Asleep at the wheel

(U.S. Army photo by Spc. Jennifer Spradlin,)

There may be a new Australian Defence Minister since the prime minister coup on Monday.

How will that new person do? I wouldn't expect much. But let us be hopeful.

Some say we should keep the current Defence Minister for the sake of stability.

I am not so sure. No one has been able to compose a list of his credible accomplishments.

I don't think that helping the PM mislead the national security council to rubber-stamp bombing in Syria is an accomplishment.

The U.S. bombing campaign of North Vietnam in December 1972 brought the enemy to the peace table.

So did Operation: ALLIED FORCE in 1999.

The threat in Syria isn't a nation-state. They don't care if buildings are destroyed, or other plinking.

Go ahead. That is not going to stop much. And it just makes the whole air campaign a big joke.

On the topic of jokes, a new Defence White Paper will be out soon. Or will it?

Defence recently did an impulse buy of 2 C-17s. The justification was Middle Eastern operations. Price about $1B.

Maybe, someday, we will have strong leaders that realize our very tiny military should only be training to be ready for war and other-than-war operations...

...in our own back yard.

170-plus flag-ranks or no.

.

Australian command disease

An interesting thing with Australia and its many failings in Defence Leadership:

The system loves studies. More studies, and, more studies. In those studies they mention wanting to find out the root cause of problems (many times) and then, do little to find out root cause.

Empty words. Time and again.

The Australian Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy is in absolute fear of firing those responsible for cause. So much so, that more times than not, they are unable to do it.

Firing, for cause, a flag-rank or other commander here or there, when the problem warrants it, is healthy to a military culture. It is an object lesson.

The system is made up of what can only be described as, a group of senior leadership which exercises moral cowardice as a consistent standard.

Patton: "There are more tired division commanders than tired divisions".

Firing, for cause would be healthy for Defence. For example, if a string of abuse on a ship happens and the commander and chief of the boat do little about it, you fire the ship commander and the chief of the boat.

As I observe this disease more and more, I am shocked at how the command climate in the ADF seems largely, unmilitary.

That is a serious problem.

No mention of the real problems in Defence

Defense procurement reform, will not happen under the next government because the opposition does not seem to grasp the real problems.

Defence budget vs. GDP red herring

The red herring for Defence that means... really... nothing:

"This in turn will raise questions - not now but well down the track - whether we will be able to continue to meet our defence needs with just under 2 per cent of GDP.

With such irresponsible and incompetent management of Defence programs, more money just means more opportunities to throw it away on stupid decisions.

The moronic cart-before-the-horse thinking must stop. Or, expect no improvement with the moribund and dysfunctional entrenched Defence bureaucracy.

Kopp paper is a warning to U.S. leadership

"If the United States wishes to retain its primacy in modern nation-state conflicts, technological strategy must be restored to the prominence it enjoyed during the Cold War period."


A recent paper by Dr. Carlo Kopp in July's Joint Force Quarterly, "Technological Strategy in the Age of Exponential Growth" walks you through technology growth patterns over the years. Read the whole paper from the beginning. I promise it won't hurt your head understanding it.

For anyone interested in the well-being of U.S and allied military superiority, this paper is a warning that time is up. We better get strong logic fused into our senior leadership or the consequences could be loss of deterrence. With loss of deterrence comes war.

The inevitable consequence of failing to practice good technological strategy is that opponents will produce breakthroughs. A smart opponent will produce repeated “capability surprise” events to an advantage, as the United States did to the Soviet Union, contributing crucially to the eventual bankruptcy of the Soviet bloc.

Technological Strategy vs. Exponential Growth

The presence of exponential growth in key current technologies is a double-edged sword because these technologies have been commodified and are globally accessible in the commercial marketplace. A Russian or Chinese weapons developer will have access to much of the same basic technology as his peers in the United States. This represents a leveling of the technological playing field unseen since World War II. For instance, the well-developed Russian technological strategy intended to defeat U.S. airpower is disciplined and well-considered, leverages exponential growth in key technologies, and displays a deep understanding of critical ideas and how to leverage globalized exponentially growing technologies.

On a level playing field, with exponential growth in critical technologies, the player who can best exploit talent to an advantage—all else being equal—will inevitably win. For the United States and its technologically competent allies, this period should be one of critical reflection. Many recent high-profile programmatic failures display numerous symptoms of poor practice and implementation of technological strategy during program definition and later development, beginning in the decade following the end of the Cold War. Moreover, poor understanding of exponential growth and concomitant early component obsolescence has contributed to severe life-cycle cost problems across a wide range of programs.

A good case can be made that these failures directly reflect the diminished role of technological strategists in the post–Cold War environment, where imperatives other than defeating peer competitor nation-states became ascendant and dominant, while the last generation of Cold War–era technological strategists progressively retired from government service or retired altogether, with few if any replacements trained or appointed.

Bold emphasis mine.

Retired knowledge--Knowledge retired

This was a comment from Bushranger on another post. It deserves to be its own post.

Some of you Anonymous posters are really brainwashed into the DoD/ADF 'group-think' culture and obviously have a pretty shallow knowledge re the wealth of expertise in the retired military community.

Last Friday, I attended a bi-monthly 76/77SQNs mixed luncheon which usually involves people from bottom to top of the rank structure, including some serving personnel (COs, pilots, groundies). Some of maybe 10 retired Air rankers often attend and alongside me were a retired CAS (Korean War veteran who also flew Sabres and F-111), and a recently retired 2 Star Engineer/Pilot who also flew Sabres in my era and was recently recalled to involve in a 3 person group analysing the diabolical mess that the Navy has got itself into regarding warship maintenance. Pete Criss would probably also involve if he lived closer to Newcastle.

There are some pretty common denominators among the retired group that regularly participate. They have mostly been involved in serious conflicts (Korea, Vietnam) and those recently retired at higher rank levels have awareness of issues involved re subsequent conflicts (Iraq, Afghanistan) and somewhat benign interventions in East Timor and the Solomon Islands. They network regarding what is happening in Canberra and are generally keen researchers concerning technological advances. Most are avid readers of military history and considerable book swapping goes on among the group. The same can be said for several who make strong contributions to the very worthy analytical efforts of Air Power Australia.

The ability of those with meaningful combat experience to think contemporarily outside the square regarding operational survivability should not be underestimated. Then Group Captain 'Bay' Adams flew with me a bit in Vietnam and we used to debate fighter versus helo issues long after bar closing. He features in Pierre Klosterman's book 'The Big Show'; both of them were the only 2 survivors of a flight of 8 Typhoons that attacked a German airfield during WW2 – he also served in Korea. Post-Vietnam, big 'Bay' rose to Star rank and was instrumental in promoting the development of helo versus fighter tactics in which another former fighter pilot and myself became involved as COs of 5 and 9SQNs respectively (that former CO5 was also at the recent luncheon). Unfortunately, all of that good work was lost after the stupid battlefield helo transfer decision in 1989, along with a wealth of helicopter combat experience that had been accumulated across the Air Force.

2 of the immediate past/present Air Force hierarchy mentioned (AH and GB) have never fired a shot in anger. Apparently, they were supportive of the appalling decisions to shed F-111, Iroquois, Caribou (and eventually Blackhawk, Seahawk) creating widening capability gaps at huge cost with diminished ADF military capacity. Preparedness to 'fall on swords' to defend the necessity of maintaining continuous adequate and credible military capabilities does not seem an attribute of Service Chiefs these days. The whole politico-military push is primarily about supporting the rent-seekers involved with defence industry.

The problem with generals

One of the paragraphs at the start of this story shows how empty the thinking is from our military "experts" (retired or not).

Retired Major General John Cantwell - a former commander of Australia's troops in Afghanistan and author of the 2009 Defence White Paper which called for an ambitious expansion of Defence capabilities - has told the ABC the budget cuts are eating away at a clear strategy in Afghanistan.

Where to start? Well, the 2009 Defence White was a joke. Realistically, any author of it should be humiliated at their participation in such a useless document.

As for Afghanistan; what "clear strategy"? Or, as that famous saying goes, "YGTBSM".

Australia has no interest in Afghanistan. There is no strategy if someone is not determined to win. With Cambodia and Laos nearby (Pakistan) it is a forever dead mission.

Operation: USELESS DIRT takes money and resources away which could be better used in our own Pacific Rim region. Big time defence savings right there by stopping this effort of no value.

As for the self-propelled artillery (gold-plated and all), I find it funny that this is a big deal and there is no mention of mismanagement of the M-113 program or any number of other needed things for the Army.

If the General and his friends are unwilling or unable to mention that the core problems are with the incompetent Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy, they bring nothing of use to the conversation.

The problem is not the money given to Defence by the taxpayer because so much of it is wasted on poor decisions.

If the general and his kind want to identify part of the problem, they only have to look in the mirror.

RAN woes update

The image of the Australian Navy has taken a beating over the years.

Poor management of existing ships by both the Navy and Defence Material Organisation have left severe holes in amphibious, fleet auxiliary, submarine and patrol ship capability.

Here is an update of the drama.

And, at the end of it all, how 3 large destroyers and 2 large amphibious flatops can be paid for and sustained over the long-haul, let alone crewed, will be a grand mystery.

Australia needs frigates, patrol vessels, some light amphibious capability and useful auxiliary ships. You can add affordable submarines to that if anyone has a sane idea to make that happen.

Unfortunately, the Navy isn't headed in that direction. And, they want more money to paper over their stupid mistakes.

I am not seeing the value of their "capability" roadmap.

More on the dud-jamming gear Defence wants to buy

As reported earlier, the plan by Australian Defence to put extra dedicated electronic jamming gear on 12 of its new Super Hornets is a bad idea.

Early in the last decade,  the U.S. Navy was trying to justify funding for a dedicated jamming version of the Super Hornet known as the "Growler". The U.S. Navy, in an effort to get the next generation jammer (NGJ) as the hardware of choice to put on the Super Hornet (Growler) had to state the obvious:  the existing years-old ALQ-99 jamming pods were for the bin. U.S. Navy said in plain language that the ALQ-99 pods were too legacy, couldn't keep up with the emerging threats and were becoming more expensive to maintain.

Guess what happened? When NGJ ran into funding problems, the U.S. Navy was forced to deploy their Growlers with a majority ALQ-99 pod configuration. They sure does look all nice painted up though boss.

Today, NGJ might be ready by 2020 according to a new report on airborne electronic attack (PDF) by the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO). Label this a must-read. The report covers a wide range of current and future electronic attack (or jamming) solutions for the U.S. DOD. And to be fair, given the serious post Cold War deskilling of this electronic warfare brain-trust, DOD has done the best they can.

In a rush to save money at the end of the Cold War, DOD and Congress were short-sighted enough to think that all future threats would be broken-down countries with old and poorly maintained Soviet hardware. If anything else came along, well, future "affordable" stealth solutions would fix that for sure. And oh, only the U.S. had the ability to field anything advanced.

Things didn't work out that way.

Of interest in the recent GAO report is more pile-on of the state of affairs with the ALQ-99 pods on the Growler. They are over-kill, inefficient  and expensive to maintain for COIN warfare. And again, as already known, they will not be able to keep up with emerging threats.

Ever.

What is more? Even when the NGJ gets fielded; if it is fielded at the end of the decade, like the ALQ-99,  fitted with the Growler, what you have is still an escort-jammer and not a stand-off-jammer (SOJ). True, hardcore SOJ capability for the B-52 was shot down a few years ago. Like other needed programs, money was cut-off and sent to support  Operations: USELESS DIRT 1 and 2. In one of the more severe examples of U.S. DOD short-sighted strategy, electronic warfare against advanced threats was not on any key-decision-maker's top-ten list of needs. Years after the end of the Cold War.

The distinction between escort-jamming and stand-off jamming is important when you try and fly a pudgy Super-drag-Growler escort-jammer into the teeth of surface-to-air missile systems that can reach out and touch someone 250 miles away in, a very short amount of time. Any effective power output the Growler hopes to emit won't reach far enough, and, enemy defenses in the shape of upgraded S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems will have enough sensor and command-control resources to put the Growler at risk of being out-matched and killed.

ALQ-99s will be foolhardy against these threats.To be nice, NGJ on Growler will fare only a little better. If the "I" in integrated air defense systems (IADS) includes enemy aircraft, well, the U.S. Navy is bringing an obsolete carrier air wing to the fight. The USAF; 120 some combat-coded F-22s that may or may not reach depending where the war is at and the F-35; a non-solution.

So back to Australia and the over-optimism of some. Wasting money Defence does not have for a fantasy capability that has no hope of becoming useful is a very bad idea.

Australian Defence needs real engineers that know these things and less vendors knocking on the door trying to sell us obsolete gear. Also, something must be done to stop a Defence/DMO cabal that, when money can't be spent on delayed faulty-project-of-concern high-dollar programs it gets redirected toward impulse buys so-as to make sure annual budget spending evens out.

The Growler upgrade for Australia's existing Super Hornets is one more bad idea for the RAAF.

The USAF has the wrong boss

General Schwartz is the wrong person to lead the USAF. Unfortunatly, no one in power knows or cares.

Schwartz has been at the helm during a number of questionable actions.

Some claim he saw the USAF through increasing drone capability in the wars. The problem is that there are few supporting metrics to make this seem like a wise thing to do.

He (along with an empty suit of a Secretary of the USAF) helped kill the F-22 program. And, 380-some F-22s to support 10 AEFs was not a theory. It was a solid plan. By the way; this also killed the hope of a theater bomber we really needed in the Pacific, the FB-22.

He states that the F-35 is the way forward for tac-air but there isn't much to make this a great idea. The jet is late, has huge problems, is overly expensive (to the point of where USAF will never see 1763 F-35s let alone a few hundred) and is obsolete. Interesting, whether he knew it or not, he stated the aircraft was obsolete the other day:

Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, told members of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee Tuesday that reducing the combat radius of the F-35A by five miles is more cost-effective than modifying the fighter to meet performance goals set a decade ago.

Over a decade actually. The JSF JORD is for an aircraft that will not be able to take on modern threats. It also assumed we would have enough F-22s to do the work needed.

Long term deterrence in the Pacific is now problematic.

Schwartz also ruined a promising C-27 capability for the Army and USAF by killing the program. He stated that there were not any airfields in Afghanistan that couldn't be serviced by a C-130. Where was all this great analysis some years ago when all the brainiacs thought the C-27 was a good idea? In any event, a sensible replacement for the Army's C-23 (of which I think is an uninspired POS) is now gone. Not very helpful. As long as we will only fight in Afghanistan, Schwartz is our guy. Oh wait. We are pulling out.

Over 10 years into a COIN warfare environment, USAF can't field a simple prop-driven CAS aircraft without screwing up the contract. There is also the KC-46 tanker contract which was almost Nunn-McCurdy material before the ink was dry.

The USAF future is in trouble. I don't know where we'll be then, but we won't smell too good thats for sure. General Schwartz IS an air power problem.

USAF does not know a date for F-35 IOC; slows rate of procurement

USAF will slow down its rate of F-35 orders. The service doesn't even know when they can declare IOC. Don't act shocked, the service is not displaying a bold leadership decision on par with Curtis LeMay.

Take it for what it is. This is a safe, bureaucratic move that goes with the flow. The F-35 program is starting to collapse under its own weight, so the timid can state that they will slow down procurement while pretending leadership.

History:

USAF was to order 110 F-35s per year when full-rate kicked in. As a result of the 2004 SWAT, this went to 80 per year for full-rate in 2006 and extending out the years. In 2008, USAF plans and programs declared they couldn't see a way to pay for more than 48 each year.


The take-away from this article is the following:

“That call is well into the future,” Schwartz said.

Of course. He will be retired by then. Let us not make any strong leadership decisions at the service level. Just continue to rake in that 4-star pay and benefits.

"With rank comes responsibility" is only uttered as a platitude in USAF HQ. It should read, "With rank comes responsibility to protect my job and any post-retirement employment opportunities."

Way too much leadership bloat

Unbelievable. We do not need this much bureaucracy to lead such a small Defence force. Too many civilians. Too many flag ranks.

The military has grown by 7000 troops - 13 per cent - and the defence senior leadership team has increased by 26 star-ranked officers, or just 17 per cent.

In 2007 there were just 82 top civilian executives and 152 star-ranked officers.

Last year the numbers had expanded to 134 civilian executives and 178 star-ranked officers.

While the number of one and two-star generals had jumped from 147 to 170 (15 per cent) in the five years, the number of band 2 and 3 civilian executives had expanded from 27 to 46 (70 per cent).

Former army officer Mr Robert slammed the bureaucratic expansion and described the 14 deputy secretaries within the department as "laughable"

AM Harvey exits

I don't know what all this means other than what is reported. Up until October 2010 Harvey was the boss of the NACC; along with its gross over-optimism on F-35 program health.

The 57-year-old, who joined the RAAF in 1977 and went on to serve as a navigator aboard Canberra bombers and F-111s, was apparently given ''five minutes' notice'' in August his position was being made answerable to one of the associate secretaries.

''He just wouldn't wear it,'' a colleague said.

Navy did not manage AEGIS sustainment properly

On Oct. 13, the Navy’s top two surface type commanders released a message to the Aegis fleet requiring more frequent diagnostic checks, better maintenance and more hands-on involvement by skippers. The goal, according to the message, is nothing less than to “inculcate a culture of SPY self-sufficiency and ownership.”

One would have hoped the Navy was always managing such an important system properly.

I guess not.

Fortunately the diversity bullies are well sustained. Every world-class Navy certainly needs those parasites.

AEGIS is not a system that you have the option of taking care of it some years, and not so much other years; not unlike nukes.

Looks like the past top leadership could not understand their reason to exist. Yet some think Roughead et al were actually worth something. I never saw it.

Too many GOFOs and SES

The U.S. military has become significantly smaller since the end of the Cold War.

So why do we have a significant increase in General Officer/Flag Officer (GOFO) slots in the DOD? Why do we have a significant increase in civilian Senior Executive Service (SES) slots the DOD?

Take a look at the chart.

80% are oxygen thieves.

Indeed. That is a lot of money wasted on spiffy office furniture, staff and other trappings. It reminds me at the end of the Cold War where USAF developed a "no general left behind act". For instance, the USAF at the prime of Strategic Air Command (SAC) had bomber wing commanders as full colonels. Full nuke alert; lots of responsibility. After the Cold War (where there was no longer any nuke alert for bombers), you started to see Wings commanded by 1-star generals with less responsibility.

I saw the SES world at a major depot. Some were worth it. Others? Well, the third leg of the waste triad was endless reorganization. No one could stop. You had to look like you were doing something even if the solution would be better served by a little bit more supervision and training. No. Reorganize. Fire up the PowerPoint. Get the message out. Rinse and repeat.

Yes, the military can suffer some cuts; if they are in the right place.

Can the USAF stop lying about air power needs?

The United States Air Force is happy to mislead and state that there are no alternatives to the troubled F-35. Since the F-35 can only be a second tier fighter and does not have the ability to take on large threats, what the USAF claims is not true.

An advanced F-16 will do second tier fighter work just fine. The F-16 is cheaper to acquire and sustain than the F-35. It is already cleared for a variety of long range stand-off weapons like JASSM and HARM (if that is your thing). It can have AESA and IRST like the Block 60. It can have conformal fuel tanks. There is the option of two aircrew which is better for close air support and UAV control. F-16 sensor fusion works and does not over-reach. The F-16 has excellent defensive jamming gear. The F-35 does not.

Hopefully with budget cut decisions, the lies of the USAF on this matter will be shot down. Unfortunately, on the topic of air power, the USAF has an established record of lying. Over the past several years, USAF air power decisions have put the defense of the United States and its allies in danger.

Promoted beyond their ability

Interesting; the confusion of it all.

"In a two-page explanation of the unexpected demise of the fleet provided by defence … no person or identity … was identified as being responsible,'' Dr Thomson says. ''To be clear: a critical capability costing the taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars a year fails without warning and we're told it's nobody's fault. The worst part is that accountability is so amorphous within defence that it's a plausible claim."

Dr Thomson also says ministers are typically reluctant to hunt out who is responsible for mistakes because an antagonistic relationship with defence is more likely to result in the replacement of the minister, rather than the secretary of the department or chief of the Defence Force.

The problems have also increased defence ministers' workloads as they demand more frequent and detailed briefings, increasing the number of submissions to the minister from 690 in the late 1990s to more than 2200 last year.

''To complicate matters further, the 24-hour news cycle has increased the 'velocity of government' so that ministers often find themselves managing the ephemeral issues of the day at the expense of more substantive matters. The combination of a mountainous in-tray and a distracted (often new-to-the-job) minister is a recipe for slow decision-making, or worse,'' he says.

Dr Thomson also criticises the withering of civilian influence in the Defence Department, which he says stems from the fact the Defence Force has been involved in overseas operations for more than a decade - in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The defence organisation is split between the Defence Force, headed by its chief, and the predominantly civilian Defence Department, whose head is the secretary.

As a result, "key advice" about the size and shape of the Defence Force comes from the military, while civilians are relegated to managing the finances and drafting white papers that provide retrospective justification for decisions already made.

Yet somehow, AVM Houston allegedly did a great job; got awards for it; and was even praised by the PM upon retirement.

In this alternate world of capital level groupthink you get promoted way beyond your ability and hardly anyone gets fired for incompetence. Just the kind of environment where you want someone handling billions in taxpayer dollars.

Can 3, fly 8-the dysfunctional MOD supply chain

The UK has to cannibalize 3 Typhoons in order to keep 8 flying in the moronic sideshow which is the Libya operation.

Some are quick to say cannibalization is common. It depends. If it is too common, you always end up spending more taxpayer money to support flying operations. It points to incompetent flag-level management. It points to incompetent senior civilian military management.

When you pull a part from an aircraft to put on another, that part is not zero hours like the kind of part you pull off the shelf. This messes up your maintenance process; cascades, and causes other problems.

When you cannibalize an aircraft, you contribute to blowing out your maintenance man hour costs and creating bad side-effects. The person(s) assigned to pulling a part off of a can bird to put on another takes more time than going to a properly stocked parts bin. Also, when you source from your parts bin what you get is something that is fresh (no matter if it is new or refurbished) and you can predict the number of hours that it can fly on the aircraft before replacement.

So, when you pull a part off of a can bird you use more maintenance man hours that any unit can ill-afford and you “repair” the operational aircraft with a part that is in effect “used” and you will have to replace that part again on the same jet on shorter time intervals.

There is another danger of an improperly funded parts bin at the unit level. Consumable parts that you cannot cannibalize are also in short supply. Aircraft that would otherwise be on the flight training schedule sit on the ground. With either category of part, this  produces lost flight training hours.

Canning should happen in some extreme cases like remote airfields in combat. It should not happen with expensive aircraft that belong to air arms that supposedly employ proper logistics and finance people.

In the procurement holiday that was the post Cold War 1990’s, the U.S. military did a huge amount of cannibalization. It cost so much money in the budget due to lost maintenance/logistics man hours, extra budget administration man hours, lost flight training hours and loss of experienced people that Congress took notice.

Loss of experienced people? You see, when you stress out the pilot and maintenance community this much—pilots want to fly, maintainers can only take so many 12 hour/7 day shifts—they leave the service. The taxpayer loses good tribal knowledge that you have to then replace in the training pipeline with a green person. All because someone couldn’t budget money for the parts bin.

This happens in phases. It gets addressed (kind of). Then it gradually creeps up again. In an MRAP-one-war-wonder useless dirt operation era where UAV’s powered by uprated snowmobile engines are “air power” stars, I wonder how big the cannibalization problem is in today’s DOD?

The Killer Angel

Lieutenant-General Hurley will be the next chief of the defence force.

Good thing about this is that although he represents the whole military; he is an Army guy. This is good for the obvious reason being it is the Army that is doing most of the pointy end of the spear work in this war.

I would hope the new boss is innovative and can properly advise the Defence Minister. Lord knows Smith needs good advice. My ultimate fantasy would be that Hurley would label the Defence White Paper of 2009 as useless garbage. I doubt they would fire him for saying that. It is after all, the truth.

This is important because a fantasy Air Force or Navy isn’t going to help the troops in the field facing a daily threat from the enemy. While there are other parts of Defence that actually work, the needs of the Army should be driving the conversation.

Other outsiders have an opinion on this too.

I wish you luck sir. You will need it.

Defence can be fixed. Who will help?

General Molan has an interesting write-up over on the Interpreter blog about the same old sad story of Defence management woes.

He brings up the complaints of Mr. Babbage--one of the authors of the 2009 Defefence White Paper--but doesn’t mention that Mr. Babbage’s statements to our elected officials have always been weak in understanding things like net-centric warfare (over-selling it), air power (blessed be the system of systems approach...it will win); you name it. Is Mr. Babbage really someone you want helping to author a Defence White Paper?

General Molan goes on to state this.

“That the Government is, in an underhanded and duplicitous way, shredding the previously announced 2009 defence plan should not surprise any of us. Governments have done this to Defence White Papers since 1976. But this Government has done it faster and more deeply than even Kim Christian Beazley did, which is saying something.”

In some ways, this is well and proper. The Government should treat the 2009 Defence White Paper with all the contempt it is due because it is a laughing stock of a product. It is a rudder that is jammed making us go around in circles; going nowhere fast; chasing our tails. The 2009 Defence White Paper has little worth.

He states that “the retired community is deathly silent”. I disagree. There are a few people that have tried to make a difference. However, if no one listens and the groupthink mode rules the day, no amount of quality analysis will make a difference.

Defence will be gutted simply because there are few that can make sensible plans and few that can advocate change that makes both strategic and affordable sense.

When Australia can demand that the entrenched Defence bureaucracy is held to real account; that proper strategic thought can be put to paper; that institutional groupthink is hunted down and killed, we might be able to make a go of having an ADF worthy of the name.