As a blaze tore through from the Orroral Valley, troops were ready to evacuate my 88-year-old father from his nursing home. It was the first place that would be hit if Canberra's suburbs were overrun.

Flames were visible from the windows of the nursing home and as darkness fell, Mt Tennent's menacing glow loomed overhead.

As the fire front bore down, army personnel were poised with military vehicles to extract scores of the frightened, immobile elderly.

Ahead of the expected path of the fire, military engineers were building critical fire breaks. In the air, surveillance aircraft and even small drones assisted with mapping the fire progress.

As a blaze tore through the Orroral Valley, a team of troops were at the ready to rescue my 88-year-old father from his nursing home. ( ABC: Greg Nelson )

Behind the fire lines, the radio crackled as medical corps scrambled to set up on Mt Stromlo should care be needed.

Many of us have felt powerless in the face of the force of these fires. It was a comfort to know that there was help at hand when it was needed.

War is a powerful national metaphor

This is one of many stories of heroism to emerge from what has been dubbed Australia's "black summer", and we should be proud of the work the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has done in response to the bushfire crisis — in the air, at sea and on land.

War is a powerful national metaphor for Australians. The nation watched on as communities were engulfed by flames and it is difficult to think of our predicament as anything but a battle.

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"Where's the bloody war? This fire is Australia's war at the moment," Joy Robin, the mother-in-law of Celeste Barber, remarked in a rally cry that would help spur donations of more than $50 million for fire relief.

The question now is whether this is a war the ADF should be expected to continue fighting?

Does 'security risk' include climate change?

More than 6,000 ADF personnel have supported Operation Bushfire Assist.

On Government advice, the Governor-General has revoked the compulsory call out of ADF Reserves. The move takes effect today.

While it remains unclear if reserves will pack up and head home, reservists are now formally withdrawn from the frontline.

With the wide-scale emergency threat eased, thought is turning to whether the ADF should be reorganised to address the national security risk and natural disasters which arise from climate change, both in Australia and in our neighbourhood.

There is Canberra defence community chatter and rumour that the pivot might be profound.

Some are saying the ADF's role is defending Australia from security risk — and climate change is such a risk.

Others feel that even if a case is made for a new national firefighting effort, that Defence should focus fighting traditional conflict.

There is no organisation more equipped

Despite the incredibly diverse and flexible response, the ADF can contribute more than boots on the ground, helicopters in the air and beachhead rescues.

Those of us who work closely with the ADF know just how much these skilled people have to offer.

The ADF leadership is revered internationally for punching above its weight: many of the quiet Australian leaders are those that have led global efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We could bring this skillset to bear on our climate and bushfire challenges.

There are few Australians as well equipped to plan for fighting adversity, designing capability and assessing lessons learnt once the action has taken place.

The ADF can contribute more than boots on the ground, helicopters in the air and beachhead rescues. ( ADF: Kelvin Hockey )

There are few organisations in Australia as effective at researching the risks that others don't foresee, and designing a rapid response in difficult conditions.

The ADF is expert at coordinating live "situational awareness" in mapping and how to effectively distribute resources to threats in real time.

Boots on the ground is one thing

The ADF is also effective at managing change. The wars our families fought in the 20th century, with separate, distinct military forces, are not how wars are fought today.

The ADF now deploys troops in the "joint operating space" and this ability for different military forces to operate together is lacking in our bushfire response.

The ADF can assist with this problem by complementing the knowledge and experience of our fire services.

It's not clear whether the ADF wants to play a permanent year-in, year-out frontline natural disaster role and it's also not yet clear what the Government has planned.

But it is clear that there is a need for a national on-call professional disaster response capability on top of our volunteer firefighters.

If the military won't fill that role, the Government will be need build that capability somewhere else.

Boots on the ground is one thing but developing an overarching strategy to keep Australians safe from these disasters is another.

No Australian organisation is better suited to developing a plan for this challenge than the ADF. ( Twitter: Darren Chester )

To win the war, we must be prepared

No Australian organisation is better suited than the ADF for developing a response to this challenge.

The Government needs to call on these intellectual resources as much as "assets".

The ADF should be given the job of writing a national disaster white paper to advise the Government on what Australia needs to do to be prepared for these events. ( AAP: Department of Defence, Nicole Dorrett )

The ADF should be given the job of writing a national disaster white paper to advise the Government on what Australia needs to do to be prepared for these events — from how many aerial firefighting planes we need and what technologies we need to develop to make them more effective, to how to structure a volunteer and professional force to deal with a catastrophe of scales we haven't yet seen.

If these fires are like a war, then only a war-fighting organisation can write the plan to keep us all safe.

Tom Sear is an industry fellow at UNSW Canberra Cyber at the Australian Defence Force Academy.