This article, and the series which follows, are an updated version of a presentation given at the Australian National University titled ‘Logistics preparedness and mobilising the national support base: the effectiveness of ADF strategic logistics prior to Operation Warden 1999‘

The period from 1987-1999 was one of turbulence for Defence, with a variety of forces drawing Defence in different directions. These forces influenced nature of the guidance given to Defence, and through it, the ADF. This, in turn, shaped the form and function of the ADF’s approach to logistics, and in doing so, set the ADF on a path where the logistics problems of Operation Warden became inevitable.

It was a period where the defence budget was in decline, where Australian society enjoyed an absence of an existential threat to Australian sovereignty, where deregulation and public sector reform saw government services rationalised and reduced, where organisational centralisation reformed authorities and accountabilities in the ADF, where defence industry and infrastructure was pressured to be more efficient if not sold, where a greater contribution of the national support base as an aspect of ADF preparedness was sought, and strategic policy was contested – vehemently.

Over time, and especially after the Cold War concluded with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1991, productivity, efficiency and the well-known tooth to tail balance between combat and seemingly non-combat forces primarily defined the value of the investment in Defence.

This article, and those that follow, will highlight different aspects of the ADF’s approach to strategic logistics so to make some sense of the complexities that lead to logistics ‘unpreparedness’. These aspects have been described in Logistics In War in the past, and include ‘policy and guidance’, ‘organisation’, ‘plans and planning’, ‘capability’ and ‘testing and assessment’.

The first of these aspects – policy and guidance – largely relates to the context by which Defence acts, and all other aspects of logistics preparedness can be considered. Logistics preparedness is, at its core, based upon considered, implementable and pragmatic guidance. While much rhetoric – certainly from Defence – consistently contends the pace of organisational change is always faster than that experienced beforehand, there can be little doubt that the decade prior to Operation Warden was one of review, reform and reshaping.

The 1980s and 1990’s comprised a period in which the ADF’s motives and its capacity to reform were considered by Government (and at times, the Department) with scepticism. Government use policy and guidance to break stalemates or force adaption, with the ADF’s strategic logistics capabilities often at the forefront of change. Paul Dibb’s 1986 review, and the policy document DO87, exemplifies the Government’s drive to resolve the impasses of the 1980s – but it was not the only one. Force Structure Review 1991, and the Defence Efficiency Review of 1996 also pushed the organisation to move in radical directions.

Logistics arrangements were as influenced by commercialisation and civil-military relationships, productivity and efficiency, as they were by strategic policy. Successive issues of guidance and reform programs mercilessly accelerated commercialisation and efficiency-seeking which radically changed the preparedness method of the ADF let alone the organisation, plans and capabilities required for a novel approach to strategic logistics in the ADF.

Defence underwent a time in which the pace of change was frenetic; it was virtually impossible for the ADF to keep pace with the calls that it must adapt. The victim of the resultant shifting of attention and resources was the routines and practices that should have defined the ADF’s approach to strategic logistics in 1999.

The history shows, however, that the Defence was not always a willing participant. Although there were important, influential and ambitious reformers within the ADF’s logistics organisations and among Defence senior leadership, history has also shown that the organisation was difficult to coax even when policy and guidance was explicit. Confrontation famously infused policy deliberations in the 1980’s, competition for resources in the early 1990s, and debates about control of processes and policy development in the 1990’s – a period anecdotally known as the ‘war in heaven’. At the worker level, large sections of the ADF resisted commercialisation for fear of its impact on the military workforce, and military commanders worried that they no longer had direct control over the logistics resources needed for operations.

In the context of strategic logistics, two themes come to mind when considering the nature of guidance given to and within Defence prior to Operation Warden in 1999.

Firstly, the propensity for Government leaders, policy officials and military staff to make decisions in advance of detailed studies of logistics feasibility was a catastrophic failure of policy and guidance in the period 1987-1999. Robert Cooksey’s 1986 conclusion that much of the debate about defence industry and its relationship to Defence in the 1980’s was based on experience and ‘values’ rather than detailed analysis reflects similar criticisms of the ADF’s preparedness and logistics approach made during the Defence Efficiency Review (DER) one decade later. Very few decisions seemed to be made on the basis of data or analysis, and even if they were (such as during the Dibb Review and the DER), other reform goals and organisational objectives outweighed otherwise compelling logics.

Some reviews were so wildly ambitious, such as the Wrigley Review, that the desires of their authors only served to dislocate potential reforms from rational and pragmatic approaches to civil-military logistics relationships. ADF leaders cited professional experience as reason for judgements but presented the decision-makers with evidence based upon scenarios so far from what strategic guidance intended that the evidence was meaningless and had negligible impact. Service input into FSR91, via Concepts of some detail yet were politically unsupportable, exemplifies this problem.

Secondly, policy and guidance typically saw logistics as a cost to be controlled rather than as a capability which assured preparedness and ADF responsiveness. There is no other review in which this was made clearer than in the DER; a review which was later described as being effective because of performance metrics which emphasised the ‘teeth’ over the ‘tail’. From the 1980s to the 1990s, strategic policy became less significant to ADF logistics than productivity reform that, by the DER, was akin to a force structure review for all its effects on the ADF’s approach to logistics.

In sum, the late Brendan Sargent in interview described the big struggle during the 1990’s was not necessarily ‘about the policy’, but ‘who was going to control it.’ In many cases the logistics organisations of the period, including the Logistics Division of HQ ADF in the 1980’s, or National Support Division in the late 1990s, were ignored if not faced outright ambivalence and hostility when their actions impinged on another areas with real – and often perceived – policy responsibilities. It is therefore understandable why the reform of the ADF’s approach to strategic logistics was impeded at nearly all stages by organisations less interested in overall preparedness outcomes but vying for influence and control within a turbulent organisational environment.

The series will continue shortly, focussing on the evolution of ADF logistics organisations and planning throughout the 1980s and 1990s.