Strategy and Defence Planning: Meeting the Challenge of Uncertainty explores and examines why and how security communities prepare purposefully for their future defence. The author explains that defence planning is the product of interplay among political process, historical experience, and the logic of strategy. The theory of strategy best reveals both the nature and the working of defence planning. Political 'ends', strategic 'ways', and military 'means' all fed by reigning, if not always recognized, assumptions, organize the subject well with a template that can serve any time, place, and circumstance. The book is designed to help understanding of what can appear to be a forbiddingly complex as well as technical subject. A good part of the problem for officials charged with defence planning duties is expressed in the second part of the book's title. The real difficulty, which rarely is admitted by those tasked with defence planning duty, is that defence planning can only be guesswork. But, because defence preparation is always expensive, not untypically is politically unpopular, yet obviously can be supremely important, claims to knowledge about the truly unknowable persist. In truth, we cannot do defence planning competently, because our ignorance of the future precludes understanding of what our society will be shown by future events to need. The challenge faced by the author was to identify ways in which our problems with the inability to know the future in any detail in advance-the laws of nature, in other words-may best be met and mitigated. Professor Gray argues that our understanding of human nature, of politics, and of strategic history, does allow us to make prudent choices in defence planning that hopefully will prove 'good enough'.

Strategy and Defence Planning: Meeting the Challenge of Uncertainty explores and examines why and how security communities prepare purposefully for their future defence. Professor Gray argues that our understanding of human nature, of politics, and of strategic history, does allow us to make prudent choices in defence planning.

Defence Planning as Strategic Fact provides and elaborates on an "upstream" focus on the variegated organizational, political and conceptual practices of military, civilian administrative and political leaderships involved in defence planning, offering an important security and strategic studies supplement to the traditional "downstream" focus on the use of force. The book enables the reader to engage with the role of ideas in defence planning, of organizational processes and biases, path dependencies and administrative dynamics under the pressures of continuously changing domestic and international constraints. The chapters show how defence planning must be seen as a constitutive element of defence and strategic studies – that it is a strategic fact of its own which merits particular practical and scholarly attention. As defence planning creates the conditions behind every peace upheld or broken and every war won or lost, Defence Planning as Strategic Fact will be of great use to scholars of defence studies, strategic studies, and military studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Defence Studies.

How can countries decide what kind of military forces they need, if threats are uncertain and history is full of strategic surprises? This is a question that is more pertinent than ever, as countries across the Asia-Pacific are faced with the military and economic rise of China. Uncertainty is inherent in defence planning, but different types of uncertainty mean that countries need to approach decisions about military force structure in different ways. This book examines four different basic frameworks for defence planning, and demonstrates how states can make decisions coherently about the structure and posture of their defence forces despite strategic uncertainty. It draws on case studies from the United States, Australian and New Zealand, each of which developed key concepts for their particular circumstances and risk perception in Asia. Success as well as failure in developing coherent defence planning frameworks holds lessons for the United States and other countries as they consider how best to structure their military forces for the uncertain challenges of the future.

Paul Dibb AM has had an extraordinary career. He enjoys an international scholarly reputation of the highest order, while at the same time he has done much distinguished public service. He was a pioneer in moving back and forth between posts in government departments, notably the Department of Defence, and academia. He began as a student of Soviet economic geography, and then spent nearly two decades in Australian Defence intelligence, including service as Head of the National Assessments Staff (NAS) in the Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO) from 1974 to 1978, Deputy Director of JIO in 1978–80, Director of JIO in 1986–88, and Deputy Secretary of Defence (Strategy and Intelligence) in 1988–91, before becoming a Professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC) at The Australian National University (where he is now an Emeritus Professor). He has been quite happy to engage in vigorous public debate about important and controversial strategic and defence issues, giving him a high public profile. The contributors include two former Chancellors of ANU, one a former Minister of Defence, and the other a former Secretary of the Department of Defence, a former Chief of the Defence Force (CDF), and other former senior officials, as well as academic specialists in geography, international relations, and strategic and defence studies. ‘This would be a high-quality set of essays for any edited volume, but for a festschrift – a genre that sometimes generates uneven collections – this is an exceptional assembly. The individual pieces are very good; together, they have coherence and power.’ – Professor Ian Hall, Professor of International Relations, Griffith University

This book examines the processes, practices and principles of defence planning in small and middle powers. Small and middle powers are recalibrating their force postures in this age of disruption. They are adapting their defence planning and military innovation processes to protect the security of their nations. The purpose of this book is to explore defence planning and military innovation in 11 contemporary case studies of small and middle powers in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania. Employing a structured focused comparison framework, it traces patterns in the choices of small and middle powers across the following themes: (1) alliances, dependencies and national ambitions; (2) approaches, processes, methods and techniques; and (3) military innovation strategies and outcomes. Breaking new theoretical ground, it offers a three-pronged typology distinguishing between the strategic defence planner, the transactional defence planners and the complacent defence planner. The book offers a rich array of insights into cases that fall across different geographies, strategic cultures and governance systems. These insights can help guide discussions on how to structure decision-making structures, arrive at ambition levels, formulate priorities, select partners and design defence planning and military innovation processes. This book will be of much interest to students of defence studies, security studies, public policy and international relations, as well as to professionals in defence planning.

The Ministry of Defence does not place sufficient emphasis on financial management in its decision making and the finance function at the MOD does not have as central role in strategic planning as it should have. Annual financial plans at the MOD have been over-committed. By the end of July 2009, the budget for the Department was exceeded by its forecast for the rest of that year by £700 million. When the assumptions underlying the plan for 2010-11 were reassessed, the forecast deficit grew from £185 million to over £500 million. The Department should make choices in setting its budgets and priorities and could use financial management more effectively to address those factors which are within its control. The shortfalls in financial management have significant consequences. The over-commitment in future spending plans has led to additional savings being necessary. During 2009-10, the Department had to find additional savings of £800 million to bring its planned expenditure back into line with its budgets. Finding these reductions mid-year is a time-consuming and destabilising exercise. Many areas have to revisit or adjust their plans leading to delays, material changes to project specifications and costly renegotiation of contracts with industry. Delaying projects also leads to significant increases in the project cost. The forthcoming Strategic Defence and Security Review will provide an opportunity for the Department to rebalance its future spending plans in the short term. Over the longer term, however, the challenge for the MOD will be to ensure that these plans remain in balance.

This report notes mounting concern that UK Armed Forces may be falling below the minimum utility required to deliver the commitments that they are currently being tasked to carry out let alone the tasks they are likely to face between 2015 to 2020 when it is acknowledged that there will be capability gaps. The Committee is concerned that UK Armed Forces will be continually operating at the maximum level envisaged by the Defence Planning Assumptions. The Committee is not convinced that this aspiration can be achieved by co-operation with our allies given the challenges of aligning political with operational needs. The SDSR identified seven military tasks and the Defence Planning Assumptions that underpin them. However the Review fails to show how decisions such as those on the Aircraft Carriers and Nimrod MRA4 will lead to the Armed Forces being able to undertake those military tasks. The Committee has serious concerns over the realisation of what is called "Future Force 2020", the Government's intended shape of the Armed Forces from 2020, particularly as the provision of the necessary resources is only a Government aspiration, not Government policy. The MoD must reform, and ensure substantially improved transparency and control over, its finance and budgetary practices. When committing to undertake new operations the Government should state from the outset where that operation fits in the Defence Planning Assumptions and which of the military tasks it is meeting. The Committee is concerned that the Government seems to have postponed the sensible aspiration of bringing commitments and resources into line, in that it has taken on the new commitment of Libya while reducing the resources available to MoD.

Based on a distinguished 35-year career in the RAF as an Air Commodore, Andrew R. Curtis highlights what is wrong with the way defence is managed today, and presents evidence-based proposals to fix it. Defence is failing to deliver. From the ability of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to develop defence policy, to the single service's - Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force (RAF) - ability to acquire and maintain military capability, and undertake military operations. This is not a new problem; indeed, ever since the creation of the MoD in 1964, there have been tensions between the department of state and the armed forces over allocations of responsibility, authority and accountability. Concerned with political oversight; the allocation of responsibility, authority, and accountability; administration of people; organisational structures; and policies and processes, Curtis compellingly demonstrates the critical need to reform the management of Defence for the UK's armed forces to fight and win in the future.