The Two-Way Benefits of the Regional Force Surveillance Group: Building National Resilience from the ground up.

The Regional Force Surveillance Group (RFSG) plays a critical role in protecting Australia’s sovereignty in the regional and remote regions of Australia’s north and west while providing tangible development and employment opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on-country. Through RFSG, Defence is investing in resilient communities in a strategically important area of Australia, building our national resilience from the ground up.

RFSG is formed by the three Regional Force Surveillance Units (RFSUs), including the North-West Mobile Force (NORFORCE) in the Northern Territory and the Kimberley Region, the Pilbara Regiment, and the 51st Battalion, Far North Queensland Regiment (FNQR) in North Queensland. These part-time units, which were originally stood up as RFSUs in the 1980s and before that had varied legacies as military units stretching back before WWII, consolidated under the name of RFSG in 2018. Now centralised at headquarters at Larrakeyah Barracks, the consolidation of the RFSUs under the RFSG umbrella aims to improve interoperability and formalise command and control structures.

RFSG is a unique part of the Australian Defence Force. The units that make up the group largely consist of part-time personnel from regional and remote areas of Western and Northern Australia, with a significant proportion of these part-time personnel, namely in NORFORCE and the 51st FNQR, identifying as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. The Units draw on those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Army personnel, combining local knowledge with clandestine surveillance and intelligence collection techniques while carrying out their patrols across an area equal to over 50% of the Australian landmass, and approximately 2.5% of the world’s total landmass.

In 2020, RFSG opened up a dedicated RFSG Training and Education Centre (RTEC) at Defence Establishment Berrimah in Darwin. RTEC supports both the RFSG’s operational training and Defence’s Army Indigenous Development Program (AIDP), a 5 month program aimed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who do not meet the General Entry standards and need to develop education, aptitude, fitness and resilience skills before commencing recruit training.

A part of Defence’s success with RFSG and the AIDP (which has some crossover), is the tiered options offered to would-be recruits that do not exclude those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The AIDP attempts to bring participants up to the required standards for general stream Defence recruitment, but offers options to those who do not reach those standards. These tiered options include entry as a general reservist with broad deployment options and entry onto the Regional Force Surveillance List (RFSL), which restricts a recruit’s deployment solely to RFSG’s operations.

The tiered approach allows Defence to maintain quality standards at all levels while acknowledging that the skills needed for the different tiers permit some flexibility around recruitment, so long as boundaries are put in place to maintain the standards of the generalist recruitment stream.

The benefits of the RFSG and associated training pathways flow both ways, for Defence and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their communities, the benefits generated are quite clear. The RFSG and its pathway programs provide the ability to receive ongoing education, development and employment opportunities, regardless of their ability to meet generalist Defence recruitment standards.

Sustainable employment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in regional and remote communities is scarce, and for many people, anecdotally, it is a dream to be able to ‘walk in two worlds’ and work in a way that utilises traditional knowledge of country, survival and taps into historic warrior cultural identities and status, while being paid a Western wage.

Opportunities like those offered by the RFSG contributes to creating strong, resilient community members who have the potential to become drivers of change in their communities into the future, often in the face of inter-generational trauma and a history of government mistreatment that has led to pervasive issues of substance abuse, family violence, crime, incarceration and general disengagement.

For Defence, the benefits generated by the RFSG and its pathway programs are even more expansive.

Firstly, the local knowledge that these recruits bring to the Units is a valuable function that enables the operability of the self-contained small-scale troop contingents that conduct discreet surveillance, reconnaissance, observation and intelligence collection. Without this knowledge, the effectiveness and survivability of those self-contained patrols would be impacted.

Secondly, Defence benefits from the capacity building that the RFSG and associated training pathways lead to. As a part of their training, RFSG recruits gain technical skills using radar and surveillance equipment and the accompanying literacy and numeracy skills required to understand and communicate this intelligence up the chain of command. Similarly, the skills that AIDP participants gain builds their capacity more generally, regardless of whether they continue within Defence. In building this capability, Defence gains a potential critical advantage should a conflict ever arise on Australian shores. Local recruits could utilise their intimate knowledge of their respective regions, and their RFSG training, to either operate in a ‘stay behind’ capacity or help provide rear-area security and counter threats to lines of communication and infrastructure.

Thirdly, employing locals builds trust for Defence in regional and remote areas of Australia, creating connections that enable more effective flows of information from people on the ground. This would not only be useful in a conflict situation, but is critical in the other duties that the RFSG carries out on behalf of Defence with regard to Operation Resolute, Defence’s contribution to Australia’s whole of government efforts to protect Australian borders and offshore maritime interests.

Finally, the RFSG and programs like the AIDP help Australia work towards its goals of ‘Closing the Gap’ in Indigenous disadvantage. While this is not a Defence benefit per se, it is a broader social benefit that aligns with Defence’s commitments under their Reconciliation Action Plan and the targets therein.

Considering how successful Defence has been with the RFSG, there could be scope for other Commonwealth entities to enhance their own operational capability in regional and remote Australia by following in Defence’s footsteps and looking into a similar model.  

Although, it is important to note that many Commonwealth agencies do not have the history that Defence has working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This history, and Defence’s significant investment of time and effort into engagement and relationship building, has allowed them to build trust and wider reputation for following through on promises, something that very few other Commonwealth entities have been able to achieve.

The work that Defence has invested into the RFSG and its pathway programs have enhanced the capability of their operations across Australia’s north and west while delivering tangible benefits to local people and generating sustainable options for their futures.

In creating more resilient community members in the regional and remote regions of Australia’s north and west, Defence is building Australia’s national resilience from the grass-roots. The increasingly changing geo-political environment in the Indo-Pacific, and the non-traditional security challenges that will inevitably stem from climate change into the future such as forced human migration and natural disaster response and recovery, makes resilient communities in this critical area a vital cog in Australia’s national security architecture.  

Defence’s success bears further research into their model. However, other Commonwealth agencies wishing to succeed under a similar model would first need to invest significant time and effort into addressing historical issues, engaging, building relationships and establishing a foundation of trust in communities, a process that will not be easy for any Commonwealth agency.

Jaya Pastor-Elsegood is a national security and defence graduate with the Northern Territory Government.

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