New Defence White Paper fails to address Australia's core security needs

The photo above illustrates the 2013 Defence White Paper (DWP 2013) perfectly.

The new DWP is nothing more than a prop to justify numerous bad decisions; not unlike the DWP of 2009.

For a federal government deep in debt, this new DWP is incompatible with a Defence organization that needs to be frugal.

Management 101 states that one should not embark on a project unless it has a realistic hope of having the proper amount of available resources; a useful timeline toward completion and demonstrates a real need.

The 2013 Defence White Paper refers to numerous projects that go against that kind of practical thinking.

Why is the 2013 Defence White Paper useless? 1) It will not help defend Australia; 2) The people that wrote it don’t give the impression that they are skilled in the military art; 3) DWP 2013 is a vehicle to support rent-seekers and buy votes; 4)The obscene wish list of projects has little hope of being affordable in any future budget.

Requirements?

The submarine replacement requirement is flawed. If one wants all the operational tasks mentioned for a conventional Collins-class replacement, they are unfortunately describing all the capabilities that only a U.S. made, Virginia-class nuclear submarine can perform. If the thought of having that kind of submarine is distasteful for some, then, change the requirement.

The Super Hornet; in its’ Block II form today, would, by itself, be more than a match to face the dangerous legacy air defense environment for the 1999 bombing campaign of Yugoslavia. The Super Hornet EA-18G jamming aircraft is obsolete to emerging threats. The jammer package; sorry, the escort-jammer package in its’ Growler/Grizzly form, is great for Boeing as a sales gimmick. Why? Because appearances matter to a de-skilled Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy. There are no dedicated jammer variants for the Typhoon, Rafale and Gripen. This helps lock in a sales pitch to the clueless. So, sell Australia a jammer package with gear that the U.S. Navy stated years ago was obsolete to emerging threats. Cheerleaders will say, “but there is the next-gen jammer”. True, but it hasn’t been delivered yet; might not arrive if the U.S. Navy is so short on cash they have to park ships and aircraft due to money mismanagement and finally; it will only be on the Super Hornet in a slow, short-ranged, power-limited, drag-o-matic setup that will need lots of tanker-gas to cover a Pacific op.

The F-35; the Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy is so “committed” to this program that we might have an active squadron of this obsolete-to-emerging-threats aircraft by 2020. If one follows the delay trends, it might be longer than 20 years after Defence Minister Hill and friends made their dumb mistake to pick a completely unknown capability. Roll the roulette wheel. Defence has also not figured out how to sustain this aircraft which could have a cost per flying hour twice that of the Super Hornet.

Adding to the gold-plated hardware wishes, the non-thinking Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy believes that if it is new, it must be good. For example: Australia does not need Boeing P-8 patrol aircraft. It needs to be frugal and upgrade existing P-3 patrol aircraft.

There are several more impediments for the new DWP. The welfare state is the mission of the seriously in-debt Australian government. The current spend-thrift leadership hates business and thinks it can tax its' way to prosperity. In this environment any conversation of Defence spending needed as a percentage of GDP can only be looked at as ignorant thinking buy the alleged Defence intelligencia. This statement from the new DWP is meaningless: "As Australia’s financial and economic circumstances allow, the Government will want to grow the Defence budget to around two per cent of Gross Domestic Product."

Defence will get whatever money there is after the welfare-state gets its annual fief; and, not until then.

And Reform?

Defence has no plans to shed failed programs like the MRH-90 and ARH Tiger helicopters. These platforms suck up money best used by other communities in Defence that provide actual worth.

The Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy and the writers of the new DWP seem to be unable to understand the fact that a top NCO or unit commander is not allowed perform proper discipline activities. Give that responsibility. A good NCO can stop adverse discipline trends quickly and effectively. This saves millions of dollars in government commissions that do not address how to stop root-cause military discipline failures.

The U.S. military-industrial congressional complex (like the Australian Entrenched Defece Bureaucracy) is now so corrupt and moribund that Pacific Rim deterrence will suffer greatly. The U.S. Air Force has large amounts of old aircraft and suffers from such high level management incompetence that it is unable to live within its means and is thus parking aircraft and cutting significant amounts of flying hours.

The U.S. Navy is in a similar situation where ships and aircraft are being parked because of poor money management and misplaced priorities. The aircraft that fly off of U.S. aircraft carriers now and into the future are obsolete to emerging threats. The real symbol of the U.S. Pacific pivot to Asia is the defective and often broken-down, new, littoral combat ship that would get shot up and sunk by many kinds of low end threats.

The USMC will depend on air domination from the above mentioned services and, there may be many events where there are not enough, or any, F-22s.

Lack of air domination is paid for with hundreds and thousands of casualties.

Of the frontline U.S. Army fighting vehicles, none of them can swim or ford a river properly. This makes them useless for the Pacific.

All of this is the  kind of U.S. military backup Australia is hoping for in its' new Defence White Paper.

Interesting to look at the flip side of all of this:

Indonesia has newer and capable combat aircraft, super-sonic anti-ship missiles (the U.S. Navy and RAN have none) and AFVs that can swim (BMP-3). That is not to hold Indonesia up as a great threat. It only illustrates a very serious point in how far the U.S. has slipped with its' poor ideas of what defines a useful force structure. Indonesia appears to have a better grasp of its’ littoral defense needs than either Australia or the U.S. have of their Pacific Rim defense needs.

The new Defence White Paper should be treated with as much contempt as possible for wasting everyone’s time on such an empty document.

The new Defence White Paper fails to address Australia's core security needs.

Will this disease of poor military planning cost Australia lost battles; a lost war?

---