A previously unpublished Australian defence investigation into Australian SAS throwdowns in Afghanistan concluded that SAS officers knew troops were using throwdowns - planting weapons on dead Afghan civilians to portray them as combatants - and took no effective action against the unlawful practice.

The executive summary of the 2021 report, produced by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force into the cultural context of Australia's special operations command, was posted online this week. It found a significant failure of good leadership and effective command across SAS commanders.

What the 2021 report found

The IGADF report found some SAS officers knew about alleged unlawful behaviour and did not act to stop it. Officers with actual knowledge of misconduct, including throwdowns used in fraudulent reporting, did not take effective action to investigate and address the issues.

Its central findings on the Australian SAS throwdowns in Afghanistan and command include:

• •Some officers knew soldiers were planting weapons on dead Afghan civilians to portray them as combatants and did nothing to stop it.
• •Officers with actual knowledge failed to investigate and address the misconduct, including its use in fraudulent reporting.
• •There was a breakdown of command and an erosion of military discipline during special forces operations.
• •The executive summary describes a significant failure of good leadership and effective command across SAS commanders.

The report also found that reporting systems designed to prevent misconduct had become depleted and largely unreliable, giving officers a false level of assurance. It concluded the Special Operations Task Group culture was not itself the cause of misconduct, but created an environment which enabled misconduct by a few to occur.

A culture that let rules slide

The investigation traced the failures to a set of reinforcing conditions inside the regiment:

• •An uncontrolled 'warrior' ethos developed within the SAS, which officers allowed.
• •The excessively secretive and insular nature of the SAS contributed to worsening standards.
• •The chain of command inverted: senior non-commissioned officers dominated their ostensible superiors, leaving junior officers in a position the report called 'learned helplessness'.
• •Soldiers were consistently allowed to drink alcohol while deployed in Afghanistan, in defiance of orders applying to others; the report said tolerance of the exception sent a strong signal to those involved that the rules did not apply to them.
• •Soldiers wrote false battlefield reports focused on the rules of engagement that assisted perpetrators of misconduct to conceal their actions. One standard phrase, 'manoeuvring to a position of tactical advantage', described civilian 'squirters' as direct participants in hostilities justifying engagement - used so regularly it lost meaning.
• •Repeated dangerous deployments of a small SAS cohort across the long Afghan conflict contributed to moral injury and impaired decision-making, with incremental shifts in moral compass in response to violence and killing.

How the report emerged

The investigation was commissioned in 2021 by former defence force chief - and SAS officer - Angus Campbell after the findings of the Brereton Inquiry. That earlier, published IGADF report found credible information in 2020 that Australian special forces personnel murdered 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners, but largely exonerated officers, locating criminal behaviour at patrol commander level. Patrol commanders in the Australian SAS are not commissioned officers; they are typically corporals or sergeants.

Defence had refused to release the 2021 report despite freedom of information requests and a Senate attempt to force disclosure, before the executive summary appeared online.

The political response

Chief of the ADF Admiral Mark Hammond was questioned on the report at senate estimates on Thursday morning. He agreed with its findings, saying there had been serious failures within the SAS and its command structure, and that the behaviour revealed was extremely unprofessional and not in concert with the ADF's values and professional standards.

Asked about a finding that legal officers within the defence force obstructed investigations into war crime allegations, Hammond told the hearing: "The behaviour you're describing is completely unacceptable."

Greens Senator David Shoebridge argued the report exposes an accountability gap between how junior personnel and SAS leadership are treated - what he called a difference in consequence for those without "gold braid" on their shoulders and those with it.

Opposition frontbencher and former SAS captain Andrew Hastie said the findings resonated with his experience in the regiment. "There's almost 50 findings, and a lot of it rings very true to me," he said, recalling his time as a junior officer. He added that officers holding a commission in the Australian Army are accountable for those beneath them, including moral accountability.