It won’t be right on the night

With the NACC, the Defence leadership has decided to attack all suggestions that the F-22 is a better solution. This has taken the form of misleading statements on cost, capabilities and so on. Worse is that the Defence leadership has not recognised the fact that the threat level in the region is increasing significantly. The Defence leadership are betting on so-called network centric warfare (NCW) and stealth, and state that this has changed the nature of air combat.

The problem is that purported revolutions in capability - if adopted in the absence of fundamentals - are usually found out at the worst time possible … in an actual shooting war. An example of this is Vietnam, where American F-4 Phantom fighters had no gun - the missile supposedly meant that guns were obsolete. They learned this was not the case, and quickly retrofitted guns. Guns are now standard issue, even on the JSF and F-22!

As to the revolutionary capabilities that Defence leadership is betting on, NCW is really nothing new - it’s simply the ability of a platform to gain awareness of the situation where the situation cannot be directly observed by the platform. Semaphore in the days of sail is an early example of this, where flag signals gave other vessels an appreciation of what was over the horizon. With stealth, the problem is that the JSF is not particularly stealthy from the rear aspect.

The Defence leadership is essentially betting that the regional situation will remain stagnant, and that stealthy, supercruising aircraft with network centric capability will not even be in the region by 2040-2050. This is when the NACC is still expected to be in service.

The risks associated with the program are coming home to roost. The Defence leadership stated that there would be no capability gap between the retirement of the F-111 and F-18, and service introduction of the JSF. They stated publicly - including before Parliamentary Committees as recently as three months ago - that there would be no requirement for an interim solution. Additionally - in their desire to kill the F-111 - they completely oversold apparent risks with F-111 life extension (PDF 2.1MB).

It now appears very likely that an inferior interim fighter will be purchased, the F/A-18F, to cover the unavailability of the existing F/A-18A Hornet fleet as it is put through life extension upgrades. This is billions more in taxpayers’ money, and yet another aircraft type (there is virtually no commonality between the “classic F/A-18” and the F/A-18F). What’s more, not only does this mean that our relative position in the region compared with other nations in the region deteriorates, but our absolute capability will degrade as well.

We’ve clearly got inherent problems with defence acquisitions, compounded by institutionalised groupthink in the Canberra staff organisation.

What can we do?

I believe that there are a number of things that will improve the situation considerably:

• decouple the funding of DSTO from Defence. DSTO must have the capability to act and conduct research in a completely independent manner, while still doing the work required to support Defence projects. The DSTO leadership must not be in a subservient position to Defence leadership - there should be completely separate chains of command reporting to the Defence Minister;
   
• have DSTO and ANAO personnel integrated with all major Defence acquisitions and project upgrades. Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) will probably need to be dragged kicking and screaming into this, as they will resist these measures and use arguments stating that they will not be able to operate efficiently while hamstrung by these personnel conducting oversight. They will also say that there should only be this sort of oversight when a project gets into trouble. This is nonsense - oversight is required to prevent trouble from occurring;
   
• a legislated approach to reform. That is, an “Aussie Rules” version of the approach taken in the Goldwater-Nichols Act introduced in the USA in 1986. The degree of reporting and responsibility for acquisitions and upgrades will increase significantly as a result;
   
• policy must be put in place to allow robust debate within Defence at all levels on capability issues. There must be no censure of Defence personnel who question capability, doctrine, ideology or the way things are done. So often it is mavericks within defence forces that force the conservative Defence Department to recognise reality; and
   
• Defence must engage with its critics in the Australian community and address their concerns with actions, not disparaging rhetoric. Many in Australia’s Defence reform movement are better qualified professionally than their peers in Defence. Many are also former ADF personnel, with decades of experience and the wisdom gained solving such problems before. Defence must recognise that its critics are a national resource to be used to solve problems in Defence, rather than an unwanted impediment to bureaucratic comfort.

These simple measures have the potential to save Australia billions of dollars. Fixing Defence is critical for Australia’s future. Otherwise - when the time comes - things won’t be right on the night.