Ibid - Australian Army

5
Study Paper No. 301
must be internalised by all echelons in order to establish a
framework of understanding that can inform the decision-making
process. Only then can doctrine become what the British military
thinker, Major General J. F. C. Fuller, called ‘the central idea of an
army’. 11
Characteristics of Australian Army Doctrine, 1947–72
In order to understand the context of doctrinal thinking after the
Vietnam War, it is useful to summarise scholarly research into the
development of Australian Regular Army doctrine between the late
1940s and the beginning of the 1970s. The most systematic research
has been carried out by a trio of young soldiers, M. C. J. Welburn,
J. C. Blaxland and R. N. Bushby. 12 From their work it seems clear
that, in this period, Australian Army doctrine development was
haphazard and lacked central direction. Despite a continuum of
Asian operations in the 1950s and 1960s—in Korea, Malaya,
Borneo and Vietnam—the Army did not develop an indigenous or
systematic approach to doctrine. Instead, doctrine was largely
borrowed from the British with a leavening of American ideas.
Welburn’s study of doctrine development between 1945 and 1964
demonstrates how the Australian Army adopted a policy of
doctrinal standardisation with its British counterpart. Doctrine
11
12
Major General J. F. C. Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War,
Hutchinson, London, 1926, p. 254.
M. C. J. Welburn, The Development of Australian Army Doctrine,
1945–1964, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 108,
Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University,
Canberra, 1994; J. C. Blaxland, Organising an Army: The Australian
Experience, 1957–1965, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence,
No. 50, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National
University, Canberra, 1989; R. N. Bushby, ‘Educating An Army’:
Australian Army Doctrinal Development and the Operational
Experience in South Vietnam, 1965–72, Canberra Papers on Strategy
and Defence No. 126, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian
National University, Canberra, 1998.