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Subject: Our defenceless force
Volkodav    3/30/2009 8:56:45 PM
I wonder if the new white paper will be any better than previous efforts or whether we will see more of the same. Cameron Stewart | March 31, 2009 Article from: The Australian IF there were a moment when the fragile relationship between Joel Fitzgibbon and the defence establishment finally snapped, it might have been the surprise attack the minister launched on his own flock in Brisbane last October. On that day Fitzgibbon did what previous defence ministers have rarely done: he gave his own defence force a blunt public spray about its big-picture priorities and its lack of preparedness for battle. Fitzgibbon was angry about not having the option of deploying the army's Black Hawk helicopters into Afghanistan. The minister had been taking political heat over an inadequate number of NATO medical evacuation choppers available for Australian troops at their base in Tarin Kowt, in Oruzgan province. "If we do see a strategic and tactical justification for sending Black Hawks to Afghanistan tomorrow, we would be unable to do so as they lack the electronic warfare self-protection they require," Fitzgibbon lamented. "We spend a lot of time thinking and talking about important capability as we look far out into the future, but we seem to spend much less time talking about the capability we need to do the things we do right now and on a regular basis." The minister's comments broke the rules of keeping such criticism in-house. Defence likes to see its ministers keep a stiff upper lip in public, confining any criticism to private meetings. Fitzgibbon put his department offside on that day, but he also made a telling point. Few Australians are fully aware that tens of billions of dollars' worth of front-line weaponry from the navy, air force and army cannot be sent to war today unless it is a low-level, low-risk operation. As the Government puts the finishing touches to the new defence white paper, it is gearing up for a public relations blitz about the futuristic, sleek and powerful Australian Defence Force of tomorrow. What the Defence Department won't tell you is that, as things stand, most of Australia's warplanes and ships cannot be sent to any conflict involving an opponent with a half-decent air defence system and modern anti-ship missiles. Across the entire ADF, an alarming amount of expensive military equipment is not in a suitable upgraded condition to be sent to war. This is the legacy of project mismanagement and a Defence Department mindset that focuses more heavily on the defence force of tomorrow than on the force of today. "It really is amazing how little (equipment) can be actually deployed overseas when we have a defence budget of more than $22billion," says Andrew Davies, an analyst withthe country's premier independent military think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Former senior defence official Allan Behm agrees: "I think the public would be absolutely astonished and gobsmacked to think we spend so much on defence every year and yet we can't send much (of) it into harm's way because it won't work or will not survive in acontest." As the Government considers its military options for an increased role in Afghanistan, the frustration of the Rudd Government at the depleted state of the ADF is growing. An investigation by The Australian reveals just how ill-prepared the ADF is for an immediate crisis. It finds much of the defence force's most powerful weaponry is awaiting future upgrades or promised replacements and is useful only for training purposes or deployment on operations where there is little or no risk of high-level conflict. This problem needs to be seen in context. No defence force keeps its entire inventory on war footing; such a practice would be prohibitively expensive and pointless when no enemy is apparent. All Western defence forces, including the ADF, are in a constant state of transition with armoury being upgraded and replaced as it becomes obsolete. But this long-term upgrading process must be balanced against existing requirements and future short-term contingencies. Experts say this balance has been lost. "The problem with readiness planning has arisen because of peacekeeping and other short-notice commitments (that) have seen us having to deploy assets quickly and put them in harm's way," says Daniel Cotterill, a defence analyst with Hill and Knowlton and until recently Fitzgibbon's chief of staff. "There is a bias within defence towards investing in the future force rather than giving government the fully functioning options they really need today." For example, if Australia were asked to provide warplanes for an immediate operation against a country with a functioning air defence system, it could not do so. The F-111 strike bomber, which will be retired next year, can't be deployed to a hot war zone because it has insufficient electronic warfare self-protection and is too easily detected by ene
 
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neutralizer       4/8/2009 6:06:51 AM
Not sure what 'chasing' has to do with it, attackers are generally approaching .  The idea is to be in front of them and deal with them before weapon launch, I realise this might be a difficult concept to grasp (perhaps there's a bit of mental confusion between peacetime antics and war).  There were also quite a lot of Bears (they even managed to get one over the N Sea recently, first time in years).  Of course it depends how far North the 'through deck cruisers' were operating, but there was a USAF base on Iceland as well as at Thule in Greenland.  With backup from the Tornado IDS, specifically designed as long range interceptors not for BoB reruns. 
 
The point is UK had no vaguely justifiable requirement for a 'proper' carrier in the 1960s and the next couple of decades.  With the change of defence policy post Cold War the situation has changed hence the QE class construction.  The fact that RN could doubtless invent naval fantasies is not a capability justification that stands up to close scrutiny.  I'm not entirely convinced that the same can be said of Canberra - although I'd agree that both countries have a 'ship-building constituency' factor.  But I'm still LOL over the thought of MoD trying to get the Foreign Office to buy into a Arg threat to FI to justify big carriers, FO were always 'in discussion' with Arg on the FI future and were looking for any vaguely acceptable means of transferring sovereignty.
 
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Aussiegunneragain       4/9/2009 9:57:10 AM

Not sure what 'chasing' has to do with it, attackers are generally approaching .  The idea is to be in front of them and deal with them before weapon launch, I realise this might be a difficult concept to grasp (perhaps there's a bit of mental confusion between peacetime antics and war).  There were also quite a lot of Bears (they even managed to get one over the N Sea recently, first time in years).  Of course it depends how far North the 'through deck cruisers' were operating, but there was a USAF base on Iceland as well as at Thule in Greenland.  With backup from the Tornado IDS, specifically designed as long range interceptors not for BoB reruns. 

 The point is UK had no vaguely justifiable requirement for a 'proper' carrier in the 1960s and the next couple of decades.  With the change of defence policy post Cold War the situation has changed hence the QE class construction.  The fact that RN could doubtless invent naval fantasies is not a capability justification that stands up to close scrutiny.  I'm not entirely convinced that the same can be said of Canberra - although I'd agree that both countries have a 'ship-building constituency' factor.  But I'm still LOL over the thought of MoD trying to get the Foreign Office to buy into a Arg threat to FI to justify big carriers, FO were always 'in discussion' with Arg on the FI future and were looking for any vaguely acceptable means of transferring sovereignty.

 

All bollocks ... the RNs old carriers didn't carry Phantoms for no reason. If Backfires were intercepted by Sea Harriers all it would have to do is turn 90 Degrees and light the burners, then turn in to attack again when the SHAR's are out of range. Even that is if the SHAR's achieved an intercept before the Backfire's long range missiles were launched. You couldn't have relied on long range land based interceptors either. Apart from the unacceptably huge drain on tanking resources all that would need to happen would be for a storm to shut down the fighter's airbase while the convoy was in reletively calm seas, or for one refuelling probe to break in a basket to force the mission to abort, to deny the convoy air cover completely. The rhough the deck cruisers were only in service to save money and because of RAF jealousy.

 
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Julius Rosenberg       4/24/2009 9:08:27 AM
Do you gentlemen have any more information about the capability and deployability of your armies?
I would love to hear it.
 
Maybe we can meet for lunch somewhere.
 
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strat-T21C    not so different!   4/24/2009 11:28:50 AM
You guys know that almost all of the 'issues' and 'problems' being discussed here are expierianced by my own armed forces( Can ) . The curse of the sparsely populated nation, especially when said nations have big balls with bigger attitudes.
 
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Aussie Diggermark 2       4/25/2009 8:44:18 AM






 







I'm obviously out of date because I thought that there were a couple of Chinooks in Afg and hadn't noticed that they'd returned.  As I understand it the Chinook waiting list is a long one.








 



You are not out of date, you just don't understand Australian defence issues, quite obviously. 



 Yes we do have chooks in Afghanistan. However they are serving as part of the overall NATO airlift capability. Apart from the Special Forces detachment, they are the most significant force element group we have deployed to Afghanistan and if they were re-rolled to provide on-call medivac support soley for Australian forces, the value of our deployment to Afghanistan, in our allies, view, would diminish remarkably. 



What I was pointing out was because of this requirement, we no longer have a Chinook capacity to deploy to Afghanistan to provide a medivac capability for ourselves, and won't until, and if I suppose, we gain greater Chinook numbers in the Australian Army fleet. Of course we will also have MRH-90 in-service within a few years (5x aircraft already, but IOC is still a year or 2 away) and that should provide other options, but is irrelevent right now. 


The choice then is to provide an extremely expensive deployment of 2x Chinook helos to rather selfishly provide a medivac capability for ourselves, for the 1 or 2 callouts they might get per week, or do we contribute the same lift capability to the overall NATO mission and use it to increase the capability of the NATO alliance itself?

 




My understanding is that all SH and AH are part of the overall ISAF resources, less for some that are part of the US national operation and those subject to national usage caveats (eg German).   Obviously with heli they aren't normally going to be used too far from their home turf for logistic/flight time reasons.  I think you'll find that the CH used for casevac are standard machines, they are not specialised, it's also my understanding that they have one on standby at Bastion although whether tis is permanent or just when deployed operations are going on is unclear to me.  I guess the good news is that the AS/NL casualty rate is just not high enough to justify a heli permanently tasked for casevac tasks, in someone's view.  Have NL got any of their CH in theatre?


Instead of bleating about Blackhawks I'd be asking about what discussions have taken place with NL forces about a joint effort.  But I confess I have no idea about their casualty numbers.



I think you don't have the faintest idea of the capability of our Chooks. I suggest you research the MH-47's and then compare their features to the 5 Avn Regiment Chinooks we have serving in Afghanistan. They have far more in common then you might think...
 
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Volkodav       4/25/2009 9:37:07 AM
and according to The Australian, we are about to increase our numbers from 6 to 10 Chooks
 
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Aussie Diggermark 2       4/25/2009 10:11:29 AM

and according to The Australian, we are about to increase our numbers from 6 to 10 Chooks

According to DSCA we are requesting up to 7x additional CH-47F Chinooks...
 
 
ww.dsca.mil/PressReleases/36-b/2009/Australia_09-17.pdf
 
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Volkodav       4/25/2009 9:28:59 PM
Now that would be good, but a total of 13 seems like an odd number. I wonder if this figure includes rebuilds of some of our D models?
 
I hope it is seven additional and the plan is to increase the number of airframes we can sustain on deployment while still being able to meet training and local support requirements.
 
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