One reason for the predominance of civilians in the screening of Service bids for expenditure commitments lay, in my opinion, in the failure of the Services to prepare officers for this kind of objective analysis and to retain them in the job with the experience they gained. While in some heated controversies aggrieved Services dubbed civilian investigations to be ‘paralysis by analysis’, the civilians counter-charged the Services as being too submissive to shiny brochures of the arms manufacturers with their lobbyists in Canberra, and to the attractions of ever-advancing technology with insufficient weight given to cost-benefit. There were doubtless exaggerations on both sides. The civilians strengthened their claim to objectivity by the use of defence scientists, some of whom I transferred into systems analysis. All three Services had specialist engineers to support their bids along with operational experience which, however, did not necessarily equate with analytical ability. Their project officers could not remain long in the job because of the Service practice of job rotation.
To my mind an even more fundamental obstacle to those in uniform becoming perceptive and objective analysts lay in the educational standards accepted by the Services. Their personnel policies (described in Chapter 2) compounded the difficulty. Officers measuring up to the demanding tests of professional knowledge and leadership in the field were expected to become analysts understanding policies in procurement laid down by the Government. I believe that reforms in the educational system for officers have gradually changed this picture. These observations are not hindsight. Frequently, in lectures to senior officers, I personalised the matter by describing the capabilities they needed to acquire if they wanted to reduce the influence of officials like me.
The depth of education (so often confused with Service training) seemed to vary from one Service to another. The Army, perhaps because they were not tied so much as others to managing high technology (in short, modern warships and aeroplanes, and their sensors and weapons systems), seemed to produce officers who had spent more time in forms of a broader education.
These personnel practices in the Services, perhaps particularly how officers were selected for higher rank, deserved more attention from Ministers than they received. When invited after my retirement to address an Australian Defence Force Academy seminar on officer education I said
Personnel management will be supremely important. When we supplement professional training … with expensive tertiary education. … Governments will want to be satisfied with Service management. I have to say that there is no aspect of Service administration so firmly removed from external scrutiny and public discussion. This reclusiveness should be dissipated. I watched with concern the tendency (of one Service) to blow out its brains through age retirement and wonder at the personnel policy that permits this.[12]
[12] The source of this quotation has not been located. It does not appear in the text of Tange’s talk on ‘The Education of Officers for Government Administration’ to a meeting of the Australian Study Group of Armed Forces and Society in May 1980, as reproduced in Sir Arthur Tange, Defence Policy Administration and Organisation: Selected Lectures 1971–1986, a collection of lectures printed in 1992.