on a basic level,
i imagine if Army was to deploy to jungles of Asia, then a cadre of light infantry brigade of SMEs might be a good nucleus to generate that capability?
if one needed rapidly mobile capability, they might draw upon a cadre of motorised SMEs, perhaps a motorised Brigade?
if one needed heavy capability, likewise you might seek to expand upon a heavy brigade as the nucleus of that capability.
See, none of that is necessarily correct, nor does it address the real issues of capability.
For starters, everything can deploy everywhere** (for all intents and purpose). The view that jungle = light forces was seriously questioned in 1942-45 and, for us and the US, firmly killed by 1 AR in 1965. If I needed to go fight in jungle today I'd be sure as hell taking M1A2, IFV and SPH. Likewise, any deployment needs sealift, so the time to grab the land force is capped, and it doesn't matter if light, medium or heavy.
This also ignores what next. Sure, grab 3 Bde to fight the heavy role. Who is replacing them? What is the reinforcing/replacement Bde doing? 3 Bde will probably last 6 months at most. Take off a month for transit/HO/TO/theatre gateway 'stuff' and you now have 5 months. Let the mission rehearsal exercise take, say, 6 weeks, add in a week for leave and now you are at just over 3 months. It takes longer than 3 months to train up RAAC, RAA, or RAE OR/JNCO or RAInf JNCO. So your follow on force will actually be worse trained than your initial force... With a like Bde (as we had), you can draw your replacement Bde from people who are already familiar with the other arms. Last year, every RAInf JNCO had worked with tanks at least once within the previous 6 months. Now? They might not even see a tank for their career...
The multirole Bde's (that were
not war fighting Bde) provided that cadre. It's now been significantly weakened.
** the exception would be the significant mountainous areas at high altitude, a'la Indian border ranges. But, (a) the Indians, Chinese and Pakistanis have all deployed armour in this terrain and (b) such terrain requires unique equipment and training that the Australian Army has never had - and would take years to stand up.
the ADF as a whole operates at a far higher tempo than previously,
Questionable. The tempo within some units is very high, but that's mainly driven by HADR taskings which is a questionable use of military assets. There is also some institutional issues within the officer cadre that drives the non-exercise/deployment tempo.
so there will (im sure) be interaction between the other Brigades, they’ll just focus on their own role.
It didn't happen pre-Beersheba, I highly doubt it'll happen now. Like Bde's encourage diversity, specialised Bde's encourage stovepiping. I understand that RAInf and RAA promotion courses could be quite....testy when 1 and 3 Bde people were on - simply because their Corps operated so differently.
on this point having no heavy vehicles in Darwin could be consistent with a deteriorating strategic situation (but that situation is more local and has shifted far to the east of Darwin from East Timor). Until they have their littoral lift how would heavy vehicles in Darwin get anywhere to deploy in a moderate threat situation? The only sovereign option is to Send a LHD or Choules escorted by the RAN surface fleet through the Torres Strait and have it stuck in the Arafura and Timor Seas.
Not necessarily. 1 Bde (or the old 9 Bde) could road and rail to the east coast easily. Having internal communications links offers significant flexibility. And, while I'm venting on this in other places, the DSR map includes Africa and the Indian Ocean. If your argument holds up about 3 Bde - what happens if we need to deploy armour to Africa or the ME?
My guess is that the reorg is partly about signalling. Look at 3 Brigade on a wall map now and it is a mixed role brigade that is in a high state of readiness every three years. Look at 3 Brigade after reorg and it is a mechanised brigade (with colocated attack and medium lift helicopters) that can be brought to readiness in x months. That will be apparent to a US Admiral, to a potential adversary and to regional parties. Bringing 3 Brigade or 7 Brigade to high readiness will be an obvious signal available to government (akin to moving F-111s).
Ah yes, but with a Beersheba Bde I could draw on all three to build a Bde ready to fight now. Unless you want to hold 3 Bde at high levels of readiness (and bye bye retention), you simply can't do that now. Previously I could grab 2 Cav, 1 RAR, 5 RAR, 1 CER, 7 CSR, 1 CSSB and 1 Regt and go. They all could draw on their parent Bde to get up to speed rapidly (so in this case they are drawing on 3x CSSBs and 3x JLUs; now it all falls on 3 CSSB and JLU-NQ).
I don’t think the reorg is a good way to go about sustainment, recruitment, retention and integration with reserves etc or even dealing with potential contingencies necessarily, but I don’t agree that it it means that the threat perceived by govt is low.
I think that's more an actions v words question. I'm yet to see any action that indicates there is a real threat. Lots of words, but no actions. And that's just Defence; there certainly is no actions (I'd argue the opposite in some cases) from DFAT, Treasury, Industry, Science and Resources, etc.
