Why are talking re-establishing our ACF as it is not even on the radar? The DCP-2019 reaches out to 2030-35, no mention not even a hint...
Don't get me wrong I would love to see the return... but I can't see it in any foreseeable future...
In many respects the DCP19 was a mild refresh of DCP's earlier in the 2010's decade, but for locking in an already very average "High Pathway" funding plan of the Key government as well as adding for some rhetorical flourishes of recognition that things are becoming more strategically strained and to keep an eye on the PRC.
So why are we talking about it now? Because in the NZ context someone has to start raising it and my view is that now its time has come. And on this forum board it is as good as any.
As a Mod ten years ago I would shut down such discussions, because I knew the political climate had no appetite for it and had no foreseeability for it though I and others recognised an obvious strategic unbalancing in both New Zealand's long term future, but also because some of the solutions were from armchair amateurs that were frankly ridiculous or unrealistic. My view at the time was that it was a capability set that should have never been lost. I privately felt that eventually over the medium-long term it would need to get re looked at - as real politique sensibilities on a sea of increasing instability would capsize the pacificist idealism (mixed with dollops of University Common Room moral superiority of the local political class) of the 1990's and early 2000's New Zealand.
Because things have moved so fast in the last 5 years in terms of strategic instability - in fact during 2020 there are respected commentators who believe that the unthinkable - major state on state conflict in the Indo-Pacific region could happen. That is the problem with the NZ political class - they cannot understand that just because they cannot think it - the unthinkable will not happen. Covid has shortened the strategic insecurity timeframe.
The problem is that for a maritime nation with both regional defence and global trade interests over significant distances it has virtually no counter maritime strategy. Having ISR capabilities is only a dimension of a counter maritime strategy and a maritime strategy involves air, space/cyber and naval domains as well as land adjacent to, or bordering on a sea, ocean, or other navigable waterway.
And into this challenging environment we find that through what is sheer strategic stupidity and frankly ignorance driven by hubris the NZDF has no capability of engaging a moving ship or aircraft from outside visual range. No flexibility and rapid response capability to move from a situation of detecting something to interdicting something and confronting it as well as no provision of a credible deterrent to nation(s) contemplating an offensive maneuver into our strategic lines of communications, let alone areas of interest in our maritime domain.
The other significant point is that with the removal of a credible air combat capability and without an attempt to rebuild it it weakens not just ourselves but our closest defence partners in the region. It is not just an issue for New Zealand but one also for Australia obviously but also Singapore.
There is this disconnect, this hypocrisy when New Zealand looks at the four cornerstone of our external relations. We recognised inter-dependence in partnership engagement in our trade, diplomacy and intelligence components, but in defence there is this selective abrogation into dependency when it comes to certain combat elements of our defence capability.
As this decade unfolds it will become more unconscionable for not just New Zealand but also other friends and partners who we will mutually rely on for New Zealand to have a partial gaping hole in naval combat capability and a huge gaping hole in air combat capability. Any future adversary with half a brain would have read Sun Tze (I'm sure it is on the reading list at all PLA academies) and realises that those gaping holes are our weaknesses to exploit and through proximity directly affect Australia.