The successful exploitation of the benefits of a digitised network-centric battlespace in a tactical Land Environment will add to the "Knowledge Edge" capability for the Australian Army. It mill advance decision-making, accelerate the flow of information, more effectively synergise collection and processing within the intelligence system and speed up the targeting process, hence improving overall combat effectiveness. To make this a reality, a practical and feasible operational architecture is essential. This paper describes the process of developing an operational architecture for the Australian Army Enhanced Combat Force (land force in 2015) based on US DoD's C4ISR architecture framework. The fundamental concept driving the architecture is the philosophy of mission command and the requirements of flexible command structures that allow 'plug and play' of capability elements. The architecture built on this command philosophy and the potential of a digitised network-centric battlespace aims to guide future capability development to increase the responsiveness and flexibility of military operations. The paper focuses on a scenario of an Australian led coalition operation to restore territorial integrity and re-establish sovereignty of local people on a hypothetical island within the inner arc of the archipelagos of South East Asia and the South West Pacific. Operational architecture view products, depicting a brigade sized, highly mobile, hard hitting, low mass and austere fighting force's offensive operation, are presented in the paper. This work has shown that the operational architecture can facilitate defining and visualizing command and control systems, coalesce the threads of thought on the development of mission command in the information age and inform the corresponding doctrine evolution.
