Lessons from the 2022 Russian-Ukraine War: What can the Australian Defence Force learn from the failures of the Russian Federation Armed Forces military campaign that can be utilised when planning future military operations and campaigns?
This essay was written on 23 September 2022, before the Ukrainian recapture of Kherson in the South in October 2022.

Even Imperfect Tools Can Be Useful: An analysis of the MAP and its utility in combating complex adaptive systems.

An Analysis of Capability Development to Support the Future.
Research and public discourse indicate that the ADF needs to reform its acquisition and force design processes to make acquiring military power a faster process.[2] Many within the national security space continue to ask whether the current system can support the development of military technologies in an all-domain kill-web environment.

Linear can be good enough: Enhancing the ADF’s Military Appreciation Process by using Systems Engineering methods to help define complex adaptive systems in war.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces was a significant escalation of ongoing tension and conflict between the two countries. This essay will evaluate three elements of military campaign planning against Putin’s strategic objectives. Noting the Russia-Ukraine War is still ongoing, an assessment of ‘success’ will not be made; instead, Russian-Ukraine War campaigns conducted between 24 February 2022 to September 2022 (Ukraine retakes 2400 square miles, including the city of Kharkiv) will be used to evaluate military campaign planning effectiveness.

This essay argues that the ADF should primarily consider joint multi-domain systems to create adaptive ‘kill webs’ to succeed in the contemporary environment. This paper evaluates the historical ‘service, platform, and network-driven’ models to discern limitations in the ADF’s ability to generate critical joint systems of Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) to defend and Joint Fires and Effects (JFE) to attack potential adversaries.

The Russian approach in the 2022 Ukraine War.
This essay was written on 23 September 2022, before the Ukrainian recapture of Kherson in the South in October 2022. It offers a snapshot of the events leading up to that point. An analysis of Russian campaign planning and operations demonstrates how the Clausewitzian trinity of chance, passion and reason continues to hold true and has undermined Vladimir Putin's military foray into Ukraine.

Why the ADF needs to incorporate non-linearity into contemporary planning to seize a competitive advantage.
This paper will argue that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) must place greater emphasis on nonlinear thinking and methodologies to enable a more holistic understanding of the contemporary operational environment and develop the intellectual edge required to outsmart, out-innovate, and outmanoeuvre its adversary.

This paper argues that the ADF requires network-driven system design to maximise the effects of platforms and capabilities across all domains. System design through platform or Service is a relic of the past.

This essay argues that linear planning processes are the most effective method of justifying capability development to the Australian Government to then apply those capabilities as military violence in the complex adaptive system of war.

This article evaluates the principal strengths and weaknesses of the ADF’s Joint Military Appreciation Process when used in the planning and execution of operations against complex adaptive systems. It proposes that the ADF could either scrap the JMAP process and move to an existing and more suitable framework for complex adaptive systems, or continue to use the JMAP in conjunction with these more adaptive reiterative systems.

This essay's thesis is that Russia failed to achieve its primary objective due to inadequate operational risk management. This risk, combined with failures in combined arms warfare and logistical problems, led to Russian forces failing to maintain sufficient operational reach and reaching their culminating point before achieving their operational objective.