7RAR and 1 Armd Regt may be disbanded
Former Australian Army Major General Fergus McLachlan has tweeted speculation that the 7th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, and the 1st Armoured Regiment may be disbanded in the near future.
FILE PHOTO: A 7RAR soldier in full body armour, light-weight helmet and “soldier carriage ensemble (minus pack)” at Cultana Training Area, South Australia. Photo by Brian Hartigan.
Other rumours suggest that both formations may be absorbed into others, because recruiting issues have left many formations ‘hollow’.
For example, 7RAR may be re-linked to 5RAR, to re-form 5/7RAR in Darwin – and 1 Armd Regt could be absorbed into the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Townsville.
“Speculation around veteran circles suggest 7RAR is to be closed down as part of the Army response to the DSR [Defence Strategic Review],” Major-General (read) McLachlan said.
“I don’t think this will be the biggest story in Canberra today but it seems 7RAR and 1 Armd will be effectively disbanded.
“In a very small Army with a handful of battalions I hope these rumours are not true.
“Perhaps a few less headquarters first?”
In response, Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute Michael Shoebridge suggested the top-heavy structure of the ADF was to blame.
“Australia has a small military with a growing top structure,” Mr Shoebridge said.
“The explosion in senior ADF and Defence-civilian positions is eating budgets and resources that are hard to justify.
“And, the increasingly top-heavy organisational structure is making Defence even harder to lead and manage.”
Other, anonymous sources quoted by the ABC blame recruitment difficulties that have left many units undermanned.
Defence Minister Richard Marles is overdue to deliver a statement on Army’s new structure.
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Hey On reading all these comments there is no need to worry Elbow in China now signing up the CCP to take over all our military needs all good
!
1st to leave should be Comd ADF, I can’t say his name because it leaves a very nasty taste in my mouth. I’m sure he’s pushing to be the next GG of Australia that would add insult to injury.
I wouldn’t worry. If any digger is convicted of a war crime, he will be sharing a cell next to them. Doubt The King would sanction a convicted war criminal as his representative. He can hide when it’s just the army doing the investigation, but when it gets to a civilian court he won’t be able to change the rules or shift the blame. He will be held accountable!
Remember the top-heavy Canberra Defence establishment have been sitting on their highly paid, respective, backsides and allowed the Army to get into this parlous state for the last 20 years. The suggestion to reduce the huge number of Canberra based, WOKE, desk warriors and put them back into Operational units has a lot of merit – after all, what exactly have they been doing for the last 20 years if all that they have produced is a recruiting problem.
Retention in any of the services will always be an issue until we integrate life after service as part of the overall defence career. For example, we could offer meaningful incentives to serve. Consider how much greater our dentition would be if after 10 years continual service, the Oz Govt, offered serving members a trade or degree qualification of their choice discounted to 20% of total value. Alternatively, to retain long term, enshrine significant discounted mortage rates for those serving and double the super contribution while serving. Lastly, consider introducing decent housing and education facilities or offer boarding school placement in capital city’s combined with significant pay incentives to relocate to Darwin / Townsville and other hardship locations.
Bottom line, if we don’t motivate individuals to stay in and / or keep families happy we will lose the core of the very capability we are desperate to retain.
Excellent suggestions and incentives.
Time to bring back Nashos
If on centre link then you are in 2years come out with a new look on life
Is it possible someone in the Army or Defence has come up with a plausible (and it has been tested and works) battlefield strategy that doesn’t require reserves, hence why not – “7RAR and 1 Armd Regt may be disbanded”, after all we don’t need reserves that duplicate skills in the military because we will always win first time, we will always only need to apply our skills and resources once in future wars. God help us if we had 10 or 20 or 30 7 RARs, I mean what would they do? – Help in natural disasters without stretching their capabilities to exhaustion levels, provide a real disincentive for potential adversaries to attack Australia. Maybe those who plan and undertake military restructures in Australia should read up on what it takes to defend against, let alone attack a bigger determined enemy. Maybe these planners should read up on the material resources – manpower and hardware that was lost in various battles on the Eastern Front in WWII to get a real feel for what war can come down to, what planning peace time militaries actually means. “I had a dream……………”
I mean, they could actually make uniformed service a viable career.
The Army and RAN are notorious for treating their enlisted folks like garbage- the pay is low, the injuries are lifelong and stories of abuse abound.
Most ‘qualifications’ you earn in training aren’t applicable to or recognised in the civilian world either.
No wonder recruitment and retention are at record lows.
Excellent point
Also, Reported today that 10 Brigade will be raised in Adelaide to deploy the new Missile assets being acquired by the ADF. Guessing it will be raised around 16 AD Regt.
Naming the new formation after the WW1, ‘10th Artillery Brigade’ Is very apt.
If true this effectively nukes Army Objective Force, as the new 9BDE was centred on 1ARMD and 7RAR for the regular component of the BDE (effectively resurrecting a leaner version of the old pre-Beersheba 1BDE(MECH) ).
This would also have interesting implications for the LAND400 Ph3 production of Redback, given it is effectively only enough for an inf Bn withing a mech BDE.
Really Pete the Pieman? Why are you divulging such specific confidential military strategy and strategic information on an open forum?
What’s the point in the taxpayer being slugged to pay the exorbitant military budgets when you are just writing up all the ‘classified’ info online for ANYONE to read ,and make contingency battle plans?
Whatever happened to respect and classified information?
This information is already in the public domain, it’s not ‘news’ to anyone really … a few minutes on Youtube will show several videos discussing this very subject and possible deployment scenarios for our newly acquired assets that are several months old already.
No doubt China gave the orders.
Rus T.
Leftist Government policy. Cut the Defence Forces and then proceed to spend up big on all the woke agenda, Canberra Defence fat cats and anyone with a leftist agenda.
How can this happen in a climate where the rise and rise of the CCP military and their continuous threatening, belligerent actions are taking place at us and our neighbours?
To those who voted Labor this is your mess.
Well we can’t be recruiting those nasty straight white men, what will the “equity” people think?
Is the woke agenda in the room with us right now Frank?
The best thing about a Labor government is watching people like you get so worked up about these things.
Concur, the leftie Labor, Green and Teal losers in charge will destroy this country in the next two years. Pudding has been proven so far since Albosleezy and his misfits got in. 30% off the public supported this idiot on the promises being lies he threw at us so far.
Serves you right you leftist woke wankers!
Yes frank Correct
Labor policy. Cut the Defence Forces and then proceed to spend up big on all the woke agenda, Canberra Defence fat cats and anyone with a leftist agenda.
How can this happen in a climate where the rise and rise of the CCP military and their continuous threatening, belligerent actions are taking place at us and our neighbours?
To those who voted Labor this is your mess.
Labor at its very “Best”. Cut the Defence Forces and then proceed to spend up big on all the woke agenda, Canberra Defence fat cats and anyone with a leftist agenda.
How can this happen in a climate where the rise and rise of the CCP military and their continuous threatening, belligerent actions are taking place at us and our neighbours?
To those who voted Labor this is your mess.
Labor at its very “Best”. Just like its always done..,, cut the Defence Forces and proceed to spend up big on all the woke agenda, Canberra Defence fat cats and anyone with a leftist agenda.
How can this happen in a climate where the rise and rise of the CCP military and their continuous threatening, belligerent actions are taking place at us and our neighbours?
To those who voted Labor this is your mess.
Labor at its very “Best”. Just like its always done..,, cut the Defence Forces and proceed to spend up big on all the woke agenda, Canberra Defence fat cats and anyone with a leftist agenda. How can this happen in a climate where the rise and rise of the CCP military and their continuous threatening, belligerent actions are taking place at us and all around us.
Labor at its very “Best”. Just like its always done..,, cut the Defence Forces and proceed to spend up big on all the woke agenda, Canberra Defence fat cats and anyone with a leftist agenda. How can this happen in a climate where the rise and rise of the CCP military and their continuous threatening, belligerent actions are taking place at us and all around us. To those who voted labor this is your mess.
Are you okay Frank?
he,s fine he is making a good point keep it up Frank your spot on mate
Frank is right, Labor governments consider Defence is full of majority conservative voters, so cut defence spending and throw the extra “taxpayers money” in swing electorates and in other places which might buy them votes and get them re-elected. In the meantime create a diversion, in this case “The Voice”. Who cares about the safety of the country? Our main job is to get re-elected, we are politicians.
Labour can’t manage defense and can’t be trusted. The army every time get cut in money compared to the other two services
Probably because the Army is a joke of a career and people are increasingly wise to it.
Or the country is full of blow-in immigrants who wouldn’t defend it and would sooner flee to whatever economic greener pastures at any slight trouble or pledge allegiance to their respective mother lands
This is exactly what happened in the 70s and 80s . What a joke . Our entire Defence Force wouldn’t last a week on a modern battlefield. I feel for the soldiers , kicked in the guts again .
And who was in power for the last 5 years.plus?
The old story, “Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians”.
Imagine if they gave a War and nobody came?
Neutrality for Australia.
Peace.
We need national service program that has full time guaranteed federal government enlistment programs that will ensure direct civilian recognition of training along with bringing back the twenty year service pension. Bonuses should reflect the highest demand for people ready and eligible for enlisting for those select occupations. Politicians for far too long since 1970’s 1980’s cut military programs and service members units who are are bureaucratic fools having never served nor appreciated the absolute necessity to have these units of military service people. With China on the rise in the Pacific and in The Solomon Islands; We need a national service program fully ready and equipped to meet emergency requirements. Our military Commanders need support now more than ever. Money from lottery commissions could be used to help fund enlistment programs and getting replacement pilots and aircrews for our services. It is imperative to act now as China is gaining strength in The Pacific Ocean and these programs could help cut unemployment. Also civilian defence programs to hire eligible civilian workers to support defence in a career that gives them a goid career and a support in an important role of the nation’s national security.
These are really constructive suggestions Joseph.
You should take this to Q &A so more of the Australian population actually understand how dire our defence resourcing situation is.
People in the streets have no idea.
Gang warfare gets more coverage on the nightly news and the police force are probably fighting a harder war on a daily basis with even less resources than soldiers practicing in training.
Be the’ voice’ for us.
Wow, very interesting. Well, with the cessation of hostilities in the conflict zones recruitment over the three forces has well and truly been in decline. Yes, Australia has a small military and very professional at that. But as far as I’m concerned there are way to many fatcat bureaucrats in Canberra twiddling their fingers doing absolutely bugger all, when they should be at grass roots level units earning their keep.
If the amalgamation of units is required in the future to consolidate resources then so be it, but it’s far better than disbanding units.
We need out defence force to be battlefield ready whether it be small or large and we definitely need all our units to be at full strength.
The same thing happened during WW1, we had far to many battalions that were well and truly under strength towards the end of the war due to dwindling men joining up.
Three divisions would have been sufficient instead of the five.
A review of Red Cap numbers as a proportion of unit requirements as well as civilian counterparts hiding behind desks in Canberra is called for.
Mean and lean should be a top down process.
I guarantee the squeals from Canberra would be very loud.
Agreed – but it needs to be from the very top down – even if this proves to be untrue, this has fast become an unenviable position for the Australian people to have to accept, that is, our sovereignty is verging on something far worse than just embarrassment, should we be tested by ‘now adversaries’ with seemingly very similar views to our nation’s not 35 year ago.
Makes one lament on how much longer this will be allowed to continue – I suspect our adversaries are watching the West commit suicide with their own woke nooses and nonsense…We were once, arguably, the luckiest country in the word. I’m less sure about our potential divided future – and I thought bloody Whitlam was bad…
Because young people today now realise that a uniformed defence career isn’t worth it.
The pay is garbage, the impact of injuries and abuse is lifelong. You don’t even get proper useful qualifications while you’re in.
You do know the difference between ‘red-tab’ and ‘red cap’, don’t you?
Just asking, as otherwise you sound very profound. Not.
Yeah, those pesky defence civilians hiding behind their desks, making the APS6 mega bucks (sarcasm).
We don’t need engineers and analysts right?
Just more pongos in cammies doing nothing but endless pointless exercises while being treated like rubbish.
Retention is at an all time low because the secret is out: Uniformed life is not worth it.
Definitely agree.
Green machine!!