The Command Post today has the story of friction wearing out the Australian Army:
A total of 10,633 injuries, and two deaths, were reported for Australia's 52,000-strong defence force in 2002-03. There were also 889 incidents where ADF personnel needed immediate medical attention, hospitalisation or were off work for more than 30 days. There were also 2307 incidents recorded as "near misses" that "could have but did not result in a fatality, incapacity or serious personal injury".Emphasis added. I want to draw attention to those two points because they are clarifying.
Defence sources have told The Australian that deployments to places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Solomon Islands was only part of the reason for the high attrition rates.
Motorcycle and vehicle accidents, stress disorders over prolonged deployments, injuries playing contact sports and during heavy endurance training had also taken their toll. […] Sources also suggested that the real injury toll may be much higher because soldiers were "stoic", and tended to hide niggling injuries, particularly in special forces units.
The Armed Forces Federation, which represents ADF members, said last night the higher injury toll was a symptom of the force being both "overworked and undermanned". "People are being broken by higher fitness standards and the higher operational tempo generally. And they are just not able to get the rest in between deployments," federation chief industrial officer Graham Howatt said.
You can see at the website for the Ministry of Defence that Australia deploys only about 2,000 troops outside of its borders -- and that includes the East Timor assignment, which is a fairly short cruise by warship. Note that the usual deployment of combatant forces is of roughly battalion size: that is, at the size the US military considers the smallest self-supporting unit. Other deployments are largely symbolic; the Australian commitment to Afghanistan, which has at times been far larger, is currently limited to one soldier: a landmine specialist.
Some of this is just military griping -- "People are being broken by higher fitness standards." But there is a real limitation that they are starting to rub against. Australia can't do more than it is doing -- and it can't maintain current levels of activity in any deployment without cutting back in other areas (as they have done already in Afghanistan), or increasing spending to make some of their 50,000 non-deployable forces into expeditionary forces.
That can be done, if there is the will: the United States went from having almost no army at all, to sending 500,000 men to Europe in the year 1917. There is nothing I've seen coming out of the Australian election, however, to suggest that such a will exists.
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