Proceedings: How is the war in Afghanistan affecting your Navy, and how will your Navy play in its current phase?
Shackleton: Our country is contributing to a coalition force in a package sense. The United States asked if we could provide special forces support in the form of air-to-air refueling; fly F/A-18 combat air patrols over Diego Garcia; and continue our support of maritime interdiction operations in the Gulf.
In addition, we are sending the Kanimbla, one of the two LPAs that we bought from the U.S. Navy. Since we acquired those ships, we have fitted each with a flight deck, hangar, and a modem hospital.
We also fitted a comprehensive command-and-control system into these ships, because we see them as providing afloat command and control for our Army, as much as anything else. So we have a 2.4-gigabyte satellite capability. We can run top secret, secret, and restricted, which you use as "for official use only." We can run simultaneous planning from afloat to ashore. We have been watching the U.S. Navy's evolution of ships such as Blue Ridge (LCC-19) and Coronado (AGF-11) for some time. The lessons we see you people learning are very much applicable to us.
We are sending Kanimbla with one of our guidedmissile frigates, so that when the LPA is in the Gulf she has her own force protection and is able to act as a forward Australian command position. As we send our forces forward, and we are part of a coalition, one of those things that our history has taught us is you better make sure that you've got your own command and control worked out. As big operations start to unfold, there's a need to ensure that the national interests of the coalition—or, in our case, an alliance—are not subjugated accidentally by the sheer size of the U.S. system. That's not to suggest we are concerned. But nobody cares more about your forces than you do. In our case, we want to be sure that the ways our forces are used in this conflict will be in the ways that allow them to be maximized.
We also see that ship providing hospital facilities. You can never have enough medical in this kind of operation. You also can never have enough lift. You need transportation, and the LPAs provide us with a very flexible capability.
To broaden the sense of your question, we see these ships providing some real experience for us in terms of operating with our Army. We are sending an Army brigadier with our forces. Our experience in East Timor was that we operated very closely with the Army, and could provide things for it that it hadn't thought about. Obviously East Timor was predominantly a land operation, but the support the Navy provided allowed the Army to do its job. We see that as being a natural set of circumstances. It's push-pull, and sometimes somebody else is pushing. Sometimes we're pushing. Sometimes we're pulling. Sometimes somebody else is pulling. So it's working the game so you get the synergies, rather than saying: "Hey, I'm more important than somebody else."
Proceedings: We hear a lot about British participation in the coalition so far, but that's about it. Can you provide us with some insight into how the Australian government views this situation?
Shackleton: It's interesting, and you're right. The British are participating. I guess there's a very strong sense of leadership, on the English political side, to assist. I think that's absolutely right and proper. Sometimes you wonder with the Pacific so long away, does it matter whether people such as Australia send forces to these things or not? In my view, it does. I think this coalition operation is going to be very hard, in that this is a war of the kind that nobody has fought, at least for a very long time. It might have been the kind of war they used to fight in the past, where the tribesmen would come down from the hills, slash, burn, kill, and mine for a bit, and then they'd go back to their villages.
We have an alliance with the United States, which, interestingly enough, is often criticized in Australia as making Australia too dependent on the support of the United States for any difficulties Australia might find itself in. In other words, the United States will come to Australia's assistance. In many respects, our defense policy has been about defending ourselves as best we can, but also providing the kinds of assets we think we would need to be complementary to those of the United States, should that alliance need to be triggered.
We've now seen a complete about face of that. The Australian government said it thought the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, United States) alliance requirements for consultation between governments had now been met because of the attack on the United States. I think that shows a relationship that has real depth and maturity, in that some people in Australia always have thought that America would come and save Australia. We've got no sense that Australia is going to save America, but we do have a sense that what we do and how we do it is important to this relationship. And relationships have to survive the thick and the thin. This is not a time to be asking whether we should or we shouldn't; the question is how much can we do and how long can we stay. Australia is going to be there for the long haul.
Proceedings: The 2000 Defence White Paper clearly states that Australia needs a maritime strategy. What are the main tenets of that strategy?
Shackleton: In some respects, it's a recognition of the blindingly obvious—that we're an island continent. The last thing we want to have to do is to defend continental Australia. So it's better to be in a position where you can prevent that event having to occur, which means you might have to operate more in the forward areas, away from Australia.
What we are seeing, on a more global basis, is the need for forces to be applied quickly, before operations start to escalate to a point where only an overwhelming force can start to turn it around. In other words, get engaged early and try and bring an event to a conclusion using the minimal amount of force. The reality is that you have to live with these countries afterward. It's important to have an end state, which recognizes that what you might be dealing with is an aberration.
Our Army and Air Force sign up to this. It wasn't a case of me saying, "We're an island, therefore we must have a maritime strategy." It's a recognition that the best way to defend yourself is to do it somewhere else. Only when we saw ourselves facing a direct threat to continental Australia would we start to see that we would have to put up our hand and say, "Hey, United States, we've got a problem here that we really can't deal with by ourselves. Would you mind coming and giving us some help?" We feel very strongly that we've got to carry our own bags for as long as we can, because that's our responsibility.
In terms of what the White Paper produced, so far as the Navy is concerned, the government agreed essentially to replace every ship that I've got in the space of about 10 to 12 years. That was a pretty good outcome.
Proceedings: It seemed to mark a sea change in the way the government looks at the services.
Shackleton: I guess one of those things I've had to learn is to use words that other people understand and try not to talk to people in politics or industry in the jargon of the navy; stop using the threeletter hieroglyphics, the acronyms. Relate the message to experiences that I can reasonably believe would have been in their mind-sets. So it's trying to apply some marketing and sales skills, really. You don't buy something from somebody who you can't understand.
Clearly, my Army and Air Force counterparts and I were participating in the process of developing the government's plan. It was strategic-threat based—i.e., what kind of capabilities might we have to deal with in the life of this government policy? We didn't want to pick on any one particular country, but we had to answer some specific questions. What is being exported into the region? What is it easy for people to purchase? Where's the long pole in the tent? What kinds of things must we have to hedge against what we may have to confront?
To some extent, that's been Australia's defense approach for a long time, in that we've never said one country is our particular threat. We always have had this notion that says, "Well, you really don't know who it might be. So you'd better be prepared on a broad front." I might say that one of those things that we worked very hard at as a group—and that is the chief of the defense force and the three service chiefs—was that we wanted to see a balanced force. It was going to be absolutely no good to the Army if the Navy could not take the Army where it needed to go, protect it en route, protect it in theater, resupply it in theater, and bring it home safely.
That's what led to an understanding that Australia needs a significant antiair warfare capability. The people to our north are not necessarily going to volunteer the use of their runways so we can fly our aircraft from them. Likewise, we are not a country that frankly can afford the size of air force that you would need to provide 24/7 combat air patrols. Because the bad guys always come around when the watch changes, you need people there when you need them.
Proceedings: Australia's Navy for the 21st Century is very focused, well written, well presented, and has the best definition we've run across of "littoral."
Shackleton: Thank you. What did we say? [Laughter]
Proceedings: It says that "littoral" is defined as "those areas on land that are subject to influence by units operating at or from the sea; and those areas at sea subject to influence by forces operating on or from the land."
Shackleton: This is nice because it doesn't restrict you to the 100-fathom line or the 12-mile limit. And it changes with technology. The diagram in the publication shows the seamlessness of the sea-- air-land environment.
It was quite fortuitous that we published the Australian Maritime Doctrine in front of the Defence White Paper. One thing I saw when I became Chief was that the Defence White Paper was the game in town. It was about the future of the Navy. So I couldn't sit back and expect somebody else to solve this problem for me. I'm the Chief of the Navy; I've got to lead this debate. I've got to get out there and talk to people. I have to explain, explain, explain, explain, explain. And I've got to engage with people and have them understand the message.
Ultimately, if the government should choose not to hear what I've got to say, then it won't be because I haven't been in the position to give them the message. It's because they've been able to make a choice. It is important to understand that governments will make choices. The role of people like myself is to have them understand that if you make that choice, then this is my professional advice of what the implications are. If you make another choice, then here's my professional advice on what the implications of that choice mean.
Proceedings: The development of the U.S. Navy's Maritime Strategy seemed to draw on a quote that we have here on the wall from John Adams: "Let us dare to read, think, speak"—and a very important part is: "to write. " If you're willing to make that kind of investment, can you institute change?
Shackleton: Yes, you have to do it on a broad front. And they have to be within sight of each other. You can't afford to have the reading and the thinking and the writing be out of step so far that the coherency fails. As part of the reorganization of the Navy, it was my intention—and I've achieved it, up until this point—to have a very strong cell of people who have thought about the future of the Navy. This is not to criticize our joint world. But the joint world itself is fed by the single services, and the single services themselves are fed by the joint world. If you don't have your own thinkers, however, you'll be led by people who do not understand the detail, and the devil is in the details.
Proceedings: Is this where your Navy innovation strategy comes into play?
Shackleton: Yes. We have formed an alliance with our own defense, science, and technology organization. We don't have the Office of Naval Research, in such a sense. We have a defense, science, and technology organization that works with and for each of the three services and the joint organization. Within the "joint" I include intelligence and surveillance and reconnaissance. It also acts as a clearinghouse comanager for research and science and technology projects for universities, both in and outside of Australia. So it's a lean and mean, but very smart, organization.
What we've managed to achieve is to form a Navy Science Committee. It is cochaired by myself and the head of that organization. We meet formally on a biannual basis to look at the objectives we've set ourselves. It's both a relationship management forum and a "tell me are we on the right track" kind of forum.
I want the Navy to be a laboratory. We've got to keep trying new things, finding out what doesn't work and change it or fix it. Does that mean I'm going to invent my own combat system anytime soon? Probably not. But does it mean that I know what ought to be in a combat system? Absolutely. Do I know what sort of doctrine and tactics I want this combat system to support? Absolutely. Do I have strong links with the science community that will show me how to do that in the best way possible? You bet.
We've established linkages with the U.S. Naval War College. We've got people in the United States on the staff of the Warfare Development Command. We will participate, for instance, in the U.S. Navy's fleet battle experiments. We have a thing called a virtual submarine, a virtual surface combatant, which we will play in the game with the United States. For instance, in our virtual submarine we can play tactical games between an experimental system in Adelaide via a high-capacity classified link to the submarine base in Western Australia.
Once we get ourselves in the position, we want to put all this stuff into our submariner's combat system that we are going to be working on with the U.S. Navy. My notion is that you shouldn't have to wait 12 months to receive some new software. If you like it in the lab, print it, compile it, and deliver it. Not only that, but change the training system at the same time. Our submarine is, in fact, quite well advanced on computer-based training. So it ought to be possible, in theory, to change it because a sailor likes working with it this particular way
Proceedings: What are the challenges that information technology and network-centric warfare present for you, as far as interoperability and the draw on technology such as satellite capacity?
Shackleton: We are on the brink of being able to modernize the entire Royal Australian Navy's approach to warfare, if we just can get this right. For instance, I see the need to replace all of the ships in the Navy as a huge opportunity to build a Navy that can, in one fell swoop, minimize its operating costs. I can now buy ships where the differences between the ships are simply mission-critical systems.
From what I've seen of the way the U.S. Navy is going with networks and information management, I think that is a role model. You cannot do this stuff by voice transmission any more. Link 11 is way too slow and inaccurate to do the kinds of things we're talking about. The only way you can leverage all that information technology is when the whole lot works together. I will be asking our own organization to take command and control very seriously, as a force-multiplier option for ships the Navy has and for the airplanes the Air Force gets.
The notion of command and control is not just simply about antiair warfare. It's about all kinds of engagements. You are trying to get to plug and play where the proverbial sensor grids, communication grids, weapon grids, and all those kinds of things really do come about. I don't think the theory is all that bad. The computing power these days is just astronomical, when you consider what it was just a few years ago. The communications bandwidth is almost there. The trick now is to bring it all together in a way that works. I don't think even for navies the size of the Australian Navy we should shy away from wanting to have that kind of capability.
Proceedings: How is your Navy doing in the recruiting and the retaining of sailors and officers?
Shackleton: What we have seen is that the recruiting outcomes for sailors have gone from 54% to 96%. That trend is staying steady. We see it staying like that at least until the first quarter of next year. I've had almost a 40% increase in recruiting. I've seen a slight reduction in the departure rate of people at the top after a period of time. So what I've seen the Navy do, in the last six months, is start to grow again.
A number of things contribute to the change. One, we've been working very hard on quality of leadership, and insisting that leadership be good at every level. I think we're starting to see that pay off. We've put a lot of effort ourselves into determining our own future when it comes to people issues by being direct in terms of saying what we want and going out and getting it. I think people are also seeing, through the kinds of advertising that we are doing now in our recruiting, that it relates more to what they say they want from their lives.
Young people today are about teamwork, sharing, service, being rewarded, feeling worthy. They respond to terms like honor, courage, loyalty, and integrity in ways that perhaps a few years ago we might not have wanted to talk about. When I talk to large groups of sailors, which I do, I say it's okay to say that you feel patriotic about your country, it's okay to stand up and say, "I care." You can see them sitting up in their chairs and saying, "That guy's talking to me."
It is not okay to behave in the way that we might have done in the bad old days. My reputation is your reputation; it's our reputation. So you've got to think about this being your Navy, it's our Navy; it's trying to give people in the Navy a real sense of ownership.
I have not thrown out the idea that I could multicrew ships in the same way that the civilian merchant ships do it. I wouldn't do six months on/six months off. But you could do, for instance, four months on/four months off.
I believe that we should be prepared to look at other models. We could say, "I'm going to let you live anywhere you want in this country. You don't have to live where your ship lives. I'll fly you to and from. When you're at home, I'll have you on the Internet. I'll get you the right level of security so I can keep you up to a level of computer-based training and the like while you're at home. You can interact with your ship via the communications system. In the last month, I'll put you back through some work-up training, so you come together as a team. Then I'll put you on an airplane and I'll fly you to wherever that ship is."
In one hit, I've broken the nexus that is the most terrible for our people, which is uncertainty about where you're going to be in six-months' time. When I talk to my sailors about this, they say, "That's not bad." There are some people who say, "Well, what about loyalty to the ship?" And that's true, there's no doubt. But you could sustain that by having teams. I'm not pretending that I've thought this all the way through.
Proceedings: We try to end every interview by giving you the opportunity to address an issue that we may have missed.
Shackleton: Nobody cares more about a navy than the Chief of the Navy does or the CNO. No matter how we change our organization, the thing I've learned is don't give up. You really have to be the champion and be prepared to go, not just the extra mile, but as far as it takes.