Teeth v Tail: The DSR, ADF, and manpower

Historically, Australia has had an insecure relation with its small population when compared to the world’s major powers — indeed across our region, relative to our geographic area, the nation is increasingly confronted by the rising economic and political power of formerly developing nations, with substantially larger populations than our own. 

As the regional and global paradigm continues to evolve and the centre of gravity shifts from an Atlantic-focus to the Indo-Pacific, the impact of this new reality will play out far closer to home than much of the major geostrategic, economic, and political competition of the 20th century. In facing these emerging challenges, the Albanese government’s Defence Strategic Review (DSR) is setting high expectations for the outcome and subsequent transformation of Australia’s tactical and strategic defence capabilities. 

Indeed, the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister, Richard Marles, explain the importance of the DSR, stating, “As we face the most challenging geopolitical circumstances since the Second World War, the Albanese government is committed to properly managing every dollar of defence spending, and ensuring Defence can deliver the capabilities ADF personnel need, when they need them.”

With this in mind, it is also critical to understand that Australia, like many allied nations, have, at least since the end of the Cold War, shifted much of their military emphasis from warfighting, taking advantage of the “peace dividend” towards highly bureaucratic structures, where a great deal of operational capability is locked behind in the “tail” of the organisation. 

This is best described by John J McGrath of the Combat Studies Centre at Fort Leavenworth, who explains the “Tooth-to-Tail” (T3R) ratio as: “the number of troops in a military organisation employed in combat duties versus the number functioning in non-combat roles”.

Manpower under the microscope of the DSR?

The previous government had recognised the growing personnel requirements that the ADF would face in coming decades, announcing in March 2022 an intent to expand the Defence workforce, with then defence minister Peter Dutton stating, “Defence operates with a highly integrated workforce spanning the Australian Defence Force, civilians, and industry providers, with each bringing specialised skills and expertise.

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“This growth in workforce and expertise will enable us to deliver our nuclear-powered submarines, ships, aircraft, and advanced weapons. It will mean we can build warfighting capabilities in the domains of space, and information, and cyber,” Dutton announced at the time. 

However, despite the “transformational” branding given to the DSR, it seemingly overlooks a critical component of Australia’s deliverable tactical and strategic military power — manpower: indeed the terms of reference seem to highlight this oversight: “The review must outline the future strategic challenges facing Australia, which may require an Australian Defence Force operational response. The review must identify and prioritise the estate, infrastructure, disposition, logistics, and security investments required to provide Australia with the Defence force posture required by 2032–33.

“The review must consider all elements of the Integrated Investment Program and provide recommendations for the program’s re-prioritisation, particularly in light of recently announced large-scale projects, to provide Australia with the force structure required by 2032–33. The review must outline the investments required to support Defence preparedness, and mobilisation needs to 2032–33."    

We’ve never struggled before

In spite of our comparatively small population, when called upon, Australians have never shied away from answering the call of duty — in some cases raising and deploying significant portions of our general population to defend the nation and its interests. For example, during the First World War, over 420,000 Australians served in the military, with nearly 332,000 serving overseas, against a national population of approximately 5.03 million. 

Meanwhile, by the end of the Second World War, the Australian military boasted a strength of nearly 600,000, with some 224,000 alone serving in the Pacific, against a national population of just under 7.4 million — in both instances, these figures represented approximately 8.1–8.3 per cent of the national population in the armed forces. 

Fast forward to today, in an era that has been repeatedly described as the most serious decline in our strategic circumstances since the Second World War and the Australian Defence Force has an active figure of just over 60,000, with just under 30,000 standing by in reserves — against our current population with an approximation of 25.7 million representing just .23 per cent of the population. 

Even with the aforementioned plans highlighted under the previous government, it is clear that Australia doesn’t face a manpower problem, despite the rhetoric we continue to hear from government officials, analysts, and even the general public — instead, what Australia suffers from is a lack of will, commitment, and true understanding that Australia will be required to build a larger, more flexible, and survivable military capability. 

Iron sharpens iron: Conduct a detailed ‘uniformed workforce’ analysis, ‘start-up’ culture, and streamlining bureaucracy to deliver warfighting capability

Unlike the traditional Russian approach of simply throwing bodies at the problem until it disappears, Australia can’t approach the challenge of available manpower in the same way, while automation, uncrewed systems, and cyber capabilities, to name a few, will go some way to filling the gaps. Australia will need to not only increase the available manpower, but equally will be required to streamline and rationalise its uniformed workforce away for unnecessary bureaucracy to focus on Defence’s core mission: that is fighting and winning conflicts. 

This is not to say that uniformed personnel shouldn't be conducting mission-critical administration and bureaucratic direction, on the contrary, where these processes can be streamlined and where relevant digitised, although given Defence’s track record of implementing digital infrastructure to revolutionise defence architecture and operational capability like the Army’s now-defunct battle management system, it might need more help in this area. 

Further supporting this, in the immediate wake of the release of the DSR, Defence, must conduct a detailed workforce analysis of its uniformed personnel to identify where resources are in effect, “combat ineffective” or unable to conduct operations where there is a reasonable likelihood that they would be required to do so. There is a historical precedent for such an approach, with the US Marines having a proud history of “Every Marine is a Rifleman” and nowhere was this more clearly demonstrated than during the Battles of Midway and Battles of Wake Island where even the Marine cooks picked up their rifles and returned fire at the attacking Japanese aircraft. 

Defence doesn’t need to go through this immense process alone, rather leveraging the experience of Australia’s robust start-up community to support the digital transformation, streamlining and efficiently finding in the uniformed workforce to free defence personnel up to focus on building critical capabilities in traditional and emerging realms of warfighting — while much of the role for Australia’s start-up community has been heavily focused on defence industry, there are critical lessons here for the uniformed workforce.

It is clear, based on comments made by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during his 22 February 2023 address to the National Press Club, where he emphasises the DSR’s emphasis on rebuilding Australia’s “standing influence” in the Indo-Pacific that expanding Australia’s available uniformed manpower by improving the efficiency in the existing workforce, while also increasing uniformed workforce, will become increasingly important to deliver the desired outcome for Australia. 

Lessons for Australia’s future strategic planning

There is no doubt that Australia’s position and responsibilities in the Indo-Pacific region will depend on the nation’s ability to sustain itself economically, strategically and politically in the face of rising regional and global competition. Despite the nation’s virtually unrivalled wealth of natural resources, agricultural and industrial potential, there is a lack of a cohesive national security strategy integrating the development of individual, yet complementary public policy strategies to support a more robust Australian role in the region. 

While contemporary Australia has been far removed from the harsh realities of conflict, with many generations never enduring the reality of rationing for food, energy, medical supplies or luxury goods, and even fewer within modern Australia understanding the socio-political and economic impact such rationing would have on the now world-leading Australian standard of living.  

Enhancing Australia’s capacity to act as an independent power, incorporating great power-style strategic economic, diplomatic and military capability serves as a powerful symbol of Australia’s sovereignty and evolving responsibilities in supporting and enhancing the security and prosperity of Indo-Pacific Asia, this is particularly well explained by Peter Zeihan, who explains: “A deglobalised world doesn’t simply have a different economic geography, it has thousands of different and separate geographies. Economically speaking, the whole was stronger for the inclusion of all its parts. It is where we have gotten our wealth and pace of improvement and speed. Now the parts will be weaker for their separation.”

Accordingly, shifting the public discussion and debate away from the default Australian position of “it is all a little too difficult, so let’s not bother” will provide unprecedented economic, diplomatic, political and strategic opportunities for the nation.

As events continue to unfold throughout the region and China continues to throw its economic, political and strategic weight around, can Australia afford to remain a secondary power, or does it need to embrace a larger, more independent role in an era of increasing great power competition?

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