Reforming defence.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

SIR: As a junior officer reading John Donovan's article on "Reforming Defence" (April 2008), I am not surprised that the proportion of officers in the ADF has risen from well under 20 per cent to nearer 25 per cent. In many places it seems that every second person has a commission. It is not a simple case of too many chiefs without enough Indians, but it is hard to get around the mathematics of the situation, in that each officer has less man-hours available for tasking. Each junior officer, that is--at the policymaking level the relevant minions are staff officers, which may help to explain a few things.

A decade ago the ADF was not designed to conduct operations; Australia was (to borrow a phrase regarded as a standing joke at lower levels, but possibly still taken seriously in Canberra) "fitted for but not with" a defence force. There was consequently little need for operational-level staff, and members were "double-hatted" with peacetime and wartime roles. Apparently it was thought that the daily business which otherwise kept people occupied would become less important, or could be suspended, if real bullets started flying. Perhaps planners were inspired by the Six Day War.

In any case, this arrangement satisfied the need to find annual financial efficiencies while maintaining a comprehensive diagram of units and potential capabilities to show politicians and the public. That many of the units existed on a mutually exclusive basis and the capabilities required a warning time that no intelligence system (or indeed ...