This book has reviewed the more than a hundred offshore operational deployments, scores of domestic response operations conducted, and major initiatives undertaken that affected the Army's ability to operate since the end of the Vietnam War, when Gough Whitlam became prime minister, through to the end of 2007, when John Howard's term as prime minister came to an end. The post–Vietnam War period was marked by one particular policy continuity concerning the nature of operational deployments: throughout these years governments placed a high priority on casualty avoidance. Their concern was to minimise the risk that Australia would find itself in the politically untenable position in which it found itself for the latter years of the Vietnam War. The major protests and mounting casualties associated with that war were seen as having significantly eroded the then government's domestic political support.

Learning and adaptation as the operational tempo rises

More than three decades after the end of the Vietnam War, and 50 years after the raising of the Special Air Service Company in 1957, the Army of 2007 had conducted a range of operations far and wide, many of them very small and some more substantial ones, particularly closer to Australia. But they all were framed by a carefully calibrated calculation of Australia's national interests and what needed to be done in support of them.