We should find out this month whether action will be taken against commanders in the wake of the Brereton inquiry. There’s been resentment among the lower ranks of Australian special forces because of a perception the Brereton inquiry targeted junior non-commissioned officers and failed to assign culpability to those further up the army’s rank structure or even to their political masters.
The key question is where does one stop when determining responsibility? Is it at the unit commander (lieutenant-colonel) level or with successive prime ministers responsible since 2002 for our demanding and clearly unwinnable Afghanistan commitment?
Some have suggested Chief of the Defence Force General Angus Campbell should accept responsibility and fall on his sword. That’s hardly likely to happen. After all, ministers don’t accept personal responsibility and voluntarily step down when transgressions are exposed among their staff. (Nor, for that matter, do they do so when caught out themselves.)
While not wishing to pursue the responsibility issue further, I thought it would be useful to look at the implications of the hypothetical loss of several very senior army officers — and turned up some surprising facts.
Army generals are graded at “one-star” to “five-star” levels. A one-star is a brigadier — or in US parlance a brigadier-general. That’s the level of Australian officer who would command a brigade of roughly 3000 soldiers. A two-star or major-general commands a division (three brigades). A three-star or lieutenant-general commands a corps (two to five divisions). A four-star or full general commands a field army. A five-star or field marshal commands an army group, which may comprise several armies.
The Australian CDF is the only four-star officer in the Australian Defence Force (ADF). We have no five-stars.
The Australian Army has 29,511 regular personnel, plus 18,738 active reservists. It could field a division-minus sized force, or the field command of a major-general. Notionally, however, we have the structure for two divisions.
The Australian Army’s 1st Division comprises a deployable headquarters, while 2nd Division under the command of Forces Command is the main home-defence formation, containing Army Reserve units. The Australian Army has not deployed a division-sized formation since 1945 and does not expect to do so in the future.
The Australian Army currently has 86 regular officers of general rank, while the Army Reserve has 98.
By comparison, size-wise, with the Australian Army, the US Army had (in December 2019) 472,595 active-duty personnel, with another 191,007 in reserve, and an Army National Guard of 331,881. The US Marine Corps is a separate service with 180,958 active members.
In the US military, the total number of active-duty general officers is capped at 231 for the army and 62 for the Marine Corps.
This means that the US Army has one general for every 2045 soldiers and the Marine Corps one for every 2919 marines.
By contrast, the Australian Army has one regular army general for 345 regular soldiers. If you add the Australian Regular Army and the Active Reserve together, you get around 50,000 personnel and 184 generals, or one general for every 271 soldiers.
The US has managed to keep the number of generals down by having lower-ranking officers performing tasks that in the Australian Army would be performed by a one-star or above.
A US brigade, for example, is headed by a full colonel, not a brigadier. It’s also not uncommon for a senior officer to be working for a more senior officer of the same rank.
Australian “rank bloat” comes at some expense, given that a brigadier has a minimum annual salary of $200,000 and a three-star has a maximum salary of around $500,000.
If we brought our rank and responsibility structure into line with that of our major ally, the US, we would need no more than 15 regular army generals for an army of 30,000, and perhaps 10 reserve generals for an active reserve of up to 20,000 personnel.
In conclusion, Australia could probably afford to lose more than 150 army generals and be none the worse for it!
Clive Williams is a visiting professor at the ANU’s Centre for Military and Security Law (and former Army officer)