The appointment of Lieutenant General Sir John Wilton as Chairman COSC was the most important development at this time.^[11] A full-time chairman had first been appointed in 1958, but the incumbent did not gain much influence until Air Marshal Sir Frederick Scherger was appointed in 1961. He was promoted to Air Chief Marshal in 1965, a year before he was succeeded by Wilton. Scherger believed that a single ADF should be formed but, as he said later, ‘Vietnam was no time for changing horses in midstream, or even changing the colour of the horses’.^[12]

Wilton had no such hesitation. His problem was that he had no command authority over COMAFV. Thus if the COMAFV sought urgent direction from Wilton, he could not give it until he had called the COSC together. In practice, Wilton sometimes gave the necessary direction and sought COSC and ministerial approval later. Writing at about this time, Tom Millar, the first head of the newly-formed SDSC at the ANU, observed:

In September 1967, Wilton circulated his proposals for change.^[14] His key proposal was the formation of a unified Department of Defence, involving the abolition of the Service departments and ministers. The fighting Services would retain their separate identities to preserve morale and operational efficiency. Wilton’s own position should be redesignated Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). Higher direction of the department would be in the hands of a Defence Board of Administration, which would operate in a similar manner to the Service boards. It would be headed by the Minister, and would include the CDS, the Secretary and the Service chiefs. The CDS and the Secretary would exercise joint executive authority. The COSC would be responsible to the Minister for the direction, planning and control of operations, with a joint Service staff to assist it. There should be a joint intelligence organisation, a joint cadet college, a joint staff college, a joint warfare establishment, a joint communications centre and joint medical services. The Service chiefs would remain the professional heads of their Services and would exercise their functions through their own headquarters.

Wilton argued that, as most operations in which Australian forces were likely to be committed would be joint, there should be a ‘single clear chain of operational control’. Joint forces, such as Australian Force Vietnam, should report to the COSC, which should have ‘statutory authority and some of the powers now vested in the existing statutory Service boards’. Other proposed joint commands, such as Air Defence and Maritime Commands, could report to the COSC through the Chief of the Air Staff and the Chief of Naval Staff respectively. As Wilton put it, the CDS, in ‘respect of operations’, would be the ‘executive agent’ of the COSC, issuing instructions to designated joint commands and military establishments and as appropriate to individual Chiefs of Staff. The joint staff and the staffs of the Service chiefs were to be collocated in the same building. It would be another 30 years before this idea was realised.

Wilton was unable to persuade either the Defence Minister, Allen Fairhall, or the Defence Secretary, Sir Edwin Hicks, but he bided his time, and when Sir Henry Bland became Secretary in January 1968 he began implementing changes. By the time Wilton retired in November 1970, with Bland’s assistance he had formed a Joint Staff headed by a two-star Director Joint Staff (Rear Admiral Bill Dovers). Wilton chaired a committee that recommended and pushed through the formation of the Joint Intelligence Organisation. He established the Joint Services Staff College; took the first step in forming the Australian Joint Warfare Establishment; and was a prime mover in working towards a tri-Service officer cadet academy (the latter not being approved until after he had retired). He even persuaded the COSC to accept a joint Service badge—the same one that is used today for the ADF, an organisation that at that time had not yet been formed.

Wilton was not the only one agitating for change. Writing in 1969, Millar argued that if Australia were to become involved in ‘substantial operations of war’, it would require ‘a direct command structure’. He wondered whether ‘the head of the whole defence organisation should be a professional military man rather than a professional civil servant?’ Recognising that this was probably ‘not feasible’, he thought that ‘the senior Service officer at least needs to be given prime operational responsibility, by making him the Chief of the Defence Staff and not simply chairman of a committee’. Defence needed ‘a chief and not a chairman. He should be of four-star rank, i.e., general or equivalent. At present the Chairman of the COSC, usually a three-star officer, is at a disadvantage in international military meetings and in dealing with the Chiefs of Staff’.^[15] (Wilton had been promoted to general in September 1968; but there was no guarantee that his successor would be promoted.)

In his last year as Chairman, with a new Defence Minister, Malcolm Fraser, and a new Defence Secretary, Sir Arthur Tange, Wilton revived his earlier proposals, but he made no headway. Two years later, after he had retired, he submitted another paper to the Shadow Minister for Defence, Lance Barnard, in which he argued that the COSC should be established as a statutory authority and that its Chairman should be redesignated CDS as a statutory appointment. He would perform his duties ‘by virtue of his statutory office rather than as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff. He should have co-equal status and authority with the Secretary Department of Defence.’^[16] Interestingly, the ANU played a minor role in Wilton’s approach to Barnard: in mid-1972 Wilton attended a lecture given by Barnard at the university and afterwards explained his concerns to Barnard, who subsequently agreed to meet with Wilton.^[17]