Military policy based on the Keystone Cops

An Australian Army CH-47 Chinook from the 5th Aviation Regiment prepares to unload an M777 howitzer during Exercise Chau Pha near in June. Picture: Defence

The government’s army restructure is another nothingburger in the sad story of our perennial ­efforts to reshuffle our declining deck chairs across the badly becalmed, listing cruise liner of our military.

We spent 10 years and a few ­billion dollars shuffling the army around before, to get more of them into Adelaide where at least their spouses can get jobs so there’s an outside chance of retaining them.

Now we’re going to have another substantially pointless move around, a few more troops in Darwin, all the armour in Townsville and the new, misnamed “long fires” in Adelaide.

No soldier should feel rushed in lifestyle terms because – as a reflection of the grave urgency of the worst strategic circumstances we’ve faced in 80 years, which government ministers from the Prime Minister down have repeatedly warned us about – all these gentle changes will take place over years and years in the natural rotations of time.

This is certainly a government that won’t be rushed on defence, as made plain by the recent announcement by Defence Minister Richard Marles that the government will not publish or respond to the review of the Navy’s surface fleet, which it either has now or is just about to receive, until some time in the first quarter next year.

If this is a government gripped by strategic urgency, I’d hate to see it on a go-slow.

Because the government has cut out most of the Infantry Fighting Vehicles and self-propelled artillery it was going to buy, it will only have one armoured brigade now and that will be in Townsville.

Cancelling that armour was a good idea if the money saved was going to go towards urgent maritime capabilities instead. But there is nothing urgent happening, and no new maritime capabilities at all.

Aircrew from the Australian Army Aviation Corps and the US Army prepare for a late afternoon flight on an Australian MRH90 during Exercise Talisman Sabre 2023 near Townsville.

The absence of armour means the Darwin-based troops will now be designated a light littoral combat brigade. The armour will be in Townsville and there will be a ­motorised brigade in Brisbane.

But it’s Adelaide where the real fun will be. Adelaide will host a “fires” brigade. The 1st Armoured Regiment becomes an “innovation and experimentation unit”. Does Defence hold internal competitions to come up with these ­utterly fatuous names?

But in so far as Adelaide retains any real military role, it will house the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, we are very slowly going to acquire. It will also host our Integrated Air and Missile Defence capabilities.

There is a deep defence wiliness at work here. The idea is that HIMARS, the so-called long fires, if pointed out from the coast line, can put an enemy at risk some distance from our coast. So naturally, with Get Smart cunning, we’ll, ­locate them 3000km from the northern coast they might one day defend. Similarly, all our northern air bases are completely defenceless and would be wiped out by missile attacks on day one of any conflict. So sensibly we locate our air defences as far away from them as possible.

Why on earth we have not bought any Patriot missile defence systems is anybody’s guess.

None of this remotely constitutes a serious military capability, nor does it “build deterrence” as government ministers have frequently claimed to be doing.

This is the sort of stuff you do when you’re not doing anything at all. That’s our defence policy.