Australian Defence Force
The Australian Defence Force is the military organisation responsible for the defence of Australia and its national interests. It consists of three services: the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Air Force. The ADF has a strength of just over 90,000 personnel and is supported by the Department of Defence alongside other civilian entities also members of the Australian Defence Organisation.
During the first decades of the 20th century, the Australian Government established the armed services as separate organisations, with each service having an independent chain of command. In 1976, the government made a strategic change and established the ADF to place the services under a single headquarters. Over time, the degree of integration has increased, and tri-service headquarters, logistics, and training institutions have supplanted many single-service establishments. The ADF has been deployed around the world in combat, peacekeeping and disaster-relief missions.
The ADF is technologically sophisticated but relatively small for its landmass. The ADF has 58,909 full-time active-duty personnel and 33,269 active reservists. The ADF has the largest military in Oceania, although it is smaller than most Asian military forces. The ADF is supported by a significant budget by worldwide standards and is well equipped and trained, with defence spending at 2.02% of GDP.
History
Formation
By 1870, each of the then Australian colonies maintained their own military forces. On 1 January 1901, the colonies federated into a new nation and on 1 March 1901, these colonial forces were amalgamated to establish the Australian Army and Commonwealth Naval Forces. In 1911, the government established the Royal Australian Navy, which absorbed the Commonwealth Naval Force. The Army established the Australian Flying Corps in 1912 which was separated to form the Royal Australian Air Force in 1921. The services were not linked by a single chain of command, as they each reported to their own separate Minister and had separate administrative arrangements. The three services saw action around the world during World War I and World War II, and took part in conflicts in Asia during the Cold War.The importance of joint warfare was made clear to the Australian military during World War II when Australian naval, ground and air units frequently served as part of single commands. Following the war, several senior officers lobbied for the appointment of a commander-in-chief of the three services. The government rejected this proposal and the three services remained fully independent. The absence of a central authority resulted in poor coordination between the services, with each service organising and operating under different military doctrine.
The need for an integrated command structure received more emphasis due to inefficient arrangements during the Vietnam War which at times hindered the military's efforts. In 1973, the Secretary of the Department of Defence, Arthur Tange, submitted a report to the Government that recommended the unification of the separate departments supporting each service under a single Department of Defence, and the creation of the position of Chief of the Defence Force Staff. The government accepted these recommendations, and the Australian Defence Force was established on 9 February 1976.
Defence of Australia era
Until the 1970s, Australia's military strategy centred on the concept of "forward defence", in which the role of the Australian military was to co-operate with allied forces to counter threats in Australia's region. In 1969, when the United States began the Guam Doctrine and the British withdrew east of Suez, Australia developed a defence policy which emphasised self-reliance and the defence of continental Australia. This was known as the Defence of Australia Policy. Under this policy, the focus of Australian defence planning was to protect Australia's northern maritime approaches against enemy attack. In line with this goal, the ADF was restructured to increase its ability to strike at enemy forces from Australian bases and to counter raids on continental Australia. The ADF achieved this by increasing the capabilities of the RAN and RAAF and relocating regular Army units to northern Australia.At this time, the ADF had no military units on operational deployment outside Australia. In 1987, the ADF made its first operational deployment as part of Operation Morris Dance, in which several warships and a rifle company deployed to the waters off Fiji in response to the 1987 Fijian coups d'état. While broadly successful, this deployment highlighted the need for the ADF to improve its capability to rapidly respond to unforeseen events.
Since the late 1980s, the Government has increasingly called upon the ADF to contribute forces to peacekeeping missions around the world. While most of these deployments involved only small numbers of specialists, several led to the deployment of hundreds of personnel. Large peacekeeping deployments were made to Namibia in early 1989, Cambodia between 1992 and 1993, Somalia in 1993, Rwanda between 1994 and 1995 and Bougainville in 1994 and from 1997 onwards.
The Australian contribution to the 1991 Gulf War was the first time Australian personnel were deployed to an active war zone since the establishment of the ADF. Although the warships and clearance diving team deployed to the Persian Gulf did not see combat, the deployment tested the ADF's capabilities and command structure. Following the war the Navy regularly deployed a frigate to the Persian Gulf or Red Sea to enforce the trade sanctions imposed on Iraq.
East Timor deployment
In 1996, John Howard led the Liberal Party's election campaign and became prime minister. Subsequently, there were significant reforms to the ADF's force structure and role. The new government's defence strategy placed less emphasis on defending Australia from direct attack and greater emphasis on working in co-operation with regional states and Australia's allies to manage potential security threats. From 1997 the Government also implemented a series of changes to the ADF's force structure to increase the proportion of combat units to support units and improve the ADF's combat effectiveness.The ADF's experiences during the deployment to East Timor in 1999 led to significant changes in Australia's defence policies and, an enhancement of the ADF's ability to conduct operations outside Australia. This successful deployment was the first time a large ADF force had operated outside of Australia since the Vietnam War and revealed shortcomings in its ability to mount and sustain such operations.
In 2000, the Government released a new Defence White Paper, Defence 2000 – Our Future Defence Force, that placed a greater emphasis on preparing the ADF for overseas deployments. The Government committed to improve the ADF's capabilities by improving the readiness and equipment of ADF units, expanding the ADF and increasing real Defence expenditure by 3% per year; in the event, expenditure increased by 2.3% per annum in real terms in the period to 2012–13. In 2003 and 2005, the Defence Updates emphasised this focus on expeditionary operations and led to an expansion and modernisation of the ADF.
Iraq and Afghanistan
Since 2000, the ADF's expanded force structure and deployment capabilities have been put to the test on several occasions. Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Australia committed a special forces task group and an air-to-air refuelling aircraft to operations in Afghanistan, and naval warships to the Persian Gulf as Operation Slipper. In 2003, approximately 2,000 ADF personnel, including a special forces task group, three warships and 14 F/A-18 Hornet aircraft, took part in the invasion of Iraq.The ADF was subsequently involved in the reconstruction of Iraq. From 2003 until 2005 this was mainly limited to a Security Detachment which protected the Australian embassy, the attachment of officers to multi-national headquarters, small numbers of transport and maritime patrol aircraft, and teams of air traffic controllers and medical personnel. From 2005 until 2008 a battalion-sized Australian Army battle group was stationed in southern Iraq. In addition, teams of ADF personnel were deployed to train Iraqi military units. In line with a 2007 election commitment, the Rudd government withdrew combat-related forces from Iraq in mid-2008, and most of the remaining Australian units left the country the next year.
The ADF also undertook several operations in Australia's immediate region during the 2000s. In 2003, elements of all three services were dispatched to Solomon Islands as part of the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands. Regular deployments of Australian forces continued to the islands until 2017. Between December 2004 and March 2005, 1,400 ADF personnel served in Indonesia as part of Operation Sumatra Assist, which formed part of Australia's response to the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. In May 2006, approximately 2,000 ADF personnel deployed to East Timor in Operation Astute following unrest between elements of the Timor Leste Defence Force. This deployment concluded in March 2013.
From 2006 until 2013 a battalion-sized Australian Army task force operated in Urozgan Province, Afghanistan; this unit was primarily tasked with providing assistance for reconstruction efforts and training Afghan forces, but was frequently involved in combat. In addition, Special Forces Task Groups were deployed from 2005 to 2006 and 2007 until 2013. Other specialist elements of the ADF, including detachments of CH-47 Chinook helicopters and RAAF radar and air traffic control units, were also periodically deployed to the country. A total of 40 ADF personnel were killed in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2013, and 262 wounded. Following the withdrawal of the combat forces in 2013, ADF training teams have continued to be stationed in the country to train Afghan forces.
The Australian Labor Party governments led by prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard between 2007 and 2013 commissioned two defence white papers, which were published in 2009 and 2013. The 2009 document, Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030, had a focus on responding to China's rapidly growing influence. It included commitments to expand the RAN, including acquiring twelve submarines, and increasing defence spending by three percent per year in real terms. This increase in spending did not occur, however. The Defence White Paper 2013 had similar strategic themes, but set out a more modest program of defence spending which reflected the government's constrained finances. As part of an election commitment, the Liberal–National Coalition Abbott government commissioned a further defence white paper that was published in 2016. This document also included a commitment to expand the ADF's size and capabilities. There has generally been bipartisan agreement between the ALP and the Liberal–National Coalition on the ADF's role since the mid-1970s. Both political groupings currently support the ADF's focus on expeditionary operations, and the broad funding target set out in the 2016 Defence White Paper. The ADF's broad force structure has also experienced little change since the 1980s. For instance, throughout this period the Army's main combat formations have been three brigades and the RAAF has been equipped with around 100 combat aircraft. Most of the equipment used by the services has been replaced or upgraded, however.
It is stated in the 2016 Defence White Paper that Australia's changing security environment will lead to new demands being placed on the Australian Defence Force. Although it is not expected that Australia will face any threat of direct attack from another country, terrorist groups and tensions between nations in East Asia pose threats to Australian security. More broadly, the Australian Government believes that it needs to make a contribution to maintaining the rules-based order globally. There is also a risk that climate change, weak economic growth and social factors could cause instability in South Pacific countries.
The ADF has developed strategies to respond to Australia's changing strategic environment. The 2016 Defence White Paper states that "the Government will ensure Australia maintains a regionally superior ADF
with the highest levels of military capability and scientific and technological sophistication". To this end, the government intends to improve the ADF's combat power and expand the number of military personnel. This will include introducing new technologies and capabilities. The ADF is also seeking to improve its intelligence capabilities and co-operation between the services.
Beginning in August 2014, RAAF combat forces, an Army special forces task force and an Army training unit were deployed to the Middle East during Operation Okra as part of the international war against the Islamic State. The RAAF aircraft conducted air strikes in Iraq and Syria and provided airborne command and control and air-to-air refuelling for the coalition forces. The special forces advised the Iraqi Army and the training unit trained Iraqi soldiers. The RAAF combat aircraft completed operations in January 2018, and the other aircraft were withdrawn in September 2020. The Army training force departed in mid-2020.