David Beaumont has served in a wide variety of Army and Joint logistics units and headquarters, and is currently Chief Instructor at the Army School of Logistics Operations. He has written extensively on expeditionary warfare, military logistics and organisational transformation, from blog articles to book chapters and substantial papers. His most recent paper is ‘Transforming Army Logistics to Support the Joint Land Force, published by the Australian Army Research Centre, in which he describes an agenda for change in Army logistics.
Emily Chapman is a RAAF Reservist posted to the Air Liaison Organisation. She is concurrently a PhD candidate researching civil-military interaction in disaster relief operations at UNSW Canberra. Her research interests include Defence learning processes, practices and mechanisms.
James Lewis is an officer from the First Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment. He led an Urban Close Combat (UCC) Mentoring and Training Team (MTT) on Operation AUGURY – Philippines. The observations and lessons included above have been drawn from a number of sources, including key AFoP personnel, the initial Commander – Joint Task Group 629, and the initial Commander – JTG629 (Land). Observations have also been drawn from other previous MTT commanders from UCC, Joint Fires, Combat Engineering (Urban Search and Breaching), and Sniping and Counter-Sniping.