Defence Force manoeuvres

This entailed a different army with a different relationship to the air and naval arms, and a quite radically different strategic role to that envisaged under the post-Vietnam or late Cold War doctrine of continental defence-in-depth and niche contributions to allied operations.

Step by step, this is what we are now starting to get. It is called the seamless joint force and is the concerted objective of those shaping the country’s strategy and force structure under the mature Howard Government.

Quietly and without undue fanfare, the pieces have been moving into place. This has been obscured partly by the fact that the great bulk of new capital equipment allocations has still gone to the Air Force and the Navy.

However, the Army is at the centre of the new strategy, and the criterion by which the platforms slated for acquisition by the other services is increasingly being judged is their serviceability for joint expeditionary operations.

The Army needs to be expanded modestly by around 1,500 personnel to fulfil its duties and ensure units are capable of being sustained and rotated. This will require extra funding, or some hard choices about capital equipment priorities.

The hardening and networking of the Army to equip it for manoeuvre warfare, and the move toward better equipping the Air Force and Navy to work as a joint, deployable force, are all key elements of the new strategic posture and force structure that has displaced the “Defence of Australia” doctrine.

This does not mean defending Australia has been jettisoned - just reframed in terms of classical strategic wisdom and current technological and security challenges.

Defence is investing heavily in concept development and experimentation, leveraging off the Army’s rough and frugal work of the early to mid-1990s and the fruits it yielded. In short, serious debate is occurring and strenuous thinking is taking place. The paradigm has shifted.

The challenge is to keep the momentum going, and to strengthen the institutional basis of joint planning, experimentation and learning. There is a great deal that can still be accomplished.