It is 2030 and Australian soldiers are moving into a crowded megacity in which peace and order have collapsed amid fighting between rival ethnic factions.
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Microdrones the size of birds or insects fly ahead, scoping for threats. The soldiers wear augmented-reality goggles that project easily digestible information – where their comrades are, where the enemy might be, any religious buildings they must avoid shooting at, the distance to their objective, whether a local man's face matches that of a known bomb-maker.
If it is a long patrol, the soldiers will wear exoskeleton suits that allow them to carry gear weighing many times what they could normally carry. They may also be followed by sled-like drones that bring extra ammunition and can help evacuate wounded soldiers. Wheeled drones with ground-penetrating radar search for improvised explosive devices.
This is the kind of future scenario described by Major-General Gus McLachlan, the Australian Army's head of modernisation and strategic planning. He is spending billions of dollars to digitise the Army and drawing on billions more from the recent white paper to buy safer armoured vehicles, better protective equipment and camouflage for soldiers, and long-range weapons like anti-ship missiles.
But mirroring much of the rest of the world, General McLachlan is grappling with the challenge of how his troops can manage vast amounts of information rather than be paralysed by it.
"Effectively we're trying to turn our army into an 'internet of things'," he told Fairfax Media, referring to a network of connected smart devices.
In the past, even knowing where their own troops are has been a challenge for military commanders, much less the whereabouts of the enemy or whether civilians might get in the way.
But a modern army will have a flood of information.
The challenge, General McLachlan said, was putting it together in a way that doesn't overwhelm soldiers and commanders but allows them to make decisions. It's unavoidable that commanders will need to be trained to deal with more information but General McLachlan also indicates a degree of artificial intelligence will be built into the system, though humans will always make final decisions particularly when it comes to firing weapons.
For instance, the system would warn a commander if a surveillance drone overhead picks up phone signals that indicate an enemy is watching.
"It will tell him: 'We think this is an observation post that is tracking your location. Of all your weapons systems, we the battle management system recommend you lay your mortars on to that one to suppress it, and you engage that with your 30 millimetre cannon'.
"And he either agrees 'yes', which means it's quick and you've got a high tempo, or 'I don't actually have rules of engagement that allow me to use those mortars because there are civilians around. Thanks machine but I don't agree. I'm going to have to send an infantry patrol out to clear that'."
The days in which armies marched across the land and tried to annihilate each other head-to-head are largely gone. Even in a state-on-state conflict, General McLachlan said, the typical role of soldiers would be to combine with the air, sea, cyber and space domains.
That might mean manoeuvring through urban terrain to take out enemy air defences so the RAAF can fly safely in and deliver a decisive blow. Or it might mean setting up anti-ship missiles on land at a maritime choke-point to create safe passage for naval ships and submarines.
To stay under a more sophisticated enemy's radar, they would need to move in smaller, more nimble groups, General McLachlan said.
"We do need to get them as unencumbered from logistics as we can. That might be tapping into local fuel sources," he said, pointing to vehicles that could burn different types of fuel or even vegetable oil.
And 3D printing would allow them to replace parts on the spot and press on with the mission.
General McLachlan acknowledged the Army still needed to harden its digital systems so they could not be hacked or jammed by an enemy as soon as they entered the battlefield.
This was a view shared by Malcolm Davis, a military modernisation expert with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who said "we've ignored that area for too long and now we're seeing our adversaries gain an upper hand" – noting that Russia and China had strong cyber and electronic warfare capabilities.
In any major conflict, there would be only a brief period in which both sides had perfect information and control, he said.
"And then it will all go to hell. The enemy will begin taking apart our systems … there will be this battle on the electro-magnetic spectrum and in cyberspace and in space for who wins the initial information advantage," he said.
"I don't think 'fog of war' is going to go away."
Beyond networking, Mr Davis said physical performance improvements to soldiers would be the other major development in the near future.
"Exoskeletons ... could see the individual soldier being much more able to bear loads and get less tired in the battlespace. You could work that into body armour to protect the soldier more effectively against shrapnel and small rounds and grenades. And you end up with a soldier out of Halo [the popular video game]. I think that's still a way off, 10 or 15 years, but I think it's coming."
