Plan for bigger Australian military role in disasters raises questions
Concerns over whether deploying troops for ops such as fighting bush fires would weaken their combat capability
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Jonathan Pearlman For The Sunday Times In Sydney, Jonathan Pearlman
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During the recent bush fires in Australia, more than 6,000 troops were called out to assist in firefighting efforts after Prime Minister Scott Morrison ordered the nation's first deployment of reserve forces for a domestic disaster.
Mr Morrison has signalled that he wants to look at increasing the role of the military for domestic emergencies.
But the proposal has raised questions about whether deploying troops for disasters would weaken their combat capability.
The Chief of Army, Lieutenant-General Rick Burr, signalled that he was concerned about the proposal, saying assisting with bush fires was not the army's "primary mission". He told the Australian Defence Magazine Congress that focusing on the fires was a distraction from the army's main role, which is "to conduct war-fighting".
"Training for war is absolutely what we need to be equipped for and focused on," he said, according to a report in The Australian.
"Our principal job is to prepare capabilities to conduct war-fighting and with the resources that we have they're pretty well tied up in doing exactly that."
The recent bush fires in Australia killed at least 33 people around the country and burned more than 10.6 million hectares of bushland - an area larger than South Korea. More than 3,000 homes were burned.
During the crisis, the Australian Defence Force was deployed for the relief effort - roping in more than 6,500 troops (including about 2,500 reservists) along with 13 aircraft, 20 helicopters and three naval vessels. Hundreds of international troops also supported the effort, including from Singapore, Indonesia, the United States, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.
Following his historic decision to call out the reservists, Mr Morrison indicated that the military could be deployed for such disasters in the future where serious numbers of lives and properties are under threat.
"I don't put this forward lightly," he told the National Press Club on Jan 29. "An enhanced, and more proactive role for our defence force in response to domestic natural disasters will have implications for our force structure, for its capability, development, its command, its deployment and the training of our defence forces."
The rules for calling out the military in future bush-fire operations will be considered by a Royal Commission into the recent bush fires, which will complete its report by the end of August.
But analysts have warned that Australia's military - including its equipment - is not designed to fight bush fires or other such natural disasters and that deploying it could be costly, wasteful and could lead to a loss of skills. The recent bush-fire deployment, for instance, has reportedly forced the military to delay training exercises.
The head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Mr Peter Jennings, backed Mr Morrison's claim that the public expected that the military's role is not merely "high-end war fighting" but to assist in disasters. But, he said, the military would need extra funding to allow it to play such a role - to the tune of A$2 billion (S$1.8 billion) a year.
"Whatever defence is asked to do on climate disasters, it can't be at the expense of diverting even one dollar away from the core task of providing for the military security of Australia and our interests," he wrote on The Strategist, a blog run by the institute.
He suggested creating a specific "disaster response command" that would plan for and oversee future crises. The command, he said, could examine which current equipment and units could be deployed in fires and other crises and could also establish new units specifically designed to assist with disasters.
An expert on the military and climate change, Mr Tom Sear, from the University of New South Wales Canberra Cyber at the Australian Defence Force Academy, said the military had suitable skills to assist with bush fires and climate disasters and was also accustomed to adapting to new roles. He said it could potentially play a permanent natural disaster role and should be assigned the task of advising the federal government on how to prepare for future crises.
"There are few Australians as well equipped to plan for fighting adversity, designing capability and assessing lessons learnt once the action has taken place," he wrote on the ABC News website.
