues, including the use of Canadian Light Armoured Vehicles which are similar to those we use in the New Zealand Army,” said MAJGEN Gardiner.

New Zealand Army officers COL Tim Keating, LTCOL Darren Beck and LTCOL Andrew Fox gave overviews of New Zealand’s operational deployments to Afghanistan, Tonga and Timor Leste. They spoke about the issues they encountered during their deployments, and about the complexity of the respective environments within which they operated.

In his concluding remarks, MAJ GEN Gardiner acknowledged the value of the seminar, but challenged attendees to continue to monitor and think about emerging issues and trends. “While warfare is often seen in simplistic terms, nowadays it is anything but simplistic,” he said. “Contemporary warfare can involve the three block war where soldiers can be moving from providing humanitarian assistance one hour, and into a sector where there’s an insurgency the next, or maybe into a situation where there is a full-scale conventional war.”

This, in turn, requires that Army develop its soldiers’ abilities to think and adapt to different situations. “Our soldiers must understand the laws of armed conflict in all these situations, and of course the Rules of Engagement which will be quite different in each situation. The modern environment is very complex: warfare is not just about skills and firing weapons. It’s also about judgement and having mental agility,” he concluded.

Image Gallery - Issue 381