From The Source: Errol McCormack, Chair of the Williams Foundation | ADM Oct 2010
While the Williams Foundation may be known as an air power think tank, the board is looking to expand the areas it covers in papers, workshops and seminars.
ADM Editor Katherine Ziesing recently spoke to chair Air Marshal (Rtd) Errol McCormack AO about the role of the foundation and his view on a range of aviation issues.
Katherine Ziesing | Canberra
Profile - Errol McCormack
1957 Apprenticed Fitter, Bundaberg Foundry
1962 Joined RAAF as Direct Entry Pilot
1972 Completed Junior Officer tours in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and US
1988 Completed Command and Staff tours with No. 1 SQN, No 82 Wing, Air Force HQ and Operational Command
1998 Completed tours as Force Development Air, Air Attaché Washington, Commander Integrated Air Defence System Malaysia/Singapore and Deputy Chief Air Force
1998 Chief Air Force
2001 Retired from Air Force
2010 Member of several boards and consultant to several multi-national companies
ADM: Is the Williams Foundation intending to expand its remit beyond traditional air power issues?
McCormack: Yes.
I find it very difficult to actually support an air-only policy; it’s got to be in the context of a broader base, so unless you have a broader base you can’t really have a cogent airpower policy as well.
As stated in our Charter we plan “to promote the development and effective implementation of national security and defence policies as they impact on our ability to generate airpower”.
It would be folly to try to develop an air-centric approach to defence policy without taking into account wider defence issues.
Along this line we have developed a paper called “A defence strategy for the 21st century; control and protect” which we are about to distribute widely in the political and defence communities with the intention of broadening discussion on defence issues and hopefully influencing decision makers into considering a different approach to defence.
ADM: Do you believe there’s enough independent analysis into the strategy and finances in Defence?
McCormack: Short answer: no.
I don’t believe there can be too much informed analysis of Defence in the open press.
For example, I believe ASPI does a great service for Australia in their analysis of Defence finances with the Budget.
Because of the nature of the beast, Defence tends to like keeping ‘secrets’; that tends to be the default position.
Without breaching security, we should all try to educate the wider community on defence issues.
ADM: What role do you see think tanks like the Williams Foundation, ASPI and the Kokoda Foundation playing in the broader defence landscape?
McCormack: As you know defence is a very complex national issue and I don’t believe any single body, either government or non-government, has all the answers.
I don’t believe there is any feeling in the Board that we are out to compete with the other organisations you mentioned.
One important function that I believe the organisations you mentioned try to fulfil is education of the public on a range of complex defence issues.
The Williams Foundation has taken a think-tank approach so that we can counteract a lot of the uninformed comment that’s going out there on various issues.
We felt that there was very little informed comment on air issues.
But we had a lot of people talking about facts and aeroplanes but not in the context of the broader issues involved with defence.
For example, there was never an alternative, once the F-22 was cancelled, to the F-35 except Russian aeroplanes.
So were they expecting Australia to buy Russian?
The cultural issues, the basic support issues, the alliance issues were never discussed so we needed to actually approach it from the broader ‘what’s available, what can we afford, where does it fit in?’ and so I think that’s the basic reason behind our support of the F-35.
ADM: The Williams Foundation has been a firm supporter of the F-35 program from the outset.
How have you reconciled this support with the turmoil the program has seen in the last 12 months in terms of cost and schedule?
McCormack: Maybe I’ve been around too long but I was involved very closely with the “controversial F-111” program way back in the ’60s and it turned out to be one of the best decisions government has made, even though it was bought as a paper aeroplane and all the sort of things that were going on about the F-35 went on about the F-111 at the time: waste of money, etc, etc, etc...
I think one of the issues is that a lot of people seem to think that you buy an aeroplane like you would a car: pick a model and buy one.
If you want to get leading technology you can’t do that.
As far as the F-35 is concerned the trends are heading in the right direction.
I understand the Lockheed Martin contract for LRIP4 is well below the figures that were used to knock the project, so costs are trending in the right direction.
The Israelis are, I believe, about to sign up for aircraft.
The fact that they have probably the most operational air force in the world gives an indication that their information, obviously classified coming from the States, leads them to believe it is the aeroplane they need to have in the future.
So I think on both costing and capability, the trend’s in the right direction.
ADM: For the first time in its history the RAAF is looking at operating a single-type air force built around the F-35.
It won’t be unique in a global sense but what do you think are the risks with operating the single type across various roles, and what are the rewards?
McCormack: The reward is obviously lower cost.
A single aircraft type is undoubtedly less expensive to maintain than two aircraft types.
On the other hand, it does give us the possibility of a single point of failure.
However, since I joined the RAAF we have not had two types of fighter except for three years in the early ’70s when the Air Force had both F4 and Mirage aircraft.
Incidentally, the F4, the bomber, had a greater air-to-air capability than the Mirage, the fighter.
For the rest of the time we had Sabre and Canberra, Mirage and F-111 and Hornet and F-111.
With its extremely high wing loading for high-speed low-level operations and a very rudimentary potential air-to-air capability there is no way the F-111 could be considered an effective operational capability against even the most benign regional fighter aircraft.
For years my knuckle-head (fighter pilot) mates reminded me that the hubcaps on the F-111C were marked FB for Bomber!
The benefits of having a multi-role aircraft is that you can swing all the fleet to fighter or bomber, depending on what the operation is, and in fact in Iraq for example, the fighter part of the fight only took a very short time, the rest of it was bomber but we could use the same aircraft.
Whereas the Mirage, for example, had very little air-to-ground capability, so it was only the F-111 that was available.
ADM: The debate over the new naval aviation helicopter has been raging for some months now.
Has the Williams Foundation taken a position on that?
McCormack: Not really.
Our aim is to broaden debate on all aspects of air for the defence of Australia and it was only when some parts of the media started pushing the ‘common airframe is the way to go’ line that we put together a paper that virtually said while that could be important there are other more important commonality issues like radios, connectivity, supportability that could be either equal to or more important than having a common airframe.
We don’t have enough classified information to be able to make a recommendation.
We were just trying to point out that there were other issues involved.
The proponent of the common airframe solution wanted us to publish a blog based on our paper.
But we don’t want to edit the blogosphere but said if you give us a standalone paper with your points in it we’ll publish it.
I’m still waiting for that paper.
So no, we have not entered the fray on one side or the other; we’re just trying to point out some fallacies in the first stage of the debate.
ADM: The US and UK have been forced to re-examine their spending priorities, including aircraft carriers and the F-22A Raptor, due to the demands of the counter-insurgency (COIN) campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq and subsequent budgetary constraints.
How should Australia reconcile high-end air warfare capabilities with the demands of low-intensity counter-insurgency operations that we’re currently engaged in?
McCormack: A good question.
In fact that’s worth a paper of itself and I think Williams will be putting out a paper in the not-too-distant future about that issue.
First, I have always understood that one has to examine two elements of national security when considering force structure: likelihood and effect.
How likely is the conflict and what effect would it have on national security if the strategy failed?
A force structured for COIN would most likely fail if confronted by a direct threat to national security.
However, a force structured for high-end operations with minimal variations for COIN should be able to handle either level of conflict.
Second, a force that neglects high-end operational training may never regain the high-end skills within any reasonable warning time.
High-end skills such as anti-submarine warfare (ASW), night SAS insertions, air-to-air tactics are easily degraded and difficult to regain once lost.
Third, there is a growing consensus that the concept of military COIN operations is based on a false premise.
I could stand corrected but I believe the Malayan Emergency was the only successful counter-insurgency operation and from the start it was treated as a political problem with military in support.
To put it crudely, how can the local population be convinced the ‘invaders’ are friendly when they build a school one month and blow it up the next.
And finally, to quote Friedman in his The Next 100 Years, “At a certain level when it comes to the future, the only thing one can be sure of is that commonsense will be wrong.
“Conventional political analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination.
“It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term shifts taking place in full view of the world”.
I believe Friedman to be correct.
It will be at least 30 years before we stumble into another Vietnam or Afghanistan.
On the other hand more serious threats to Australia’s sovereignty will probably arise over the same period.
So on that basis we should force-structure for the worst-case scenario; it will cost us a little bit more but we can then modify that force at the edges to conduct COIN operations as directed by Government.
If you think about UN operations, for example, which a lot of this stuff is, the UN tends to be a ‘come as you are’ situation.
‘What can you provide Australia?
‘What can Australia provide towards an operation in X?’
And the government says ‘Well we can do this or this, anything from hospitals through to a battalion’, and so you take that from the force in being.
So to structure specifically for that, which is what some nations did for many years and got themselves into all sorts of trouble when they went off to fight a war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They had a lot of casualties initially because they’d forgotten how to do anything other than UN-type operations.
They paid a big price for it.
If we neglect high-end operational training we may never regain it in a reasonable time.
What a lot of people don’t realise is that top-end capabilities are very fragile.
You need to have a structure and a training system in place to get your people up to that level.
ADM: Given the very different levels of demand for the RAAF’s air combat, surveillance and response and air lift capabilities, do you think we have the right mix of fighters, airlifters and patrol aircraft?
McCormack: That’s the $64,000 question.
I think I would start at one level above that and say a big question for Defence is the differentiation of funding to acquisition, operations and personnel, and that is very critical because if we put too much money into today’s operation we end up with obsolete equipment in the future or we can’t afford to pay the people in the very competitive marketplace for people.
And so the balance between those three is critical to the future of the Defence Force.
As an example, I went into Vietnam with an aircraft that had been ‘operational’ for 10 years and in the first few months of operations we had bombs that fell off when they shouldn’t have, we had bombs that didn’t fall off when they should have, we had bombs that fell off in the bomb bay.
If you were very coordinated in flying the loose bomb didn’t roll around too much until you opened the bomb bay doors, but that was an example of not training the way you’re going to fight.
So by not using the system the way it should have been used, at least occasionally to make sure it worked, it didn’t work when we needed it to and we had to get a lot of work done on those issues and different techniques: how to load the bombs and all those sort of things in operations, which is not the right time operationally.
A bunch of aeroplanes sitting on a ramp is not an operational force; it is the tip of the iceberg on what it takes to make an operational force.
Unless you have enough of a ground crew, air crew, intelligence support structures to support those aeroplanes, then they’re useless.
And to get people at the right supervisory level to supervise flying operations, to supervise the maintenance, to supervise all the bits and pieces, the supply, you don’t have a capability and to generate a capability is what we should all be about.
Now there were some proponents that were saying we only need 50 F-35s.
Well some countries only have a couple of aeroplanes but they don’t have a capability.
You should be able to think of the ADF as a giant training organisation because that’s what it’s about.
It’s very difficult to laterally recruit people into most military positions.
They’ve got to come in somewhere near the bottom and be trained up the ladder.
There aren’t too many civilian organisations that have fighter pilots flowing out their ears.
There are some organisations of ex-fighter pilots that do training but they’re usually older people and you don’t need them, you need the 18-25 year olds coming in, learning their trade and then either going off to civilian roles or becoming supervisors.
And the same happens with the ground crew; there’s not too many places where you learn how to load bombs and handle explosives and all the sort of stuff that you need to have an operational force.
So the pyramids of ground crew, air crew, support, are all critical to the development of an operational force.
Unless you have enough of the pyramid at every level you don’t have a capability.
ADM: On training, the RAAF is shortly to overhaul its flying training system under Project Air 5428.
Given the very different operational and even cockpit environment faced by tomorrow’s pilots, should we be expecting significant changes in way the RAAF trains its pilots?
McCormack: I hope so.
The Williams Foundation ran a seminar in May this year on pilot training and I hope we were of some influence into the Department.
As we explored at the pilot training seminar, if Defence is not careful in framing their requirements for pilot training, the RAAF will be trying to train fifth-generation aircrew on third-generation systems.
A major problem appears to be Defence’s tendency to look at projects as a means of acquiring ‘things’ and not systems and training should be considered a system that includes all elements of the training continuum from recruiting to operational system.
Unless you look at it as a continuum from recruiting through to operations, you get some gaps in the middle and the air force over the years has had lots of little gaps around, you know, the graduates from this place have to wait until they go into the next place or the recruiting people are not bringing in enough of the right people and there are all these gaps on the way through.
I hope that in the not-too-distant future we have a system where it is all flowed through so that we’re not wasting people, we’re not taking ages to tell people they can join so they get switched off and leave.
ADM: The ADF has been contemplating UAVs, and studying UAV technology, in excruciating detail for nearly 20 years – why has it taken so long to actually acquire UAVs?
McCormack: I think your 20 years is a bit short.
As a squadron leader, Operational Requirements Reconnaissance, Air Force office in 1973 I wrote a paper on why we should acquire UAVs for reconnaissance.
I failed; it didn’t make the cut.
So that’s 37 years ago I put up a paper that we should have a UAV, a reconnaissance UAV.
As we know, the ADF does have some leased Heron UAVs operating in Afghanistan.
Where to after that is the question.
I was involved with the Global Hawk trials in Edinburgh back in 2000 and that was a very impressive capability even though it was still very much developmental at the time.
With our size, geography, etc, there’s no doubt that we need to go down that track.
But when the matter was raised just recently, Air Force said that they didn’t have the manpower to have a UAV, which is a bit of an oxymoron in one sense, but it does take a lot of people behind the scenes to support a UAV operation.
And in fact if you read about what’s happening in Afghanistan there is so much information coming in that they don’t have the capacity to actually analyse it all.
I’ve no doubt that we need to get into the reconnaissance UAV business fairly quickly.
There are operational attack type UAVs which are maturing quickly and if commanders are not too worried about collateral damage, they might be the way to go but as for an air-to-air combat vehicle, I’m not sure we’re at that stage yet.
It will eventually get there but I’m not sure we’re there yet and a lot of people are still saying, especially in a time of tension, you need man in the loop.
A lot of UAVs have been shot down because they don’t know anyone’s shooting at them.
I was at an air show a couple of years ago with a civilian company that was looking at reconnaissance UAVs for their operation and one of the first questions was ‘what’s the insurance costs?’, and it turns out that you lose a lot more UAVs than you do manned aircraft so they bought the manned aircraft because of their business case.
I think we need to be in that space.
And in terms of when and how?
When the system is mature enough and we can actually buy more off the shelf as opposed to leading edge.
I think that’s the time to move.
Disclaimer: The author is the newest member of the Williams Foundation Board.