A DMO reform recipe – four starting ingredients

ARH2 on Assembly Line February 2004, Marignane FranceWhichever party wins the upcoming Federal election is going to have to prioritise reform of Defence’s procurement processes and capability delivery to address looming problems, including capability gaps, base consolidation and upgrade requirements. It’s also going to have to deal with the increasingly justifiable malaise within Defence-related industry, at both prime-contractor and SME levels. These priorities exist in the context of a 2013 White Paper which failed to deliver the needed clarity on the funding and capability ‘supply side’ required to deliver DCP aspirations, as well as the stuttering Strategic Reform Program within the Department of Defence.

No doubt, the incoming ministerial team will be bombarded over the coming months with long lists of reform suggestions from stakeholders trying to influence their thinking on these matters, and in particular to effect change on the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO), whose current organisational settings have clearly been the source of discontent for many stakeholder groups (including both of its primary partners—the ADF capability managers and industry). Read more

China and the US: hopeful times

President Barack Obama walks with President Xi Jinping of the People's Republic of China on the grounds of the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, Calif., June 8, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Hope is blooming with the summer flowers in Beijing after the Sunnylands meeting between Presidents Xi and Obama. The hope is that the two leaders—Xi just installed and Obama secure in his second term— will find the personal rapport needed to build a ‘new kind of great power relationship’. We don’t know what that really means yet, but the atmospherics of US China relations are more positive than in years. This will come as news to Australia’s doom-sayers, determined to see Washington and Beijing in a death-spiral that forces on Canberra the terrible choice of alliance or trade. Get thee to Beijing for some warmth and pragmatism.

ASPI has just completed its tenth annual 1.5 track dialogue with the China International Institute for Strategic Studies (CIISS), and we also met with a number of Chinese international security scholars. A decade long investment has generated a frank and friendly exchange. A couple of meetings can never convey the surprising diversity of Chinese opinion on security matters, but the views of China’s elite think-tanks aren’t casual or to be dismissed. Read more

Government surveillance and Australia’s multiple watchdogs

Toby Feakin’s post the other day brought up the topic of oversight of government security operations. He’s right that a liberal democracy requires checks and balances to prevent excesses from government agencies. But it got me thinking about Australia’s intelligence oversight mechanisms and wondering why most Australians don’t know much about them, despite us having a multi-layered system that’s pretty much aligned with world’s best practice.

Like any other ‘defence in depth’, the trick to designing oversight mechanisms is to have multiple independent channels. In the past twenty years, successive Australian governments have put in place just such a system. Australians are protected by legislative, statutory, parliamentary and judicial mechanisms as well as the Westminster system of ministerial responsibility. And, if all else fails, we still have a robust and cantankerous press that delights in embarrassing governments who take a step too far. The only protection we don’t have is constitutional, unlike Americans, who have the Fourth Amendment on their side (although that hasn’t stopped some significant violations of American’s rights). Read more

Australia’s strategic security: beyond the great and powerful

A Jakarta skylineAs Indonesia pursues a policy of ‘a million friends and zero enemies’, Australia needs to ensure that it stands out from the multitude; that it isn’t merely a close acquaintance or an amicable neighbour, but as close a friend of Indonesia as possible.

The changing dynamics of the Asia-Pacific region mean that Australia’s traditional reliance on a ‘great and powerful friend’ could entail far greater risks and less overall security. After all, being an ally of a nation competing for primacy is vastly different to being an ally of an unchallenged power. There are greater demands, risks and costs—and a finer diplomatic line to walk given that our major ally has ceased to be our largest trading partner. Read more

Uncertainty, China’s rise and force structure planning

When talking about current defence and security matters there seems strong agreement on at least one characteristic: that the future is uncertain. Of course that’s true, and many things could potentially happen but, even so, what does this uncertainty mean for Defence?

Defence could choose a single future scenario, press on with that and hope for the best. A fundamental problem in basing force development on a particular anticipated future is that if those specific circumstances don’t eventuate, the force acquired might prove quite ineffective. This happened to Australia in the grim days of 1942. The inter-war emphasis on acquiring warships to be based in Singapore to undertake coalition naval operations (PDF) proved completely inappropriate to the actual circumstances that eventuated. Precious time and resources were squandered preparing for an eventuality that didn’t happen, while consuming resources that could have created the force structure that was actually needed. Read more

The cyber bogeyman

At Australian Defence Magazine’s 3rd Cyber Security Summit this week, members of the shadowy cyber world gathered to swap war stories and scare one another silly with worst case scenarios. The thought that every major country in the world has hidden malicious code in power generators around the world and can remotely hit self-destruct is hardly a comforting thought. This would produce nuclear-like fallout in many respects, according to Scott Borg director and chief economist at the US Cyber Consequences Unit.

Estimates are that most first world economies can cope for 3-4 days without power. Anything more than that, and social order dies a rather quick death. Given that most of the huge and complex power generators are built in China and India and have rather a long lead-time to produce (anywhere from months to years), a powerless Australia for up to a year is a daunting prospect. Read more

Beyond damage control: taking the lead on the gender agenda

Army Chief David Morrison’s robust condemnation of some of his officers’ appalling treatment of women has won him wide praise. Morrison’s YouTube speech (below) was a watershed moment, displaying leadership and clarity that cut through the haze being churned up by the at times fetid national debate on gender issues. The speech was elegant in its simplicity, using direct and uncomplicated language. Morrison defined what appropriate conduct should look like not only for his national institution but perhaps also for a nation. Most importantly from the perspective of achieving real change in the ADF, Morrison merged women’s empowerment with military capability, defining it as more than simply a moral obligation. Instead, he argued that empowerment is essential to what the Army does and will do in the future. Morrison’s speech showed that the Army can do more than simply play catch-up on gender empowerment; it can take the lead on the gender agenda.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QaqpoeVgr8U

Another opportunity where the ADF can seize the lead on gender empowerment is presented by UN Security Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (PDF). The government produced the National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace and Security (PDF) to outline how it will implement UNSCR1325. Defence has responsibilities relating to 17 of the plan’s 22 actions. Vice Chief of the Defence Force, Air Marshal Mark Binskin’s sponsorship and presentation at the Annual Civil Society Dialogue on Women Peace and Security this year signalled that Defence takes its obligations seriously. But, as audience remarks during the Q&A sessions reflected, the underrepresentation of men and other senior defence officers at the event raised doubts about how much the NAP truly guides Defence policy. Read more

Looking through the Prism

Headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland.Coming at a time when the US has been increasingly turning the screw on China about its persistent hacking of US computer networks, the revelation that the US government itself has been gathering metadata on large swathes of its own population through a programme codenamed ‘Prism’ could have scarcely been more embarrassing. Having just finished his first round of Presidential talks with Xi Jinping where cyber intrusions were high on the agenda, Obama found himself having to defend one of the largest data collection programs ever established.

What is ‘Prism’, and what does it do that’s created such a heated reaction from the press and the public? According to the self-confessed whistle-blower, Ed Snowden, the National Security Agency has large-scale access to individual chat logs, stored data, voice traffic, file transfers and social networking data of individuals. Following the leaking of this information, the US government confirmed it had requested millions of phone records from Verizon, which had included call duration, location and the phone numbers of both parties on individual calls. Additionally Prism had allegedly enabled access to the servers of nine major technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, AOL, Apple, YouTube, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk and Skype. Read more

The Strategist Survey and Competition

We’d like to say a big thank you for the response to our survey. We got many useful suggestions and comments, all of which were read with great interest. You might notice a few changes in the next few months, but overall we were pleased to see that The Strategist was providing a useful service for the strategy and defence community.

One frequent suggestion was the ability for our readers to be able to comment on blog pieces. That surprised us a bit, because that’s always been the case—if you see something you want to comment on, use the ‘want to write for us or reply‘ link to the right to send it to the blog editors. We’re happy to run constructive short comments, although we’ll probably batch them to keep navigation on the site straightforward. All comments will go through the editorial moderation process. Some readers suggested the ability to post directly, and we’ve thought long and hard about that at times. But a look at the comments section on almost any website convinces us not to go down that path. On balance, we think the immediacy of that approach is outweighed by the low signal to noise ratio that results.

Finally, we’re pleased to announce that Strategist reader Jasmin Hill is the winner of the iPad prize for survey participants.

Asian gazing (8): ASEAN’s usual crisis and looming triumph

Flags of ASEAN member statesASEAN is ever in crisis or on the verge of calamity. The role of crisis in giving ASEAN a purpose, or even an identity, is part of the abiding mystery of Southeast Asian regionalism. The trick is to pick the moments when ASEAN is offering substance, as against those many occasions when ASEAN is only playing with shadows.

During this bout of Asian strategic star gazing, I heard quite a few people arguing that this time it’s different. This time, they argue, ASEAN truly-rooly is in crisis. Well, perhaps—certainly both the externally-generated pressure and the internal ASEAN divisions are palpable. Yet, for all the immediate problems of trust and strategic uncertainty, it’s also possible to take a few steps back from the anger and angst and glimpse a looming ASEAN triumph. Read more