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Abstract
In today’s dynamic and uncertain geo-strategic environment, it is essential that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) creates the military capability necessary to meet emerging security challenges. The three separate Services - Navy, Army and Air Force – must come together to create the most potent joint force possible.
In a seminal report on command arrangements in the ADF published in 1988, then-brigadier, later general and chief of the defence force, John Baker, stated that it has been the pervasiveness of air power that alone has driven the ‘inexorable trend towards joint operations’. That is, ‘Air’ has a special role in generating ‘Joint’.
The RAAF too often has struggled to properly prioritise the development of joint capability. Greater understanding of why a disconnect has existed between intent and action is essential if the RAAF is to realise its full potential as an integral part of Australia’s joint force.
This thesis uses organisational theory to explain how culture, bureaucratic behaviour, and organisational politics have combined to draw the attention of the RAAF (and the other Services) away from joint capability. The thesis also examines alternative models of jointness adopted in Canada and Israel to assess whether they might offer opportunities for improved cooperation within the ADF.
The research demonstrates that all three Services strive to become dominant in their primary environmental domain. Creating domain dominance is an essential activity that creates lethality within the joint force, but it is also one of the primary reasons why the creation of joint capability sometimes takes a back seat.
The thesis concludes that organisational culture and behaviour play a significant role in determining the priority the RAAF has (or has not) placed on joint capability. Additionally, many of the difficulties experienced have been, and remain, a direct result of a manifest failure within the broader Department of Defence to provide the focused direction needed to achieve joint design. The way in which Defence describes what it wants the joint force to achieve has adversely affected interservice cooperation.
Relatively minor changes to the ADF’s organisational design process and to Defence’s development of military strategy should enable the three separate Services to realise their intent of greater and more meaningful cooperation and, therefore, to become a more potent joint force.
