Training for the future warrior: Lessons learnt from Iraq

The current conflict in Iraq and the 2001 involvement in Afhanistan, provide significant ADF experience of warfare fitting, at least to a certain extent, the notion of "NCW" or Network Centric Warfare. In the war in Iraq, active deconfliction and more discriminating and economical combat power was deployed as well as far more integration of joint capabilities through NCW. It is clear that future warfare will also involve more collaboration across services, across nations and with civilians and reservists. Apart from cultural, organisational, and training transformations, the skills required by future warfighters will need to reflect these new approaches to warfare. The future warrior will be required to deal with war, peace, terrorism and any number of yet unknown situation. They also will have to be politically educated and to marshal their cultural empathy and diplomatic skills. This paper reports on some of the findings of DSTO research into the Human Dimension of Future Warfighting (HSoFW). Over 100 interviews with peronnel who have served in the recent conflicts in the Middle East were conducted, across all ranks and Services, and these are reported on in this paper. Issues such as preparation for deployment team building through networking, and the importance of service culture, as well as the lessons learnt from the deployment, are highlighted