Insecurity in defence. (Defence).

ALMOST TWO YEARS ago I left the army. It was a middle-distance career complemented by a middle-distance performance. My reasons for leaving were many. Among other things I felt that the passion and enthusiasm had left me. Unlike some officers I had known, I did not want to continue neither advancing the service nor willing to get out of the way of others who would. Well, that was one justification. More selfishly I reasoned that if the second half of my career was to be played out in an office block, it would be an office block of my choosing.

Of course psychologists would tell me that my malaise was a natural part of mid-life and, by inference, unrelated to my service in the army. This may be true. But I am not entirely content with this explanation. I do not feel the same need to be passionate in industry. Yes, I must be competent and hardworking--but passionate, that's not mandatory. It does not require "belief' in the company for someone to work an hour longer or come in an hour earlier. You are hirelings and you will do what is reasonable for the time that you work for the company.

But to lead well in the services requires passion. Nowhere is this truer than in the army. A ship cannot sail nor an aircraft fly without a clear minimum of resources. If this minimum is not met its dysfunction is apparent. But an army unit can, through a thousand cuts, still be called a unit--even if it is barely capable of driving out the barracks gate. So, as an officer's career progresses, he or she must become adept at ignoring operational dysfunction.

In the early years, when leading small groups, this is not too difficult. Small group tactics require relatively few resources. But as an officer's professional horizon widens beyond the company (or squadron or battery) the flaws become too obvious. There are never the resources to test larger tactical groupings in any credible way. Exercises have to be conducted with extensive and highly subjective notional play. Exercise results are invariably pre-ordained and fundamental lessons are too readily papered over and ignored. Of later years I have not been proud of participating in this sham. However, I cannot help being proud of how soldiers, NCOs and junior officers throw themselves into these activities. They are inheritors of a tradition nurtured by a century of inadequate peacetime resources. This tradition, through sheer insufficiency, necessarily focuses attention and nurtures the greatest expertise at the company level and below.

Little wonder, at the lower levels, that things work and work well. It is this lower level that is the bedrock of our success from Vietnam through to Somalia, Cambodia, Bougainville, East Timor and, I presume, Afghanistan. It has also carried our reputation in the United Nations through our involvement in almost fifty missions since 1947. It is an ingrained ability to operate very well at the small group level on frequently unstructured problems in relatively low-tempo environments. It is a quality that any army (and any nation) should rejoice in. It also indirectly formed the nub of my discontent. For this quality has for years served to disguise fundamental flaws within the army and defence generally.

As I left the army I could no longer ignore the disparity between our tactical expertise at small group engagements and our inability to resource and train for more complex engagements. By this I mean our ability to co-ordinate and sustain complete units and associated gun, air, naval and logistic support in higher-tempo larger-scale activity. An army's internationally recognised capability to conduct and sustain these types of operation is what differentiates it. This ability elevates an army above those other armies which, no matter how good, are only slightly more sophisticated than a well-run police force armed with heavy-calibre weapons and lightly armoured vehicles.

There seemed to be an inability within the army, the Defence Organisation and defence interest groups to plot a logical and consistent path that would lead to a redress of this problem. I realised, however, that none of this was "new under the sun". The condition of the peacetime Australian army in 2001 was little different from its condition for much of its history. And, therefore, I could either learn to live with it or move on.