All Change?

AVM Blackburn obviously has the print in his office as a reminder to look beyond the confines of Russell and the traditional military way of doing things. The photo tagline is perhaps too both an indicator of DCAF’s personal characteristics and a pointer to the size of the challenges he and Air Force HQ have in changing the shape and structure of the RAAF.

As detailed in depth in Andrew McLaughlin’s interview from page 34 of this issue, DCAF is tasked with developing and overseeing Air Force’s plans to ‘re-shape and re-engineer’, an ambitious agenda to better prepare the RAAF for its current and future challenges of a high operational tempo, recruitment and retention, and the rapid introduction of a range of new and highly advanced capabilities in the next few years.

“Our people are stretched and the transition of capabilities will be a significant challenge for all of us,” wrote Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Geoff Shepherd in his introduction to ‘The Air Force Plan – 2007-2017’, which outlines some of the change agenda. “I aim to grow Air Force over the next decade to redress force hollowness and to provide adequate flightcrew numbers and associated support elements to employ our new capabilities to achieve readiness requirements. ” Most in the Air Force would agree its current problems are great ones to have – the product of sustained increased defence spending allowing the acquisition of state-ofthe- art capabilities from C-17s to JSFs plus the sustained period of operational activities.

But how the RAAF is addressing them and aiming to better prepare itself for the decade ahead are probably even more ambitious than these two problems alone might suggest, and point to broader cultural change now underway in the service.

Perhaps the most obvious example of the change underway within Air Force is the creation of the Air Combat Officer ‘specialisation’ which is combining the roles of aircraft navigator, air defence officer and airborne electronics officer into a single category.

There are several drivers for this big change (including the reducing requirement for navigators), but one of the biggest is to provide a clear career path for ACOs and an expanded senior leadership pool for the Air Force. In his interview DCAF (himself a pilot) notes that the RAAF has sent a subliminal message that navigators wouldn’t be considered for the Chief of Air Force position, as there has never been a non pilot chief (or deputy). Instead, “This group will provide . . . future candidates for the position of Chief of Air Force,” the defencejobs. gov. au website description of the ACO role reads.

No more are navigators to be considered second class citizens compared to their pilot brethren, is the Air Force’s message. It’s hard to underestimate the cultural change that message implies in a military organisation where for so long the pilot has been king.

That change and others like it (such as the earlier decision to give navigators ‘double’ winged brevets rather than the traditional single wing) haven’t always been popular both within and without the RAAF – change, no matter how well the need for it is communicated, is always difficult, particularly in a traditional organisation like the military.

But the fact that the RAAF is changing into a more streamlined and flexible and less hierarchical organisation is encouraging. Talk of the need for change is cheap, and many an organisation’s strategic plans are not worth the paper they are printed on. Your editor has seen and heard it all before, and efforts to change the Air Force are not new. But the fact is there is clear evidence that the Air Force really is changing – from the ACO specialisation, to far greater employment flexibility, to the newly introduced pay scales within the same rank to recognise and reward skills, roles and experience.

There is some proof in the pudding.

These changes are proving to be the most fundamental to the RAAF since the end of WW2. There are evidently some very good thinkers in Air Force today driving and delivering that change. The challenge will be to ensure that the change is effectively implemented, carried through and communicated, especially as the Air Force’s senior leadership inevitably changes over the years ahead.