Former senior RAAF officers slam Australia’s defence plan
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Three retired senior RAAF officers have published a review of the culture of learned failure in the administration of defence in Australia, and more critically in the US and UK. The paper warns that “the result has been to erode the professional development and management of Australia’s Military Services, to place Australia’s Defence Industry, particularly the Aerospace Industry, in jeopardy, and to impact adversely the National security.” The authors say those results, “will now make Australia largely irrelevant, both on the regional and international stages, for the next three or more decades.” They predict that Australia will be:
Of course, the headline failures in Australia so far include the very late and apparently under-performing Boeing Wedgetail early warning and command platform based on the 737 air frame, the Seasprite helicopter fiasco (recently terminated at a cost of more than $1 billion by Canberra) and the late, increasingly irrelevant and massively costly JSF or Joint Strike Fighter project. The authors regard the JSF program as one that will if its persists much longer, result in the unilateral disarmament of the US because of the loss of air power superiority. While the paper sets out to deal with defence issues, it inflicts collateral damage on the failings of modern business management where the bureaucratic process imitates the subversion of defence expertise with management fads. The similarities between the JSF and the Boeing 787 and Wedgetail programs leap off the pages. In each case the companies involved are no longer capable of converting hype into reality. Neither can actually get a deliverable aircraft into the sky. There appears to be an inverse relationship between the amount of spin generated by each project and its implementation, the main symptom of which is the claim to be “a game changer.” |
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8 Comments
3 of Dr Kopp’s cohorts who left ADF service 26, 25 and 16 years ago respectively. Hmm.
I served for almost three years in a defence project team. The cost over runs and project management ineptitude must be seen to be believed. The “Australian Company Content” rule is completely ignored in 95% of defence acquisitions. More depressingly DSTO our defence jewel, manages to attract all the multinational defence players who if they cant trash our technology ensure that the local answer almost never sees the light of day. Have a close look at the successful IT and electrical companies in SA. Many have an ex DSTO engineers or boffin types working or guiding these small successful groups. Defence loss - private industry gain. They just got sick and tired of working with a broken system. It is broken and it needs a massive cleanout.
Ben, you might also add the loss of the Caribou fleet later this year without a suitable STOL replacement. While there are a couple of lovely King Airs on the tarmac at RAAF Townsville (which will undoubtedly carry people in leather-clad comfort) there is no vision for light freight/combatant transport into difficult strips.
RAAF have known for more than a decade that something had to be done to replace or upgrade the 40yo Bous, but comprehensively sat on their hands.
To retire what is essentially a safe (but admittedly tired) type without a suitable replacement might be considered incompetent.
Tell us, Jeremy, are not the issues raised by these Senior Officers who have the wisdom of having been there before more important than who of Dr Carlo Kopp’s friends have retired?
By the way, argumentum ad hominem is a logical fallacy; resorting to which reflects rather poorly on your grasp of the situation.
Could be wrong here but your words suggest you hark from that group of folks who fervently believe the ‘comfortable fiction’ emanating from some of the overseas primes and feel like you need to propogate this ‘total indifference to reality’.
If you need any further explanation of this observation, take a look at:
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-190209-1.html
I was one of the RAAF staff officers in Canberra in the early 1980s who developed the requirement for AEW&C, now Project Wedgetail. In 1983, Boeing offered us Qty 3 B707 based AWACS for $50 million each, a veritable bargain at the time. The civilian bean counters killed the idea because AWACS has ‘too much capability’ for the RAAF. If we had bought these 3, they would still be in service (as are the USAF and NATO models) thereby giving us more time to fully develop a replacement. Alex
Sadly, Australian Defence capability acquisition history is replete with a plethora of similar examples and their frequency and the extent of the resulting waste of precious funds has been increasing and continues to incease at an alarming rate, since 1999/2000.
This paper, written by experts with the wisdom that comes from the experience of having gone before, is a wake up call.
The challenge is whether those in Government and in Defence/DMO who really care about the defence and security of our Nation have the strength in their convictions and are prepared to bring to account both the acts and failures to act of those who do not.
One of the problems with major acquisition projects are the uniformed members thmselves. I recently worked in the ‘Overlander’ project, to acquire new field vehicles for the Army. To get the project through the government approval process, Army said they wanted the ‘vanilla’ version, off the shelf, fully operational vehicles. However as the project developed within DMO, Army started putting forward their ‘essential’ improvements purely because they thought they needed it (we’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan you know! was the refrain from Army.) As a result of changes to specifications, DMO were faced with trying to buy vehicles which didn’t exist and custom built vehicles, costing much more, were investigated. In my 25 years in uniform and about 5 years as a Defence civvie, I saw this kind of thing a few times. We must learn to do it better!!
Great analysis and insight into an issue mostly ignored by the mainstream media. The ausairpower.net website is a hidden gem of simlar research and opinion and should be a must read for the Australian Government and the litany of “group think” lemmings that dwell within it. I’ve been reading it for the past six months and live in hope that continued sobering reports like this will cause someone to wake up and reform the culture of “surrender by ignorance” that currently polutes our national defence. Fingers crossed the wider press takes Ben’s lead on this too.