Ibid - Australian Army

69
Study Paper No. 301
Training Command from the TCDC in the mid-1970s through the
Doctrine Branch in the 1980s to the Army Doctrine Centre of the
mid-1990s. Successive doctrine development sections in Training
Command have confronted constant downsizing and the steady loss
of doctrine-dedicated establishment positions as the Regular
Army’s strength has fallen during the last twenty five years.
Lacking enough qualified officers, doctrine writing often became
slow, parochial or moribund—particularly in the first half of the
1990s. 280 In 1995, the GOC Training Command, Major General
Gower, admitted that the Army had to ‘develop rigorously our
doctrine. It is accepted that this process has waned somewhat in
recent years’. 281 In 1996 a Training Command publication on
doctrine status warned that the Army possessed a weak doctrinal
development system. The publication stated: ‘the Australian
Army’s professional understanding of warfare is reflected in its
doctrine. Although Army has maintained a significant body of
doctrine for many years there remains confusion over its definition
and purpose’. 282
The publication went on to warn that doctrine was too often seen as
a ‘closed loop’—a process that ended with pamphlet publication—
instead of being viewed as an intellectually dynamic process
requiring constant review, validation and updating. 283 As the British
doctrine analyst Brian Holden Reid has observed, the publication of
a doctrinal manual is not proof of the acceptance of a doctrinal
policy. Doctrine needs institutional acceptance and its provisions
must be enforced by senior officers. 284
280
281
282
283
284
Gower’s letter to author, 28 September 1998.
‘Outline Plan for the Introduction of the Statement of Doctrinal
Principle into Australian Army Doctrine’, 14 September 1995,
para. 7.
Doctrine Status and Development 1996, p. 5.
Ibid., p. 7.
Holden Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective, 1988–98, p. 14.