By Rear Admiral Mark Hammond AM RAN
This article was first published in the Australian Naval Review, 2021, Issue 1, in June 2021.
Introduction
On assuming command of Her Majesty’s Australian Fleet on 17 November 2020, I inherited a Fleet in a strong material state and consistently generating very good availability. This is testament to the fine work of my predecessor, Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead, AO, RAN; his Fleet Command team; and the ongoing seaworthiness and governance reforms across the Navy enterprise over the past decade. I therefore focused on articulating my priorities to drive command alignment and interrogating my ‘inheritance’ to understand contemporary challenges and opportunities.
My Priorities for Fleet Command
- Safety of our people and platforms (seaworthiness)
- Our people – fit for life, fit to fight, trained to fight
- Warfighting readiness – ready to fight
Without diminishing ongoing risks and challenges, I note that our seaworthiness (and therefore our availability to government) is consistently a good-news story. Rear Admiral Smith (Deputy Chief of Navy and Head of Navy Personnel, Training and Resources) continues to drive Navy’s efforts to optimise our people systems. Accordingly, my main effort is directed to the broader team and system issues that enable warfighting readiness of the Fleet in the context of our contemporary operating environment.
Our Contemporary Operating Environment
The Australian Government released the 2020 Defence Strategic Update (DSU20) on 1 July 2020. DSU20 was heralded at the time as the most consequential strategic realignment since the end of World War II. It points to the realisation that Australia is in a very different geopolitical and security environment from that which underpinned our thinking for the past 20 years.
From a Defence perspective, the Indo-Pacific region is characterised by increasing numbers, modernisation and preparedness of military forces. Proliferation of next-generation fighter aircraft, submarines, space and cyber capabilities and hypersonic weapons, coupled with growing capabilities in autonomous systems and military application of artificial intelligence, means that our dynamic maritime environment (upon which our economic and security wellbeing depends) has become increasingly complex, congested and contested. Equally important, DSU20 eradicated the longstanding view that ample strategic warning time exists, permitting slow, deliberate planning and preparation of forces to counter threats to Australia’s national interests.
Implications for Our Fleet
The removal of this assumption from our strategic calculus necessitates a renewed emphasis on preparedness for full-spectrum operations. This is a very different paradigm from that of our recent past. Preparations for deploying to the Middle East region generally focused on force protection against an asymmetric threat, with a ‘weather eye’ on some conventional threats.
During my first 100 days in the role (in a COVID-19 environment including lockdowns, closed borders and an inability to travel domestically or overseas) I spoke to as many people as I could, through whatever means I could, to enable a ‘listen, learn, lead’ approach to command.
I concluded that DSU20 literacy was porous across the Fleet – especially at deck plate level. My command team’s effectiveness as ‘strategic translators’ was therefore critical to ensuring Fleet teams understand just how much our strategic and operating environments are changing and what that means for us. Specifically, it was necessary to drive a Fleet-wide understanding of DSU20 and its implications for Defence. All of our Commanding Officers have been explaining this context to our people across the Fleet throughout 2021 to ensure mission clarity and unity of effort at all levels.
This process also illuminated the urgent need to systemically optimise Fleet preparedness for today’s challenges. In the context of DSU20 Fleet must be postured efficiently and effectively 24/7 to enable Defence’s mission to shape our region, to deter threats to our national interests, and to respond ‘in stride’ to any such threat if required. I specifically say ‘in stride’ because our teams operate throughout the Indo-Pacific every day, and in our dynamic environment they must be ready to confront dynamic changes while forward deployed. I codified our obligations to respond to this challenge in a Commander’s Intent statement in February 2021. In short, Fleet Command must do everything humanly and legally possible to optimise the Fleet-in-being so that when our government directs a response – or the changing environment demands it – we are able to respond to the greatest possible effect in the minimum possible time.
Optimising the Fleet
Fleet’s efforts to meet these obligations are being coordinated through the Fleet Optimisation Program(FOP). On any given day there is first-rate work underway to improve Fleet’s delivery of naval power, yet much of it occurs either in isolation or in duplication of efforts around our nationally dispersed commands. The FOP establishes a framework for coordination along three lines of effort: availability, sustainability and lethality.
The availability of the Fleet is as good as it has ever been during my career. The Fleet Seaworthiness Management System has fundamentally altered the day-to-day business of Fleet as the application of a seaworthiness lens across our enterprise has driven numerous reforms. We must maintain this commitment as the foundation for the safety of our platforms, systems and people.
A capability must also be professionally sustained in order to repeatedly deliver naval power wherever and whenever it is needed. Fleet planning discipline ensures our future availability is not mortgaged to support current activities. The sustainability line of effort within the FOP ensures that Fleet continues to be accountable as a conscientious custodian of the public purse, and that the safety and wellbeing of our people – our most important resource – is safeguarded. Our workforce must be operate in a well-governed, cost-effective and safe environment, within a leadership culture that inspires them to resolutely commit to our mission.
Finally, the lethality line of effort focuses Fleet on continually refining and improving our ability to find, fix, hold at risk and, if necessary, finish adversaries as part of the Joint Force. A classified Fleet Warfighting Plan provides the contemporary framework within which Fleet will optimise warfighting concepts, systems, tactics, techniques and procedures. Fleet will continue the vital work to inform the future RAN Fleet, but we must be unrelenting in our pursuit of professionally mastering the delivery of lethal effects by the Fleet-in-being. This is not about doing more with less. This is about achieving our full potential with the teams and tools we already have. Where we should, we will stop doing some things.
Collectively these three lines of effort are synchronised, prioritised and resourced through the FOP to ensure that the Fleet is best positioned to deliver credible response options capable of deterring and responding to actions against Australia’s interests, and providing the means to shape and influence our region.
Building a High-Performance Team
In addition to my Command Priorities and the guiding framework of the FOP, my Commander’s Expectations articulate how I expect my leadership teams to behave in order to maximise our potential as a high-performing team of teams:
- One Defence, One Navy, Two Headquarters. Fleet is both enabled and governed by Navy and Defence Headquarters. We perform our role through delegations from the Chief of Navy, derived from the Chief of the Defence Force. We must align our efforts with our superior commanders, which will in turn ensure we are attuned to government’s strategic direction about what it requires the Australian Fleet to do, and how it expects us to do it.
- Leadership. Managers achieve outcomes; leaders achieve enduring results with, and through, our people. I seek to achieve enduring results by investing in our junior leaders while building a cadre of selfless ‘enterprise’ leaders who invest in their people. It is incredible what can be achieved when nobody cares who gets the credit.
- Mission Mindset. I value a ‘can-do – SAFELY’ By this I mean tenacious endeavour to fulfil the mission, but in a risk-informed manner. Commanders must constantly analyse the environment for risks and understand the controls in place to mitigate or eliminate those risks.
- Mission Command. I have pledged to provide Commanding Officers with a clear Commander’s Intent. I expect them to use initiative to achieve the mission. I have asked our leaders to invest in and empower their subordinates through delegation, ensuring appropriate checks and balances are applied.
- Warfare Mastery. We are to be experts at what we do, with a hunger to be better. We must develop an intimate knowledge of all of our weapon systems and munitions, and hone our ability to consistently employ them accurately at ‘the speed of relevance’.
- Walk the Deck Plates. COVID-19 has demanded much of our Fleet personnel and their families. Our Commanding Officers must be proactively observing and caring for our people and their loved ones – now more than ever.
- Timeliness – bad news doesn’t get better with time. The first report on any issue will usually be (at least) partly incorrect, but we must not delay reporting unnecessarily. Early reporting empowers the enterprise to be proactive on issues rather than reactive.
- Brevity. I value reports that are short, sharp and to the point. Albert Einstein said it best: ‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’
- Do the math. I believe in the power of mathematics, systems thinking and objective quality evidence. Decision-making should be evidence based with proper analysis of data. I value professional military judgement, but it must also be informed judgement.
- Money and media. The government has many priorities. Cost consciousness, good financial management and our reputation through media and public affairs are critical to our resourcing and effectiveness. We must gain and hold trust by demonstrating professional competency, financial literacy and accountability.
Conclusion
The demanding context of our environment requires professional mastery, agility and resilience. Our people must be well versed in the geopolitical context of our Indo-Pacific region and we must optimise the Fleet for the realities of our strategic environment and for the requirements of Defence as outlined in DSU20.
It is my hope that this article will generate debate and discussion about the importance of DSU20, its meaning for our Fleet, and the requirement to continue to develop our people as leaders, as masters of the maritime profession, and as forward thinkers constantly analysing their environment and optimising our potential for success.
*Rear Admiral Mark Hammond joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1986 as an electronics technician at HMAS Cerberus. He was commissioned as a naval officer in 1988 and is a graduate of the RAN Recruit School (1986), Australian Defence Force Academy (1990), Australian Command and Staff College (2004) and Centre for Defence Strategic Studies (2014).
Rear Admiral Hammond has sea experience in French, British and US nuclear attack submarines; Australian and Dutch conventional submarines; and multiple surface vessels. His academic qualifications include a Bachelor of Science (UNSW-ADFA, 1991), a Masters in Management (Defence Studies, UCAN, 2004) and a Masters in Maritime Studies (UoW, 2005).
