ADF air power and critical mass: an alternative perspective

On Target last month offered a view from Dr Alan Stephens of the Williams Foundation on the centralisation of air power in the Australian Defence Force. This was based on perceived ‘indications of a systemic failure within the ADF’s current air power model’.

Apparently, this failure is caused by the lack of an ‘integrated personnel system of sufficient critical mass to support the highest professional standards’. Although not directly stated, it is assumed that the logical consequence of such a view would be the centralisation of all RAN and Army helicopters under the RAAF. Such centralisation, it is hoped, would produce enough candidate pilots of sufficiently high quality to provide the critical mass for the fighter force and then to other aircraft.

Perhaps there are reasons for centralising air power in the ADF but there also are many good reasons for not doing so. According to Dr Stephens, evidence for the deficiency in the integrated personnel systems was a number of crashes over the past few years, one of which was on operations in Afghanistan but apparently not due to enemy action.