Prime Minister Scott Morrison appears to be suffering from the neurological condition visual agnosia – the inability to recognise certain objects for what they are. It is a condition popularised the neurologist, Oliver Sacks, is his book on the condition, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales.
How else to explain his pronouncement, as though from the Book of Revelation, when sitting in the cockpit of an RAAF F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, that “this is what sovereignty looks like”. Sovereignty was not, as previously understood by those who had inquired into this highly contested concept in political theory, the ultimate overseer, or authority, in the decision-making process of the state and in the maintenance of order.
No! It was, in the Prime Minister’s new dispensation, reduced to Australia possessing at least 70 of the advanced military aircraft he was sitting in. Sovereignty, in his mind, is objectified and anchored in the sacred object that is the F-35.
More precisely, the object of Morrison’s conviction is the most expensive weapons system ever acquired by the United States and, as with such acquisitions, an almost invariable rule was affirmed: it was delivered late, over budget, under-performing, and with a legacy of as yet unresolved issues. Indeed, it’s tempting to view the F-35 as a constellating force: around it just about everything that has historically beset the military procurement system of the US is in full view, as well as those of a more recent vintage that occur as quick as one of them is addressed.
In design, this was close to inevitable because of the “Joint” descriptor: it was an attempt to satisfy the requirements of the US Air Force, the US Navy (two versions) and the US Marine Corps. Notwithstanding that all aircraft incorporate compromises, the proliferation of end-use operators exacerbated problems at every turn.
To make the general point with just two recent examples. First, the Prime Minister’s very public episode of visual agnosia on 8 February was preceded only three weeks earlier by the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Testing reports that the F-35 remains marred by 871 software and hardware deficiencies – a reduction of just two from the previous year – that could undercut readiness, missions or maintenance, according to the Pentagon’s testing office.
Many dated to before 2018. None, users are reassured, is alleged to prejudice flight safety, or to detract significantly from the aircraft’s lethality, despite the fact that the gun has been identified as having “unacceptable” accuracy and its mountings subject to cracking.
Second, two days later the US Air Force F-35 jet team that performs at air shows around the world announced that it was scaling back appearances in 2021 as a consequence of a growing shortage of engines that are taking longer to maintain. This was a consequence of, inter alia, a worsening service-wide shortage of engines in general and previously unreported shortcomings with engine blade coatings in particular.
The problems leading in to this situation are described as “myriad”, their extent out to 2022 projected to remove at least five per cent of the USAF’s F-35s from readiness, and quite possibly as many as 20 per cent by 2025 unless drastic action is undertaken.
Though these developments provide a serious reproach to Morrison’s perspective on sovereignty through technophilia, they do not, however, throw it into the category of the absurd, bizarre and ridiculous until an understanding is acquired of the US’s own issues with sovereignty. In a word, its situation may be described as a travesty of the concept.
The pandemic has illustrated this to a marked extent but what is not appreciated is that in all core aspects of its Grand Strategy, the US is sovereignty-bankrupt. The following is an injuriously brief summary of the voluminous literature – most of it found in government reports and peer-reviewed papers – on the country’s defence acquisition arrangements.
Although the US considers itself a capitalist market economy, in matters of defence acquisition, it operates as an oligopoly when it is not explicitly a monopoly. Worse, the relationship between industry and government is best described as adversarial; often times it is a case of the latter extorting from the former.
The framing process is straightforward. Contractors tend to underbid in the reasonable certainty that subsequent cost increases will eventually fall their way. The longer the contract has been under way, the greater the certainty.
Principal contractors then disperse the manufacturing processes to as many states in the Union that can satisfy demand. As employment is generated so, too, is the local economy dependent on the program – a pressure that incumbent Congressional representatives understand innately. It’s a corruption of rational acquisition, but it’s a normalised, routinised corruption, and regarded as acceptable in a country politically dominated by corporations.
Faults in the weapon being acquired undergo a series of standard reactions: the operator (in this case the USAF) reports it as a result of operational testing. In most cases the contractors denies the fault exists or, rather, it exists only in the mind of the operator. After negotiation, the fault is frequently accepted as real, but the contractors deny all responsibility. It is, rather, the result of interventions by the operator that were not specified in the contract. Accordingly, the contractors announce the fault will either not be fixed or fixed only after further payments from the Pentagon. For the contractors this constitutes a virtuous circle.
The process, moreover, is a “natural” consequence of the increasingly complicated weapons system which the US (and Australia) buys: they are sustained by increasingly complicated support programs, provided by way of long-term contracts that are so highly profitable that, under the cover of intellectual property rights, they militate against systems that can be maintained by uniformed service personnel.
Australia is inescapably infected by this system, the configurations of which (some criminal) have been known for decades. To act in ignorance of it, or even to act despite it, requires a defence of the indefensible.
For now, two questions. First (assuming the RAAF have acquired the full suite of the F-35’s Distributed Aperture System): is it essential to mission effectiveness for the pilot to be wearing a A$835,000 helmet in an aeroplane that runs to an hourly operating cost of A$56,000? Second, is it still the case, as the Australian National Audit Office reported 14 months ago, that Defence does not know the costs of maintaining the F-35?
Perhaps these are second order questions. The crucial issues relate to why the sovereignty of Australia in general, and the RAAF in particular, is hostage to a foreign power in decline, and which itself is explicitly and chronically hostage to the contractors that manufacture its weapons systems.
That said, it must be said that strategic analysis inadequately explains and conveys the nature of Scott Morrison’s mystical adoration of a deeply flawed piece of technology. What is needed are composers such as Michael Nyman, and script writers of the order of Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn.
Michael McKinley is a member of the Emeritus Faculty, the Australian National University; he taught Strategy, Diplomacy and International Conflict at the University of Western Australia and the ANU.
Comments
16 responses to “For the Prime Minister, sovereignty is reduced to possessing 70 fighter jets”
Do we have any feedback from the pilots, Michael? I gather they loved the F111 aircraft that gave long service. The limited range of the new fighter is surely a problem. As a layman it seemed to me that the design right from the start was trying to make one aircraft do the job of two and it just doesn’t work.
Hey, don’t forget Howard’s taxpayer bucks devoted to the very useful Abrams tanks, 2004!.
https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1062969.htm
vide Robert Manne’s long article on Johnnie, ‘Little America’, The Monthly, March 2006.
I haven’t forgotten, farthington – that expensive and unnecessary purchase didn;t quite fit into the theme of the F-35 I was focusing on. I made quite a few critical noises about it at the time – few of which were appreciated – and then the whole issue slipped from the media’s gaze despite the fact that there was an underlying story worthy of several exposure articles. Thanks for bring it back to our attention as a precedent.
Sir, Scott Morrison has no sovereignty to talk about because we have already sold it to the Americans. Even the F-35s that we have bought from them will have to be operated under the dictates and management of the Americans. That 70 F-35s that we bought at an exorbitant cost, one that we can hardly afford, has little defence efficacy against the might of the Chinese military. It only serves to help support the arms industry of the US. We also willingly compromised our trade for the geopolitics of the Americans.
Until recently, we were enjoying a healthy political and trade relationship with the powers in our region. Then the Americans sold our LNP government the idea that China has territorial ambitions in the region, if not an effect of a hegemonic nature on the region. They have applied to China a similar motivation displayed by Western colonial powers of the past and present, articulated in the following statement:
“… the concern is that Beijing’s growing economic and military prowess could allow it to reshape the world in its image” (Alex Ward, 2019).”
It is inevitable that China with its close trade relationship with countries in the region would have an influence on them; but to say that it can reshape the world in its image is a figment of the US’s and Japan’s imagination. For all the wars that the US had fought around the world since WWII, I can’t find any country that has reshaped itself in the image of the Americans. Even Japan remains Japanese after 3/4 of a century of taking directions from the US. China helped Vietnam in its fight against the US in the Vietnam War. Can anyone really say that China has shaped Vietnam in it’s image? For too long, the US and its allies have treated the lesser (smaller and less powerful) nations in the rest of the world as if they are cognitively deficient, susceptible to the influence of the big powers. What they fail to recognise is that many of these countries think independently. The tragedy is that often when independent thinking is displayed that is not in accord with the liking of the US, they are subverted first by the CIA; and if that failed, by military action.
Where does Australia see itself?
Many thanks Teow Loon Ti for your very thoughtful and comprehensive comment. The direction that it’s all going in is frightening – and you’ve captured that. The question is: how do we stop it before it gets totally out of hand (presuming it isn;t already).
Sir, thanks for the kind words. I have thought about Australia’s trade and geopolitical problems with China. I feel that it all comes down to the leaders. We need leaders that are adroit enough in the multitasking of keeping a good trading relationship with China, being unapologetic about our alliances and minimising cultural misunderstandings. Such adroitness require skills and wisdom that the current leaders do not have. They are not self aware and, as such, do not even attempt to seek help from others in the region that have managed their relationship with China very well.
Agree with everything you wrote mate. But just one point. If ever there was a country re-shaped by US invasion and genocide, it was the Philippines. Its Asian colony. The heart breaking reality speaks volumes for Western values in Asia. The Americans made it into a brothel and slaughter house. From which it is only now emerging.
Paul, I lived in the Philippines for about a year on a research fellowship in 1977. I understand what you mean. The Filippinos adulated the Americans then (perhaps they still do). They were a very conservative Christian nation and with Spanish and American colonisation in succession, they lost most of their original culture (Islam was retained in the South). They developed a deeply Catholic culture centred around their cathedrals, priests and their patron saints. Beyond religion I noticed a cultural vacuum which they filled with bits of Spanish culture (remnants of a historical past) and a semblance of American culture that was understandably picked up from the education system put in place by the Americans. This is quite unlike Indonesia and Malaysia that held on to Islam. In the case of Singapore, Chinese culture (mainstream) which, with its deep roots in language, Confucianism, ancestral traditions and its continuous ties with China through trade, was not easily replaced.
The worst effect of the Catholic Church has been the exploding population growth in the Philippines. As a consequence the Philippines is the only SE Asian country to import rice. President Duterte is the first President to take on the US empire and the Catholic Church. One of his first acts as President was to introduce and implement a contraceptive program. For which the Church has waged a phony and losing “human rights” campaign. The ABC and the SMH hacks describe Duterte as a mass murderer. The Philippines was the first country to experience a “color revolution” and was used as a “lily pad” US military base experiment. Duterte has successfully tilted the country towards PRC despite threats of military coups, church failed demonstrations and the use of Uighur terrorists from Syria to kill peaceful Muslims in Mindanao. His popularity is about 90%.
Thanks once more time, Skilts. After reading Karnow’s book on the US fashioning of the Philippines I spent more time on research and came to the same conclusion as you have. Why would any self-respecting nation-state want to follow that devastating example?
Michael i cant believe you bother to reply to my comments. Thank you. Have read you admiringly for some years.
Skilts – thanks, many thanks. Those of us who care enough to comment are part of a conversation which keeps alive the many hopes we have for a better, saner, and – yes – gentler world. Please, keep commenting because sometimes the conversation is all we have.
Not since Italo Balbo Maresciallo dell’Aria of Mussolini have we seen such near orgasmic excitement from a politician sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft. The fascists just loved planes and terror bombing. Balbo came to just end. Brought down by misdirected Italian anti-aircraft fire at Tobruk.
You’re right again, Skilts: politicians who qualify as military tragics when given the opportunity are pathetic and dangerous.
The crucial issues relate to why the sovereignty of Australia in general, and the RAAF in particular, is hostage to a foreign power in decline, and which itself is explicitly and chronically hostage to the contractors that manufacture its weapons systems.
I say that was a nail on the head moment!
👍