The September 2023 announcement that the MRH-90 Taipan fleet would not return to flying operations effectively ended a program that had consumed years of funding and management attention without consistently delivering what the force needed.[1] Its difficulties reflected more than sustainment or project management: a deeper mismatch between capability requirements and the desired military effect, making the Taipan a case study in the difference between precision and accuracy. For Army’s operators and capability staff, the question is how to keep the operational aim in view from force design to delivery. This article proposes four tests within Army’s existing responsibilities.
Marksmanship explains the distinction better than management theory. A shooter can produce a tight group and still miss if the point of aim is wrong. Precision is consistency in shot placement. Accuracy is whether the rounds strike the intended point. In acquisition, precision is a disciplined process: compliant tendering, schedule control, certification and contract management. Accuracy is whether that process delivers the operational effect the capability was acquired to produce. A system can be precise without being accurate. It can deliver what was specified while failing to deliver what was needed.
Under AIR 9000, Defence sought to rationalise the ADF’s helicopter fleet through a military-off-the-shelf multi-role helicopter. The Government approved an initial 12 MRH90s in 2004. However, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) found that battlefield helicopter requirements, although well known to Defence, were not translated into adequate functional and performance specifications or followed through tender evaluation and program approval.[2] The ANAO’s 2015 audit also found that no preview test and evaluation of the MRH-90 preceded the acquisition approvals in 2004 and 2006 because the aircraft was still under development.[3]
The operational requirement was not simply to transport troops, but to provide suppressive fire while soldiers boarded or disembarked. The ANAO noted that the Black Hawk’s window-mounted guns supported this task, whereas the MRH-90’s doorway-mounted guns obstructed troop movement when positioned for firing. Soldiers had to manoeuvre around the weapons, and fast-roping equipment could not safely be used in the same doorway as a gun.[4] The pre-contract documents required gun operation with the main doors closed. The ANAO found that these requirements were changed to accommodate doorway-mounted guns. Source selection rated the doorway mount noncompliant and a rear-window option only partially compliant; the latter was not pursued.[5] Carrying soldiers and mounting weapons were not enough: those functions needed to work together during an insertion or extraction.
The ANAO records that Defence initially recommended Black Hawk in 2004, before the Government approved 12 MRH90s after considering amphibious capability, industry and wider strategic factors.[6] In April 2006, Defence itself recommended a further 34 MRH90s on capability and fleet-rationalisation grounds. The ANAO found that the submission compared 34 MRH90s with 48 Black Hawks rather than 42; a more appropriate comparison would have shown the Black Hawk option to be less expensive.[7] Army later pursued modifications to address the door-gun limitations.
In the Defence capability system, Government ultimately decides among competing military and national priorities.[8] The issue is whether operational consequences are made explicit, not whether Army’s preferred platform always prevails. Army’s advice should state what an accepted compromise means for operational tasks, operating conditions and supporting capabilities. The Taipan illustrates a requirement error as well as an execution problem; it does not, by itself, explain the acquisition decision.
The independent Defence Delivery Agency is scheduled to be established on 1 July 2027, following the Defence Delivery Group formed on 1 July 2026.[9] In parallel, capability design and development for the five warfighting domains are being consolidated under the Vice Chief of the Defence Force. Under the redesigned Defence Capability System, the Vice Chief is the Capability Sponsor for maritime, land, air, space and cyber, responsible for developing proposals for government consideration, while the National Armaments Director leads the delivery organisation responsible for approved military capability.[10] This division of responsibilities does not settle whether the requirement is right. Army’s operational evidence must inform its definition and remain visible through delivery.
That does not make Army a bystander. Major-system acquisition is delivered through Joint and Defence machinery, but Service Chiefs remain responsible for introducing capability into service, capability operation and setting sustainment priorities.[11] Army’s contribution starts in capability design, before a project enters the Integrated Investment Program (IIP). Its concepts and capability staff contribute to Integrated Capability Directives, which link threats, missions and force needs to concepts, and to the Integrated Capability Assessment of capability gaps, priorities and affordability. This work informs Government’s investment decisions.[12] For a future battlefield helicopter, this is where Army should define the troop-movement task and expected threats, rather than start with a preferred platform.
During capability development, proposals in the IIP are developed for government approval. The Capability Operator owns operational use, acceptance and introduction into service, while multidisciplinary Integrated Project Teams bring together the Capability Sponsor, Capability Operator and delivery organisations. These project-level teams are formed before Gate Zero, the early formal review of operational need and delivery feasibility.[13] Army contributes advice on non-materiel fundamental inputs to capability, such as people and training, and on the proposed capability’s operational feasibility.[14] For a helicopter proposal, that advice should test whether the aircraft and those supporting inputs can deliver the effect identified during design, and state the operational consequences of any compromise.
Contracting discipline and schedule assurance measure precision, but cannot establish operational accuracy alone. Marilyn Strathern’s formulation of Goodhart’s law captures the risk: ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.’[15] Meeting cost and schedule targets should not become a substitute for operational performance. Writing about Defence’s acquisition system, Royal Australian Air Force officer David Hood distinguishes a project risk management mindset, focused on cost, scope and schedule, from a strategic risk management mindset concerned with delivering relevant capability at the speed demanded by the strategic environment.[16]
The United States Government Accountability Office similarly warns that linear processes with requirements fixed years in advance risk delivering systems that are already obsolete, and points to iterative development with continuous user engagement and testing.[17] Richard Brabin-Smith, of the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, argues that Australia’s new arrangements must be forward-looking and that central policy and contestability need greater weight.[18] Army should provide operational evidence for that scrutiny. Delivery discipline cannot compensate for an outdated or poorly framed operational need.
The principles of war provide a framework for military judgement. Selection and maintenance of the aim requires identifying the objective and concentrating effort on achieving it. Writing in the Australian Army Journal in July 1948, the Directorate of Military Training emphasised that choosing an aim could be difficult amid conflicting interests and demands, and that maintaining it remained challenging as circumstances changed.[19] Applied to acquisition, the aim should be the required military effect, not the delivery of a particular platform. Maintaining that aim means remaining committed to the operational purpose, while being willing to reconsider the means of achieving it. For Army, the Taipan record therefore suggests four tests of whether it is doing everything within its authority to select and maintain the aim. Army’s concepts and capability staff should apply them during force design, Army representatives during project development, and commanders and users as operational evidence changes.
The ‘so what’ for Army is direct. Army does not control the Defence Delivery Agency’s negotiation and management of supplier contracts, but it can shape the operational requirement, provide evidence and challenge whether a proposed capability can deliver the required military effect.
Test 1: Contestability at the Point of Translation
The practical lesson from Mark Mankowski’s account of Land Capability Division is to collaborate early and often.[20] Army’s capability staff should state the operational effect and task in plain terms, test alternatives across all fundamental inputs to capability, and invite challenge from operators, Force Design, Contestability and delivery specialists before a solution hardens.[21] Army should use early concept testing and prototypes to test assumptions before major commitments. Industry engagement should test manufacturability: whether the proposed design can be produced reliably, in the required quantities, within the available budget and timeframe.[22] Industry advice should inform and challenge the proposed solution, not allow a supplier’s preferred product to define the operational need. This is where Army should make the operational consequences of fleet rationalisation or industrial preferences explicit.
Test 2: Evidence from Operational Employment Back into Force Design
In its 2015 audit of Defence test and evaluation, the ANAO recommended that material deficiencies and defects be identified and documented, with remediation plans established before System Acceptance. Defence agreed, while noting that outstanding acceptance testing could sometimes be managed through an agreed and documented risk decision.[23] Army’s capability staff should carry project test findings into requirement reviews, identifying what has been demonstrated, what remains untested, where assessments differ and which operational limitations have been accepted.
Army should draw on collective training, unit experimentation, operational test and evaluation, and lessons from the field. Army Advanced Capabilities already links experimentation with Army Headquarters’ G5 planning work and future land concepts.[24] Commanders, training authorities and users should provide structured evidence through Army capability staff to requirement setters and Integrated Project Teams, with the test conditions and limits of the findings recorded. That evidence should also test future concepts, not simply validate current practice. Evidence about tactical employment should be assessed alongside specification compliance, with differences explained. Iterative development provides repeated opportunities to test the requirement with users as the threat, technology and operating concept change.[25]
Test 3: Authority and Incentive to Recommend Change
Army may not make the final decision to stop a project, but it can identify when a capability no longer meets the operational need and raise the operational consequences through the Capability Operator and Integrated Project Team. The redesigned Defence Capability System emphasises minimum viable capability and disciplined trade-offs between scope, cost, schedule and risk.[26] Mankowski defines minimum viable capability in terms of the lowest acceptable directed effect, delivered in the required time and supported through introduction into service and sustainment. His account of Army practice recognises that scope may need to be traded to protect time and cost.[27] Minimum viable capability still depends on the directed effect being right; any scope trade should state whether that effect remains achievable. Recommendations should distinguish operational consequences from wider trade-offs Government has knowingly accepted. Army staff should identify decision triggers in advance and recommend continuation, a scope trade, pause or reset when the evidence warrants it.
Test 4: Assurance Before Army Advice is Endorsed
Defence retains a Contestability function that tests assumptions, evidence, costs, risks and trade-offs across the capability lifecycle.[28] In force design, before Gate Zero and when proposed modifications affect operational capability, the officer responsible for Army’s advice should apply an accuracy check within existing reviews, with input from an operational user, training representative, sustainment specialist and force-integration staff outside the sponsoring team. It should ask three questions: what military effect is required; what evidence shows the proposed solution can produce it in the intended operating conditions; and which assumptions would force reconsideration? The check should record unresolved technical dissent and who is responsible for resolving it. This checks Army’s advice without replacing central Contestability or adding an approval layer.
The ‘what now’ is for Army’s concepts and capability staff to put a user-led operational problem statement into Army’s input to Integrated Capability Directives. Army representatives should carry the supporting evidence and unresolved findings into the Capability Operator’s advice before Gate Zero. The officer endorsing Army’s advice should make the operational consequences of compromises and the triggers for scope trade, pause or reset explicit. These changes would help Army apply selection and maintenance of the aim within its existing responsibilities.
The ADF’s capstone doctrine lists selection and maintenance of the aim first among the principles of war.[29] The aim of acquisition is not a compliant platform, a satisfied milestone or a rationalised fleet; it is a credible military effect. The Defence Delivery Agency may make Defence more precise. Army’s responsibility is to help make the land requirement accurate while it is being defined, and to keep land-force evidence connected to that requirement as conditions change.
If we do not take the time to aim, it does not matter how expensive the bullet is or how fast it travels. We will simply miss the target with terrifying precision.
About the Author
Jeremy Stredwick is a military technologist and capability development professional.
Endnotes
[1] Richard Marles and Pat Conroy, ‘Army Helicopter Fleet Update’, joint media release, 29 September 2023; Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), Multi-Role Helicopter Program, Auditor-General Report No. 52 of 2013-14 (Canberra: ANAO, 2014), paras 27-29 and 48-52.
[2] ANAO, Multi-Role Helicopter Program, paras 30, 52-53 and 57.
[3] ANAO, Test and Evaluation of Major Defence Equipment Acquisitions, Auditor-General Report No. 9 of 2015-16 (Canberra: ANAO, 2015), para. 3.13.
[4] ANAO, Multi-Role Helicopter Program, paras 3.23 and 3.26-3.28.
[5] ANAO, Multi-Role Helicopter Program, paras 3.24-3.25 and table 3.2, 133-134.
[6] ANAO, Multi-Role Helicopter Program, paras 55 and 59-64.
[7] ANAO, Multi-Role Helicopter Program, paras 2.104-2.106, 112–113.
[8] ANAO, Multi-Role Helicopter Program, paras 35 and 75-76, and paras 3.27-3.28.
[9] Richard Marles and Pat Conroy, ‘Rebuilding Defence Capability to Keep Australians Safe’, joint media release, 2 July 2026.
[10] Department of Defence, Rebuilding Defence Capability: An Independent Report (July 2026), 7-8, 13-14.
[11] Department of Defence, Rebuilding Defence Capability, 8.
[12] Mark Mankowski, ‘Lessons in Managing the Australian Army’s Capability - Part Three’, Land Power Forum, Australian Army Research Centre, 8 May 2025, sections ‘What is New - Design Principles’ and ‘What is New - The Three ODCS Cycles’; Department of Defence, Rebuilding Defence Capability, 14-15.
[13] Department of Defence, Rebuilding Defence Capability, 14-15, 19.
[14] Department of Defence, Rebuilding Defence Capability, 15, figure 2; Mark Mankowski, ‘Lessons in Managing the Australian Army’s Capability - Part One’, Land Power Forum, Australian Army Research Centre, 17 April 2025.
[15] Marilyn Strathern, ‘“Improving Ratings”: Audit in the British University System’, European Review 5, no. 3 (1997): 308.
[16] David Hood, ‘Risk Management or Risk Myopia: Changing the Acquisition Risk Management Mindset of the Australian Defence Force’, Contemporary Issues in Air and Space Power 2, no. 1 (2024): 2-3, doi:10.58930/bp39360470; David Hood, ‘Risk Management or Risk Myopia? Changing the ADF’s Acquisition Risk Management Culture: Part 1’, Defence Connect, 28 January 2025.
[17] United States Government Accountability Office, Defense Acquisition Reform: Persistent Challenges Require New Iterative Approaches to Delivering Capability with Speed, GAO-25-108528 (11 June 2025), https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-108528.
[18] Richard Brabin-Smith, ‘Australia’s New Defence Acquisition Organisation Must Be Forward Looking’, The Strategist, 12 March 2026.
[19] Directorate of Military Training, ‘The Principles of War’, Australian Army Journal, no. 1 (July 1948), section ‘The Selection and Maintenance of the Aim’.
[20] Mark Mankowski, ‘Lessons in Managing the Australian Army’s Capability - Part Two’, Land Power Forum, Australian Army Research Centre, 8 May 2025.
[21] Institute for Security Governance, Defense Acquisition, version 1 (May 2021), 1-2; Department of Defence, Rebuilding Defence Capability, 15, 19, 21.
[22] Department of Defence, Rebuilding Defence Capability, 17, 25.
[23] Australian National Audit Office, Test and Evaluation of Major Defence Equipment Acquisitions, Auditor-General Report No. 9 of 2015-16 (Canberra: ANAO, 2015), paras 4.22-4.23.
[24] Australian Army Research Centre, ‘G58 - Army Advanced Capabilities (AAC)’, last updated 14 July 2026; Mankowski, ‘Lessons in Managing the Australian Army’s Capability - Part One’, section ‘Capability Definitions’.
[25] United States Government Accountability Office, Defense Acquisition Reform: Persistent Challenges Require New Iterative Approaches to Delivering Capability with Speed, GAO-25-108528 (11 June 2025), 11-12.
[26] Department of Defence, Rebuilding Defence Capability, 14-15, 17-19.
[27] Mankowski, ‘Lessons in Managing the Australian Army’s Capability - Part Three’, section ‘What is New - Definitions’; Mark Mankowski, ‘Lessons in Managing the Australian Army’s Capability - Part Four’, Land Power Forum, Australian Army Research Centre, 19 February 2026.
[28] Department of Defence, Rebuilding Defence Capability, 21.
[29] Australian Defence Force, ADF-C-0 Australian Military Power, 2nd ed. (Canberra: Department of Defence, 2024), 45.
