Transcript
2005 BLAMEY ORATION BUILDING A JOINT FORCE
A presentation to The Royal United Services
Institute of Western Australia
26 May 2005
by Air Marshal Angus Houston AO AFC
Chief of Air Force
INTRODUCTION
Mr President and members of RUSI Western Australia, thank you for the kind introduction. I am very pleased to be here to deliver this year's Blamey Oration.
Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey owes his place in Australian history primarily to his contribution to the conduct of Army operations during World War II.
However, many of you will not be aware of Blamey's impact on the Royal Australian Air Force. Tonight I would like to outline Blamey's connection with the Air Force and then discuss how we operate today and plan to operate into the future.
BLAMEY AT THE RAAF's CREATION
Blamey had a powerful influence at the time that planning was underway for the creation of a separate and permanent air service within the Australian armed forces. The year was 1920, and the government had just formed an Air Board to draw up plans for the new service that would meet the combined needs of both the Army and Navy.
The membership of this first Air Board, which was really little more than an advisory committee, was Blamey, then a Brigadier-General, and Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Williams for the Army, and Captain William Nunn and Lieutenant-Colonel S.J. ("Jimmy") Goble for the Navy.
Williams, of course, had already achieved prominence as a leading figure in the wartime Australian Flying Corps before being appointed as acting Director of Military Air Services. Williams was soon to become famous as the "father" of the RAAF. Goble was another Australian who had risen in the Royal Naval Air Service in the war before becoming the RAN's Air Adviser, and was about to become Williams' arch rival for the leadership of the early RAAF.
At this stage, however, the tension seems to have been predominantly between Blamey and Williams, with Williams declaring that he had great difficulty in making his voice heard over that of Blamey. Williams later complained of Blamey's propensity to quote "state his own opinion quite definitely" unquote combined with a disinclination to discuss his views with juniors. This is interesting, since Williams' own autocratic style later was the subject of similar comment.
In those early days, the inability of the two existing services to resolve their differences caused the government to form an Air Council. This council represented the Army and Navy and would oversee the activities of a new Air Board that would function as an administrative body on the same basis as the Naval and Military Boards.
Blamey had a seat on this new council, in his capacity as Deputy Chief of the General Staff, and at its first meeting in July 1920 Williams was the other Army representative-but with status of consultant, not member.
This situation continued for several years, so that during the 1923 Imperial Conference in London, Williams found himself merely "sitting in" on a meeting between Blamey and the British Chief of the Air Staff. The Chief of the day was Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard and the meeting occurred in the Chief of Air Staff rooms at the Air Ministry. This occurred even though by this time Williams himself carried the title of Chief of Air Staff, albeit with the modest rank of Wing Commander, nonetheless, his presence was more or less as observer only. Blamey's influence throughout this time may not have been as constructive and helpful as members of the RAAF could have wished, but there is no doubting that he was a factor to be reckoned with in the deliberations that shaped the Service's future.
BLAMEY'S FAMILY CONNECTION TO THE RAAF
A second form of connection between Blamey and the RAAF came just a few years later, in the person of Blamey's elder son, Charles (or "Dolf", as he was known). Blamey junior was a 1930 graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon. He elected- under an arrangement that had been in place for many years-to transfer on temporary secondment to the RAAF.
Sadly, this very personal and potentially valuable link between such a senior member of the Army and the RAAF was neither long lasting nor mutually satisfactory. Young Flying Officer Blamey was killed in a training accident at Richmond airbase in New South Wales on 6 December 1932. According to Blamey's biographer, Professor David Horner, it was characteristic of Blamey senior that he "showed little outward evidence of the impact" of this tragedy.
BLAMEY TO COMMAND THE AIR FORCE
There was a third episode linking Australia's pre-eminent soldier of the Second World War with the RAAF. Early in 1943, Australia was beset with problems involving the internal command of the RAAF, arising from personal differences that had emerged between the then Chief of Air Staff, Air Vice-Marshal George Jones, and the RAAF's senior operational commander, Air Vice-Marshal William Bostock.
It seems very much in character for Blamey that, at a meeting of the War Cabinet in February 1943, he should have seriously proposed that the "best course" towards solving this difficulty was to appoint himself as Commander-In-Chief of both the Army and the RAAF. When Prime Minister John Curtin - a figure that has a special place in the heart of West Australians - objected that such a step would surely quote "invoke a great outcry" end of quote, Blamey simply agreed and admitted that he would quote "not relish the idea of his suggestion being adopted" end of quote.
BLAMEY'S SUGGESTION A BLUEPRINT?
Putting aside that momentary sense of horror that most RAAF people might feel in sympathy with Curtin, I must admit to a certain fascination with Blamey's proposition. This is because the essence of his suggestion seems to carry a hint of the command arrangements that control the modern ADF today.
Under the current command arrangement, the Chief of the Defence Force can be an officer of any service and exercises actual command of all three services.
It is Blamey's initiative in making the offer to take command of both Army and Air Force that I find most stimulating in thinking about his enduring contribution to shaping the defence culture of this nation. Had his suggestion of 1943 been taken up, then Australia might well have reached the stage - at least to a degree - of creating a joint defence force more than forty years before it finally occurred in 1984.
One should not read too much into this episode, of course, since there is no evidence that Blamey was thinking of an arrangement like we have now. I doubt that Blamey envisaged for one moment that the Army might be anywhere except in the box seat when it came to a joint Army-RAAF command.
On other occasions Blamey definitely showed himself to be a true conservative in military matters. For example, during a Council of Defence debate in mid-1939 with the then Chief of Air Staff, Air Vice-Marshal Goble, about the RAAF's aircraft acquisition program, he found it inconceivable that ships could ever be vulnerable to attack from the air.
I now ponder what Blamey would make of the direction in which we in the ADF have moved in the half-century since his death on 27 May 1951.
(I am, naturally, very mindful that we have the anniversary of Blamey's death tomorrow.)
THE RAAF TODAY
The RAAF of today is a very different organisation from the one Blamey was looking at, back in 1943. For a start, we are a much smaller Service and do not have the urgent focus of having to deal with an adversary having an active operational presence right on our strategic doorstep. That difference aside, the RAAF of today is still under pressure to respond to an array of operational demands.
In just the past few years, we have been called upon to undertake operations in Timor-Leste (the former East Timor), Bougainville, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Solomon Islands. We have flown surveillance of Australia's northern approaches to counter illegal immigration and illegal exploitation of our economic exclusion zone. We have countered illegal fishing thousands of kilometres away in the southern ocean. We directly contributed to national security by providing air cover during high-visibility events within Australia - such as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the visit of President Bush.
We have also conducted emergency medical and aeromedical evacuation operations in Bali after the horrendous 2002 terrorist attack. We ran the coalition Air Traffic Control system in Baghdad for a considerable period. We have flown first aid and relief into Baghdad, Iran, Niue and, most recently, Sumatra and Thailand. We currently fly support for coalition operations in Iraq and contribute critical specialist capabilities such as medical services at Balad Air Base, near Baghdad. Our P-3Cs also deployed forward and are now based in the Gulf, supporting the naval task force and are providing important intelligence.
Let me just mention our response to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which was arguably the worst natural disaster in recent history. I would have to admit that natural disaster relief was not foremost in the RAAF'S mind at that time; we do undertake these tasks regularly, but our focus was on deployments elsewhere. The ADF was already heavily committed to quite a few operations, and it almost seemed that some sort of pattern was emerging about what the future might require of us. And then, with no notice, our priorities had to change. Since the tsunami and subsequent earthquake, we have played a significant role in providing humanitarian relief in the Indonesian region.
ADF: A JOINT FORCE
There is one main point that emerges from this brief review of our recent commitments. We, the RAAF, have been involved in a wide range of different types of operation - from high-end conventional conflict, through peacekeeping, to natural disaster relief - and in all cases our operations have been part of larger joint ADF joint task forces. We now expect that the planning and execution of future ADF operations will be always based on a genuine joint approach.
FLEXIBILITY
A related lesson is the importance of flexibility. Air Forces pride themselves on their flexibility. Again using the tsunami as an example, although the air force's primary role is warfighting, we needed to turn our hand to something quite different at very short notice. This has been quite typical of operations since the end of the Cold War: whenever you think you see a pattern, something changes. So we need to be flexible and adaptable to deal with whatever comes up. Preparing the force to fight the last war has never been a good idea, and recent history shows that it certainly will not work in our current circumstances. Avoiding this pitfall has meant a change in culture, a change in the way we operate and an emphasis on the flexible use of our capabilities.
Our people are working hard to develop a flexible, adaptable, deployable Air Force which can meet the challenges of an uncertain future. I call this our expeditionary Air Force of the future. We are prepared to provide joint forces for coalition operations in support of UN regional activities or forces supporting long-standing alliance commitments. In this context I also include crisis response as part of a coalition package in support of our international agreements such as the five power defence arrangements. In addition, we routinely work together with other Government departments to provide options to Government to protect Australian interests.
EQUIPMENT AND CAPABILITIES
Flexibility and adaptability must be fundamental attributes of our capabilities. For example, we have used our F/A-18 Hornets in both air defence and land strike roles - sometimes even in the same mission. And we have required similar flexibility from our maritime patrol aircraft, the AP-3C Orion. In Iraq, we used them to provide surface picture and surveillance coverage of the northern Persian Gulf waters. The Orions provided early warning of possible suicide boat attacks to the carrier battle groups at a range far greater than that available to the surface fleet. But we have also established that the Orions can do a fine job at land surveillance as well.
Another example is the extra flexibility made possible by the improvements in electronic warfare self protection that has allowed us to expand the operational envelopes of our aircraft in higher-threat environments, such as that in Iraq. Having broadly employable capabilities increases the response options we can offer to Government.
We have seen that operations within our large country almost always require expeditionary operations thousands of kilometres away from our home bases, and that we are increasingly being asked to contribute to operations well away from our shores. We have created expeditionary combat support squadrons to enable us to deploy and operate from forward or remote bases with limited infrastructure. We must have a tactical level organisation that can activate and operate our forward or bare bases, and protect and sustain the deployed force elements.
To support these demands for expeditionary capability, we need to think carefully about our airlift capability and combat support, so we can operate deployed air bases. And we will need a robust logistics system to keep it all going. I should also mention the air-to-air refuelling aircraft, and possible acquisition of long-range unmanned aerial vehicles, as also being fundamental to our expeditionary capability.
Certainly multi-role and multi-mission aircraft provide benefits for flexibility and adaptability. The Joint Strike Fighter is a superb performer in this regard, being valuable for control of the air, strike, air support to surface forces, and can also contribute to the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission. It will make a significant contribution to the ADF's network centric warfare capability. The multi-mission maritime aircraft, a variant of the popular Boeing 737, which is a possible contender to replace our P-3 Orions, will be similarly versatile.
PURSUING A SEAMLESS APPROACH
We also follow an important principle when it comes to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (or ISR) matters: that is, the need for having a seamless approach. During operations in Afghanistan in 2002, Army Special Forces elements provided targeting information to incoming strike aircraft, which subsequently attacked the targets. This often included Taliban elements that were on the move at the time. Such operations go well beyond the historical norm for cooperation between air and surface forces, and are also a foretaste of what network centric warfare will deliver for the ADF in the future.
LOGISTICS
A lesson we are now relearning is the importance of logistics. Unfortunately, we lost focus on logistics during the downsizing of the 1990s. Although logistics constraints still hamper us from time to time, we are well down the track to recovery, with the creation of joint and Air Force logistics agencies, and substantial Government funding to redress critical shortfalls. Logistics is an area where we depend very heavily on industry, and we are working closely with industry to ensure that we have the required level of logistic support. I am delighted that the Chief Executive Officer of the Defence Materiel Organisation, Dr Steve Gumley, and his leadership team are here tonight. They are doing a great job as they support our capabilities from the initial definition of the capability requirement, through the delivery of capability and provision of operational support through to retirement of equipment.
NETWORK CENTRIC WARFARE
I alluded to networking earlier, and the increasing emphasis that is being placed on linking people and equipment, using high-speed communications networks to make us more effective, and to enable us to operate smarter, faster and with great precision. The ADF has a network centric warfare roadmap to guide us down this path with significant implications for our future equipment requirements and our personnel.
The defence capability plan (or DCP) contains several projects that we must think of as nodes within a larger system. These include the new air combat capability or joint strike fighter (JSF) program; the airborne early warning and control aircraft; Vigilare ground command and control system; the air-to-air refuelling aircraft; and many other critical capabilities. Networking will also require increased emphasis on space-based capabilities for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, communications, and much more.
In designing our networks, we must be careful to avoid the sub-optimal approach delivered through taking a single-service view. The example I gave earlier of cooperation between Air Force strike elements and Army Special Forces shows that networking strongly supports a seamless approach to joint operations. The RAAF recognises the need for a strong Navy, Army and Air Force to work together as a highly professional team. And although there are cost and interoperability issues, we must also look beyond the ADF towards an appropriate level of networking first with other Government departments, and then with international allies and coalition partners.
PEOPLE
So far I have said a lot about capability and organisational issues but I haven't said much about the one element that holds our systems together and that is the people.
During the last 100 years, Australian serviceman and women have exhibited a unique fighting spirit that has upheld our cultural ideals of mateship, giving 'a fair go' and empathy with the broader Australian community. Our all-volunteer force is innovative and eager to get the job done. That spirit continues, with a willingness to adapt best practice to suit the warfighting environment.
In that same spirit, our people are continuing to develop a flexible, adaptable, deployable Air Force able to meet the challenges of that uncertain future.
To enable our people to undertake the variety of tasks that we face, there is an absolute requirement for honest communication, with the chain of command as the conduit, and where feedback is encouraged and creativity and innovation become second nature.
This builds strong relationships based on trust - across all levels of the organisation. This is my vision for the future Air Force and is essential for a healthy Air Force. Unlike the early days of the Royal Australian Air Force, our leaders must be prepared to communicate and listen effectively to our young people rather than being too directive. The future of our force is in their hands.
CONCLUSION: WOULD BLAMEY APPROVE?
The factors I have outlined here today are those that are driving the Air Force for the future. This leads me to the concluding observation that, regardless of what motivated Blamey to make his proposal to command both the Air Force and the Army back in 1943, the RAAF is operating closer to Army - and Navy as well - than ever before in our history. We do this, however, as part of a joint ADF, not with the idea of one service being subordinate to another, but in pursuit of common objectives and goals related to Defence of Australia and our national interests.
I imagine that if Field Marshal Blamey were alive today he could only endorse the broad thrust of the changes that have occurred to produce the ADF that we have today. He would also see the benefits of having a genuine partnership between the three Services working together as part of a whole of Government team. Thank you.