So what can we deduce about the evolution of strategic guidance, capability and budget across the five decades surveyed—what are the drivers of change and do the three components move in some casual unison? Let us begin with spending. The general pattern is clear—there is an underlying long-term rate of increase that is driven by rising intrinsic costs. Superimposed on top of this are peaks and troughs driven by the level of operational activity of the day. Growth is fast in wartime, and slow or static in peacetime. It is important to note that much of the money spent at the peaks of defence spending goes to investment. As a result, it appears that investment for the future is driven by the challenges of the day. No surprise here: people judge that the circumstances they find themselves will persist into the future. It is not hard to find statements to that effect today, such as the risk of conventional war being considered low for the foreseeable future, or that the ADF will remain busy combating terrorism for some time.
Of course, this does not represent incoherence between strategic guidance and budget (I will return to this later). Rather, it simply shows that strategic guidance and investment for the future is readily captured by the events of the day. The exception is the significant boost to investment by the Hawke Government soon after coming to power in the 1980s.
What of capability? Let us first look at preparedness. The readiness of the ADF for near-term deployments rose and fell over the period largely in accord with the perceived likelihood of near-term deployments—just as you would expect. This is not to say that all was perfect. On several occasions the preparedness of the force was not up to the demands that emerged. The Australian Army did not always have what it needed for peacekeeping operations during the 1990s, the RAN was caught short in 1991 getting ready to go to the Persian Gulf, and parts of the RAAF were well below where they needed to be on several occasions in the late 1990s. These events reflect two things: first, a failure of implementation within the ADF because of peacetime malaise and, second, the consequence of deliberate risk management that kept many parts of the ADF at less than full states of readiness.
Where things get interesting is in looking at the second part of capability, namely force structure. Once the changing technology of warfare is taken into account, there is a surprising degree of continuity across the 40 years. Furthermore, where there are changes, they are sometimes difficult to explain in terms of strategic guidance.
Here is how it looks for each Service:
The number of surface combatants remained largely static over four decades although the mix evolved over time. When more money was available, better equipped vessels were in operation; when money was tight, lesser platforms were employed. At the moment, money is plentiful and the RAN is developing the capability of its surface combatants through upgrades and the purchase of three advanced air warfare destroyers. Overall though, the number of hulls has remained around the same, just as it has for support ships and hydrographic/oceanographic vessels. Similarly, ever since the RAN acquired submarines in the 1960s and patrol boats in 1970s, numbers have been maintained at close to constant levels.
Thus, for the bulk of the RAN, it has been a matter of ‘you keep what you’ve got and, when money permits, expand by adding something more, then keep it’. But there have been some exceptions to this trend. For example, the number of minehunters has fluctuated—it seems we are never sure if we really want them. Having said that, there was at least a clear link between strategic guidance and the acquisition of minehunters in the 1990s.
Of more interest are the demise of the aircraft carrier and the emergence of an amphibious force. It was in the early 1980s that the RAN lost its aircraft carrier. To some extent this represented a tangible shift away from the demands of ‘forward defence’ (albeit more than a decade after that doctrine had been tossed on the scrap heap). Yet this is far from a complete explanation. In fact, Australia was planning to purchase HMS Invincible from the Royal Navy as a replacement until the sale was cancelled by the United Kingdom following the Falkland Islands conflict. It is likely that affordability was as big a factor in deciding to abandon the carrier as any strategic considerations.
The disjuncture between strategic guidance and capability development is most acute in the development of the amphibious force. Over the last two decades, the RAN’s surface transport capability has morphed and expanded into an increasingly large amphibious capability based around helicopter carriers. This transformation began back in 1980s and grew steadily—and stealthily—through the 1990s before finally emerging in 2000. Indeed, until Defence 2000 provided a credible rationale for an amphibious capability such a development was difficult to reconcile with strategic guidance. It is tempting to relate the rise of an expanded amphibious capability with the loss of the carrier—but it is a hard argument to make aside from observing that the latter freed up resources for the former. To some extent, at least, the development of an amphibious capability was the logical response to increasingly foreseeable challenges in the immediate region that strategic guidance was overly slow in acknowledging.
Over the past four decades, the RAAF’s maritime patrol and transport fleets have remained largely static apart from the addition of four C-17 Globemaster aircraft in 2006. In contrast, the number of fighters and bombers has contracted substantially as previously disparate roles have been progressively consolidated onto single platform types. On the surface this appears to be a substantial shift in the balance of the force structure; however it actually just mirrors changes that have occurred in all Western air forces over the same period.
As the technological sophistication and cost of air combat platforms has increased, the number and diversity of platforms has fallen, mitigated in part by force-multiplier capabilities like over-the-horizon radar, air-to-air refuelling tankers and Airborne Early Warning & Control aircraft (all of which the RAAF currently has or is acquiring). Taking these technological trends into account, the relative capability inherent in the RAAF’s combat air capability has remained largely static.
The story with the Army is simple once changing technology is taken into account. The spectrum of capabilities that make up the Army remains largely static, but its size, condition of its equipment, and its preparedness rises and falls with overall defence spending—hardly surprising given that defence spending correlates with the level of operational activity. This trend encompasses the recent ‘Hardened and Networked’ Army initiative and the decision to expand the force by two battalions. An important exception is the strategic shift in the Army’s disposition northward in the late 1980s and early 1990s (and similarly for two-ocean basing for the RAN that was introduced around the same time).
I do not ascribe to the ‘Army as victim’ school of thought, which argues that the ‘defence of Australia’ doctrine caused the Army to be ‘run down’ or neglected in favour of the other two Services. Under the guidance of the day, the Australian Army (along with the other two ‘fitted-for-but-not-with’ Services) was equipped on the assumption of warning time being available before a major conflict. In fact, I would argue that the share of resources accorded to the Army under the ‘defence of Australia’ doctrine far exceeded what was justified had the doctrine been taken to its logical conclusion. For several reasons, a militia force would have been better suited to resisting the occupation of the continent than a standing army.
The clearest trend to emerge from our 40 year survey is that the level of preparedness and modernisation of the force (and the size of the Army) is driven largely by the operational tempo of the day. Far less clear is the existence of any nexus between strategic guidance and the evolution of the force structure. In fact, once the impact of technology and the changing face of warfare is taken into account, it is surprising how little has changed—notwithstanding that our survey covers three distinct epochs of Australian defence thinking. Aside from the changes to disposition wrought by the 1980s incarnation of the ‘defence of Australia’, the really significant changes to the force structure—the demise of the aircraft carrier and the rise of the amphibious force—are difficult to ascribe to a changed strategic vision of how to defend the country (or at least one that was articulated at the time).
The result is that the basic defence force conceived and developed by Robert Menzies back in the 1960s under the doctrine of ‘forward defence’, persisted through the years of ‘defence of Australia’. With a couple of extra bells and whistles, it largely remains with us today, and is planned to continue into the foreseeable future. It is as if strategic guidance does not really matter.
There are at least two factors driving this long-term continuity in force structure. First, and perhaps most important, is the underlying continuity in our strategic guidance that derives from our geography. Despite inflated rhetoric, since the Second World War Australia has been a regional maritime power with a boutique army. Although the narrative developed to explain why Australia needs to do so changes, the reality remains inviolate. Yet while this explains much, it seems insufficient to me, and it certainly fails to explain the development of an amphibious capability through the 1990s. Nor, I would argue, does it explain some of the more recent ambitious plans that have emerged.
The second factor is that the Services each have their own priorities—independent of strategic guidance—that they push to the fore. Being conservative by nature, they favour continuity and incremental expansion when money is available. They replace what they have with the latest affordable technology and then move to the next item on the list in order to expand. The result is that nothing much changes: the three Services simply roll on—sharing the bounty in good times and sharing the pain in austere times. In some circles this is seen as a sufficient criterion for building the ADF, because it maintains the so-called ‘balanced force’. While many factors, beyond the conception of a ‘balanced force’, influence the shape of the ADF, it would be naïve to think that this factor has been insignificant.