ISSUE 125 : Jul/Aug - 1997 - Australian Defence Force Journal

44AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE FORCE JOURNAL NO. 125 JULY/AUGUST 1997The JPU would provide a greater range of pysopsitems of a higher quality and/or quantity to assist thetac psyops teams. Tac psyops is normally restricted toloudspeaker operations and leaflet/poster productionof limited quality, quantity and colour using in-houseprint equipment. The JPU would assist tac psyopsteams by providing bulk quantities of higher-qualityprinted material. The JPU would also produce printedproducts (using any suitable surface such as clothing,stickers or novelty items in addition to leaflets andposters), audio products (such as radio broadcasts)and audio-visual products (such as video, using inhouseor out-sourced production facilities) forstrategic and operational level psyops. The JPUwould also coordinate the delivery of strategic andoperational psyops products.The JPU could be created from the existing 2ndDivision Intelligence Company Psyops Platoon, usingits allocated reserve manpower of 12 soldiers as thebasis for the part-time component of the new unit.Specialists from other corps (either full or part-time)such as a draftsperson, journalist, clerk, psychiatrists,education officers, video and print-productionpersonnel would be posted to the unit as well asrepresentatives from the Navy and Air Force. Theunit would consist of about 24 people, 50 per centpart-time and 50 per cent full-time. an example of theproposed unit appears at Figure 1.Communication ForumThe JPU would also provide the forum for the coordinationof psyops, public relations and civil affairs.This would allow each of these service providers toknow what the other is doing and how they can helpeach other. It should be made clear that this is not anexcuse to create a mammoth propaganda machinethat would see public relations and civil affairsbecome an extension of psyops. There are cleardeliniations between the three areas and these shouldbe maintained. However, it can be argued that allthree of these areas are inter-related, in that the effectsof any one can have a flow-on effect to the other two.For example, in 1994 the Australian Medical SupportForce sent to Rwanda was tasked to provide healthsupport for the UN peacekeeping forces, with sparecapacity being used to assist the Rwandan people andsome Non-Government Organisations 5 . The initialcivil affairs aspect of this assistance to the Rwandanpeople brought much local good-will, whilst the flowonpublic relations aspect provided a positive imageof the ADF to the Australian people. Furthermore,these actions had a favourable strategic psychologicalimpact on both the countries within the region andthose with troops on UN service there.HEADQUARTERSDESIGN ANDPRODUCTIONSECTIONRESEARCHANALYSIS ANDMONITORINGSECTIONDISSEMINATIONSECTIONFigure 1. Organisation of the proposed Joint Psyops Unit