Comment – Is The RAAF Big Enough?

These include:

• strike operations against enemy installations, force concentrations, and logistic facilities;
• maritime strikes, mining, and ASW operations;
• air defence;
• air transport; and
• army support operations.

All this sounds theoretically very sound, although some would question the concept, implicit in the evidence, that the RAAF and Defence strategy implies long-range strikes at enemy targets as a valid response to quite low-level threats, despite the escalation of violence that would result.

That sort of strategic doctrine may deter an immediate conflict but will encourage its widening.

The concept of strike operations against “maritime forces, his offensive air capability, advanced bases and possibly air transport” suggests the availability of a fairly large orce if the operations are to be sustained and effective.

The reality of course is that such operations can be only very limited in scale and effect because our strike force consists of 16 F-111C aircraft with, currently, the most primitive of weapons.

Given the inability of strategic bomber forces to substantially affect enemy combat and economic capabilities without a huge and sustained effort as shown in Germany. Korea and Vietnam – the concept appears to lie in the realm of fantasy.

The logic appears to be a carryover from the Trenchard doctrines of strategic air power that bombers can win wars, rather than a product of four decades of experience.

It seems to owe something to the concept that an air force, to justify its independence, must have a strategic capability but, because we can only afford a small number of ill-equipped aircraft, we must make up for the deficiency by a grand escalation of claims for their capability.

The same can be said for a range of other claims – for the vulnerable Harpoon-equipped P3s, an air defence system with the most limited control and reporting system and a practically non-existent close air support capability with either fixed or rotary-winged aircraft. Without labouring the details, the reality is that the RAAF could not possibly perform all these functions in even a medium-level conflict with a regional power. And, I suspect, the RAAF knows it. In the context of evidence before a Parliamentary Committee, no official witness can appear to be critical of the Government to which he is answerable. Whatever the RAAF thinks in private, it must put on a brave face in public. The RAAF’s problem, like the Navy’s, is that it is likely to have to fight a war with only very limited additions to its aircraft inventory, especially in the first year or more if the conflict lasts that long.

That will force on the RAAF a policy of intense conflict with debilitating wastage which will cripple the force in a matter of weeks, perhaps even days. Alternatively, it must so husband its resources that it will have only a limited impact on the battle.

There is nothing new in this. In other wars, the air force did have to husband its resources until they could be built up to adequate levels. Our problem is likely to be a very great difficulty in doing so when we have limited reserves, no Indigenous aircraft design and construction capability and facing the likelihood of shortfalls in our expectations of our traditional suppliers. All this argues for the build-up of the RAAF’s inventory now rather than at the beginning of a conflict. If aircraft are purchased and placed in reserve, they can be brought forward to operational status in peacetime as others are retired for refurbishment. The cost need not be excessive because the life of each type can be extended, particularly if weapons and electronics can be updated.

An increased inventory will at least give the RAAF the chance to be able to do what it wants to do and what is expected of it. At the moment, it can only express a theoretical hope.