Fire-fighting a mission risk: army chief Rick Burr

Chief of Army Rick Burr says Defenc­e isn’t funded or trained to fight fires, and warns the ­ADF’s combat­ capabilities could suffer.

An Australian soldier on Kangaroo Island during Operation Bushfire Assist 19-20. Picture: ADF

Chief of Army Rick Burr says Defenc­e isn’t funded or trained to fight fires, and the ­Australian ­Defence Force’s combat­ capabil­ities could suffer if it is increasingly­ needed for bushfire relief ­operations.

Less than a month after Scott Morrison flagged an increased role for the ADF in responding to domestic emergencies, Lieutenant General Burr said such deployments risked distracting from Defence­’s “primary mission” and consuming its resources.

“Training for war is absolutely what we need to be equipped for and focused on,” he told a defence conference in Canberra on ­Wednesday.

General Burr said the ADF had been able to use its skills and equipment to support firefighters in Operation Bushfire Assist, “but being distracted from that primary mission obviously could relate to mission risk and I’m very alert to it”.

“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,” he told the Australian Defence Magazine Congress.

More than 6500 full-time and reserve defence personnel suppor­t­ed Operation Bushfire Assist, along with 13 fixed-wing aircraft, 20 helicopters and three naval ­vessels. The significance of the operatio­n was illustrated as HMAS Choules rescued hundreds of residents from Mallacoota in early last month, while about 4400 ADF personnel, including about 1100 reservists, are continuing to provide support on the ground in bushfire-affected communities.

Defence has had a budget top-up of nearly $90m to fund its involvement in the fire relief effort.

As the fire threat eased late last month, the Prime Minister said the ADF effort “amplified the effectiven­ess of state disaster respon­se agencies” and “played a critical role in getting fast and effecti­ve disaster relief where it is needed most”.

Mr Morrison said his decision to call out Defence reservists and instruct them to “move forward and integ­rate” was “not taken lightly”, and tested the limits of federal constitutional power.

But he said there was now “a clear community expectation” that the commonwealth should be able to deploy the Defence Forces in national­ emergencies “where the life and property of Australians has been assessed to be under threat” at such a large scale.

General Burr said Operation Bushfire Assis­t had helped test the ADF’s domestic command and control systems, and its ability to rapidly deploy reservists.

While the mass call-out of ADF personnel and equipment would be examined in royal commissions­ and inquiries, he said the ADF could currently only play a ­supporting role in bushfire ­emergencies.

“We have been able to support firefighters who have done an extra­ordinary job,” he said. “What we've been able to do this year is value-add in helping behind the scenes and helping communities. There is no focus on firefighting.”

The federal government is now examining a legal framework that would allow it to declare a national state of emergency to allow the deploymen­t of the Defence Forces without state requests, and a new agreement with the states setting out roles and responsibilities in disasters.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute­ defence analyst Marcus Hellyer said the economics of using the ADF in bushfire emergencies didn’t make sense.

Defence’s MRH90s helicopters are among the world’s most advanced tactical transport aircraft and cost about $30,000 an hour to fly. A civilian helicopter costs only about $3000 an hour to put in the air. “The risk is using ­Defence assets is very bad value for money,” Dr Hellyer said.

“But to me the bigger risk is by doing bushfire assist, your MRH90s, which you spent close to $4bn acquiring, are not available for their primary war-fighting role, because they have been overused, they are burnt-out, their crews are burnt-out and they haven’t been able to do training.

“We are already hearing on the grapevine that army may need to reschedule its exercise calendar for the year because of things like this.”

Dr Hellyer said if the government wanted Defence to regularly participate in bushfire support activ­ities, it should fund specific new capabilities for the ADF, “not use its war-fighting capabilities”.