Ibid - Australian Army

Land Warfare Studies Centre 74
contingency, there was a need for more emphasis on higher-level
military thinking, organisation and doctrine. 300
Army Doctrine and the Culture of Anti-intellectualism
A fourth problem that the Army has encountered is that of an
anti-intellectual culture within its ranks. A striking characteristic of
the Australian Regular Army is the paradox of an officer corps
composed of many highly talented individuals but possessing
a weak collective intellectual ethos. As a measure of the Army’s
individual excellence, it is worth noting that, of the nine Chiefs of
the Defence Force Staff and Chiefs of the Defence Force between
1976 and 1998, five have been Army officers holding office for
a collective period of fifteen years. 301 In stark contrast, a lack of
collective intellectual rigour in the Army’s culture has affected both
doctrine development and intellectual debate over the last quarter of
a century. In terms of doctrine development, progress has often
been compartmentalised and dependent on what one senior officer
has called ‘the intellectual horsepower of individuals’ rather than on
institutional effort. 302
The officer corps has often demonstrated an intellectual reluctance
to debate new concepts in the context of a doctrinal framework. For
example, operational concepts such as ‘defensive manoeuvre with
a counter-stroke capability’ first advanced by the CGS, Lieutenant
General John Grey, in 1993, and ‘strategic manoeuvre’, which was
formulated by Lieutenant General Sanderson in 1995, were never
fully debated by the officer corps. 303 In the 1995 Statement of
300
301
302
303
Ibid.
See Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, rev. edn 1999, Appendix 1.
Author’s discussion with Colonel Vincent Williams, Director,
Doctrine Wing, CATDC, 20 August 1998.
Lieutenant General J. C. Grey, ‘Land Aspects of Australian Strategy’,
Journal of the Royal United Services Institute of Australia,
October 1993, XIV, i, pp. 32–4. Lieutenant General J. M. Sanderson,