Military

It has been almost 600 days since 28-year-old Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney from Brisbane was killed in action in Afghanistan.

The new dad was shot in the upper body by a single enemy round during the Battle of Derapet in the Tangi Valley on August 24, 2010.

Following the battle one of his close mates in the Mentoring Task Force wrote a detailed email in which he claimed that with better fire support from mortars, artillery and light armoured vehicles, Lance Corporal MacKinney might not have been killed.

Continue reading "Don’t ignore the insights gained in the heat of battle" »

The reader response to The Punch article, 12 January 2012, “Why have we abandoned our troops?” highlighted a deep misunderstanding of the central tenet of the article, and, more worryingly, a flawed knowledge of the actual conditions of service applicable in the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

Some of the more ill-informed myths about what entitlements our military men and women received were:

• Tax free salaries – No (but there are some concessions when deployed to war zones).

Continue reading "War is hell, and military life is no picnic" »

In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians.

They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them.

Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage.

Continue reading "All’s not fair in war" »

There has been plenty of diplomatic semantics around the American presence in Darwin but many including the Chinese are still not satisfied. The United States has long wanted a permanent military base in northern Australia.

But they are not stupid. 

So when Australian officials conveyed that a fixed establishment would not be politically palatable here they saved us the embarrassment of having to say no in a high-level bilateral meeting if the request was made.

Continue reading "A more permanent US presence no baseless rumour" »

As we approach the Centenary of World War I, we start to think about the tremendous sacrifice so many of our diggers made. It is unimaginable to think that over 60,000 young men died in Gallipoli and the Western Front.

When you visit the battlefields of France and Belgium and the cemeteries and memorials you see countless numbers of white crosses honoring the fallen. Many of those crosses are for soldiers who are “Known Only to God”.

At the various memorials such as VC Corner and Menin Gate the names of those who were missing in action are engraved in stone. The Australian Government’s official estimation is there are approximately 18,000 Diggers lying under the fields of France and Belgium.

Continue reading "Digging up fallen diggers is the ultimate indignity" »

When the US Marine Corp establish themselves a new home in Darwin, they will bring some seriously green equipment and ideas to our shores. This is because in the three years of his Presidency, Barack Obama has actively led the US Department of Defense to embrace renewable energy and a strategic awareness of climate change.

The officer in charge of greening the marines is Colonel Bob ‘Brutus’ Charette, a career soldier. As Director of E2O, the Expeditionary Energy Office, Colonel Charette has been on the road in 2011 with a fascinating presentation that shows how seriously America’s defense force is fighting its fatal addiction to oil.

The Colonel jokes that when his commander told him to establish the E2O he said that his only qualification is wasting energy, as a jet pilot and commander.

Continue reading "Mean, green, American fighting machines" »

If you want to keep tabs on all the Obama action throughout the day, you can’t beat this live blog by Chris Paine over at News.com.au.

The eventual deployment of 2500 Marines in the Northern Territory, weather permitting, is not a massive military investment but it is designed to send a substantial message.

And the message is that as global power moves from the Atlantic to Asia, the United States intends to move with it.

And Australia will continue to be aligned with the US, even as its economic and cultural gears mesh more evenly and frequently with those of its regional neighbours.

Continue reading "Gillard and Obama: US forces given the nod" »

Forget Iraq, Afghanistan and any other theatres of battle Australia has been involved in recent years. The Australian Defence Force is in the middle of a battle of its own - and the enemy is within.

The latest flashpoint started just over a week ago after revelations that a young female cadet at the Australian Defence Force Academy was allegedly secretly filmed having consensual sex with a male counterpart, and that he had allegedly broadcast the tryst to other soldiers via webcam.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith’s forthright and outspoken condemnation of the way the incident was handled and military culture in general blew the lid off a simmering internal dispute over incidences of bastardisation, bullying and the gender divide, and opened the wider question of whether women should be allowed to fight on the front-line.

Continue reading "Defence battling the enemy within" »

The problem with Defence has been that nobody gets sacked.

Pushed sideways with a higher salary and rank maybe, but never taken out of a job as a punishment for failure.

That is the major significance of what has happened under Defence Minister Stephen Smith. Australian Defence Academy Commandant Bruce Kafer has been temporarily stood down as a consequence of the Skype sex scandal. Not many senior military figures have had to publicly lose face because of mismanagement.

Continue reading "Skirmish with Defence a long time coming" »

What next in Libya? The initial demonstration of strength we saw yesterday is really just the beginning. (Follow live updates here.)

As US Defence Secretary Gates has rightly observed “a no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences”. This underscores the inevitability of escalation for which a no-fly zone has set the scene, one way or another.

Even if Gaddafi, out of character, orders his aircraft or ground installations not to engage the foreign forces from here on, or they revolt out of fear or relief, that is not the end of it.

Continue reading "A necessary attack, now for the really tricky bit" »

From working with U.S forces in Afghanistan, many Commanders observed how Afghanistan had become a politically correct war. 

Ralph Peters hit the nail on the head in his 2006 New York Post article when he observed that it is hard enough to bear the timidity of our civilian leaders - anxious to start wars but without the guts to finish them - but now military leaders have fallen prey to political correctness. 

Unwilling to accept that war is, by its nature, a savage act and that defeat is immoral, influential officers are arguing for a kinder, gentler approach to our enemies. 

Continue reading "Our politically correct war in Afghanistan" »

Jamie Larcombe is the fifth Australian Army combat engineer to be killed in action in Afghanistan. He is also the first to be shot during a firefight rather than blown up by an insurgent’s improvised explosive device (IED).

The engineers are a tight-knit and dedicated group of soldiers who bring a raft of skills and a great deal of courage to the fight against the Taliban. The Darwin based 1st Combat Engineer Regiment has now lost two of its best within a fortnight following the death of Corporal Richard Atkinson at the hands of an enemy bomb maker.

In addition to the five KIA they have also suffered much higher rates of injury as they take the lead role whenever a patrol leaves the security of an operating base.

Continue reading "The loss of brave young men is becoming hard to justify" »

News that up to 21 navy sailors were allegedly running a drug ring from the Garden Island Navy base in Sydney, and that about 30 more were possibly involved in distributing the contraband, has shone the spotlight into a dark corner of military life.

With recent raids uncovering illicit drugs including steroids, heroin, cocaine and ecstasy, the extent of drug trafficking and substance abuse by military personnel is now being exposed and it is not a pretty picture.

The vast majority of navy, army and air force personnel are clean living, law abiding citizens, but for those who aren’t there are many opportunities to take advantage of their status as returning warriors and their mode of military transport to import illegal material.

Continue reading "Is the military using warships to smuggle drugs?" »

In October 2007 two unarmed Iraqi women were shot and killed by private military contractors working for Unity Resources Group (URG), the same firm that now guards the Australian embassy in Baghdad. 

Just over a year earlier, contractors from the same company shot and killed a 72 year old Australian academic for failing to stop at a checkpoint.

The Defence Department recently told a Senate committee it was aware of the incidents when it awarded URG the embassy contract, but based on third party reports from “American, Iraqi and British authorities” decided the shootings were justified.

Continue reading "Private military firms need greater scrutiny" »

A lot of people who questioned the need for a parliamentary debate on Australia’s military commitment in Afghanistan said we’d just end up with a whole heap of MPs agreeing we’re doing the right thing and we’re doing it the right way.

Indeed despite their stylistic differences, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott’s speeches to open the debate were almost interchangeable in their messages and conclusions - although the Prime Minister did admit for the first time we might be there a lot longer than she’d ever fessed up to before.

But even though there is broad bi-partisan support for our mission in Afghanistan, there has been some dissenters, and also some interesting ideas thrown up during the discussion, like the proposition by Shadow Finance Minister Andrew Robb this afternoon.

Continue reading "A call for military accountability" »

When should Australia wage war? Has anyone asked you? Have you given it much thought or is that a job best left to the government?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that twenty one Australian men lie dead, lost on the battlefields of Afganistan. Each of them is easy to admire - young, supremely fit, highly trained, brave soldiers.

It’s pretty clear they all possessed courage and commitment to their task, their training and their mates most of us would struggle to emulate. They all have families and friends - even more tragically, a number of them have young children who will never see or know their dads.

Continue reading "Most think our leaders have it about right on Afghanistan" »

The Australian public are being fed a one dimensional view of Afghanistan by both sides of politics that is misleading and will only result in further domestic political frustration and a public continuing to question why our troops are not winning the war. 

Our mission in Afghanistan will not be successful through military engagement alone.  The Prime Minister must publicly acknowledge that our mission in Afghanistan will only succeed through the implementation of a range of mainly direct civilian engagements outside the safety of our Forward Operating Bases and a long way from the good coffee in the safe compounds in Kabul.

War is armed politics and counterinsurgency is an armed variant of domestic politics in which numerous challengers compete for control over the population.

Continue reading "Our leaders have no idea how to “win” in Afghanistan" »

The Greens might not have the balance of power in the Senate until next July but one of Bob Brown’s proposals, a parliamentary debate on our military commitment in Afghanistan, should be indulged well before then.

Nine years into a war that has recently grown much more dangerous for our troops the two major political parties have fallen back on a bit of a “just because” argument for why we should remain in such a Hell hole.

It’s an accepted reality that both sides are in unanimous support for our mission. But as public unease with the growing Australian toll intensifies, our leaders have failed to properly articulate much beyond championing our training role and that “progress is being made.”

Continue reading "What exactly are we aiming for in Afghanistan?" »

The recent discussion of the Afghan deployment focus on the loss of more, young Australian lives as part of a mission which is not understood. It is a tragic loss, yet fundamental re-appraisal of western aims in Afghanistan seems highly unlikely.

The western presence in Afghanistan is not simply a lost decade of US led Osama hunting, nor is it merely a 30 year hangover from Cold War conflict. The Western presence in Afghanistan is part of a larger mission that has dragged on for hundreds of years.

The common acceptance of the logic that underpins both sides of the public debate about Afghanistan, illustrates that this mission is so acceptable to western polities that its existence is taken for granted and passes largely unremarked.

Continue reading "The real reason we’re fighting a war in Afghanistan" »

Update 10.30am: Acting chief of the defence force Lieutenant General David Hurley, and the acting defence minister Greg Combet have also just confirmed the deaths, and said the soldiers’ families had requested their names not be released.

Update 10.10am: Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has confirmed two Australian soldiers were killed. More here.

Details are still emerging but Australians are believed among the casualties in the most deadly day this year for allied forces in Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the Australian Defence Force confirmed an “an incident” involving the Mentoring Task Force and that next of kin had been informed, though did not provide further details. The Courier-Mail in Brisbane, where the MTF is based, is reporting two Australian soldiers were killed in the incident. If confirmed it will bring the number of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan to 13 since 2002.

Last night the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force confirmed an improvised explosive device incident that killed two soldiers in southern Afghanistan, where Australian troops are based.

Continue reading "Callous reminders of why Afghans still want to flee" »

On returning last month from 10 days in the Middle East Area of Operations (MEAO) that included five days in Afghanistan in Kandahar and Tarin Kowt, I was shocked to hear of another attempted extremist Islamic terrorist attack, on that occasion in Times Square.

This only reinforces my view that unless we defeat the Taliban and remove the opportunity for their Al Qaeda allies to spew venom through indoctrination, training and support, we will continue to fight them in our own backyard.

The Dutch unfortunately have decided their contribution has come to an end in Afghanistan leaving a capability vacuum in Oruzgan Province where the bulk of Australia’s combat forces are. The military has a maxim that ‘time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.’ Likewise 10 days with our troops on operations was fertile time to reflect and I’ve personally concluded that Australia should consider expanding its contribution to fill this vacuum and take the lead in Oruzgan Province.

Continue reading "More Australian leadership is needed in Afghanistan" »

The death of Ted Kenna has reminded us again of the breathtaking bravery exhibited by him and all winners of the Victoria Cross.

Mr Kenna, who with his wife spent the final years of his life in Geelong in order to be near their daughter, is the fifth VC winner to have a connection with the Geelong region.

To survey the stories of these five winners of the VC is to touch a special part of Australia’s regional history. They tell of a haulage contractor and an apple packer, an accountant and council worker, along with a professional soldier who displayed a rare bravery at a moment of extreme pressure.

Continue reading "What we learn from our Victoria Cross winners" »