Whilst this speaks about the RNZAF B757, it is also about NZDF overall and it's not nice. It's paywalled unfortunately and I won't be copying and pasting the whole article because of copyright law. Do like the article title by the way.
Grandad’s army; why our air force planes can’t fly | Politik
"With the Australian and New Zealand Prime Ministers due to meet on Friday with regional security issues at the top of their agenda, New Zealand’s Defence chiefs have given a revealing account of the state of the country’s defence forces. Their account raises real questions about the credibility of New Zealand’s claim to have a viable Defence presence in the Pacific in the event of any conflict. Present equipment is ageing and becoming more difficult to maintain, while an acute shortage of personnel means that purchasing new capabilities is having to be deferred."
We all are aware of both the deferment of new capabilities and that there are personnel shortages. It's the first time that I have heard the head shed describe it as acute though, so the situation must be very serious especially when the government refuses to release the recruiting data.
"A measure of the age and state of our defence assets came when the vice Chief of the Defence Force, Air Vice Marshall Tony Davies, last week told Parliament’s Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee that on the Prime Minister’s recent trip to Singapore and Japan, the Airforce 757 VIP aircraft had managed to fly five legs with her on board without reporting a fault. “That’s not normal,” he said."
“That’s not normal,” when talking about the B757 flying five legs fault free is a very telling remark especially being mad at a Select Committee Meeting open to the public. These aircraft were supposed to be replaced in 2025 and the way things are going maybe sooner. But it's not just them, it's other defence equipment as well.
"The lamentable state of the two 757s is echoed across the Defence force by other assets, particularly the five 57-year-old C130 Hercules transport aircraft operated by the RNZAF. “It’s very old, and we’ve got corrosion and other issues with it,” said Short. “ And so one of the airframes, for instance, was actually out of service for 11 months well past the operating life of that particular airframe. “But we are managing that, and I think as of today, we’ve got three airframes available for tasking.” The Government has committed to replacing the Hercules fleet, and five new aircraft will begin arriving in 2024, with the entire fleet operating from 2025."
He goes on to say later:
Davies explained that because of the way funding for the air force had been organised over the years; planes were left to the very last before they were overhauled and updated. “If you look back and think in the past, we bought the P3 in 1966; the next upgrade for the P3 was in 1982, and then we did another upgrade to the aircraft in 2005,” he said. “That’s the way we did defence capability in the past. “We would buy something; wait for it to deteriorate to a sad state and be like 15, 20 years after we bought it, and then we’d have this big leap and spend a lot of money and then it wastes away again. “So I’d characterise that was how we used to do it.” So now, the Air Force has entered into a contract with the US Air Force which means it will be part of their system of continual upgrade. That would mean we’re being upgraded every two or three years."
Not a very good way to do things and my question would be, who decided this was the way to do things? RNZAF / Defence or government and Treasury?
"Defence Minister Peeni Henare has declined to give National’s Defence spokesperson, Tim van der Meulen, the number targets for its current recruitment drive — which may suggest that they are substantial. But Davies told National’s Gerry Brownlee at the Committee that a decision to defer an ice-strengthened southern patrol vessel for the Navy was because the Defence Force was stretched managing the $5.6 billion procurement of 43 Bushmaster vehicles for the army; the four P3 aircrafts, and the five replacement Hercules as well as a substantial upgrade to the Te Kaha frigate. “We have taken already the initial business case to cabinet on the Southern Ocean patrol vessel, and we were due to bring back a detailed business case late last year,” said Davies. “From our side, we were also looking at the challenges we were having to projects in delivery, particularly all those impacts that Covid was having on us. “And we looked to focus our workforce on ensuring the delivery of that $5.6 billion that was already invested in. “And so that was a conscious decision of us just to put on hold the Southern Ocean patrol vessels due to the fact of us wanting to have more people working on the challenges that we were seeing with the projects. “So it’s a deferral at the moment.”
But previously, Henare has suggested that funding might become a factor in defence procurement. In July 2021, he told the Committee that whilst projects had not been cut from the 2019 Defence Capability Plan, it would be redrafted to align with Government priorities because of fiscal constraints due to the cost of the pandemic. The Select Committee highlighted in its report that the Minister said he was working with the Minister of Finance on reviewing the plan. And in March this year, Michael Swain, deputy secretary for Defence Policy and Planning at the Ministry, told Reuters: “Due to the impact Covid has had on the fiscal environment and emerging personnel pressures from other projects, this work has been deferred.” The World Bank reported that in 2020 New Zealand spent 1.56 per cent of its GDP on Defence. ACT is calling for that to be raised to two per cent, and National Party members approved a remit at a recent regional conference calling for the same target. ... Moving to two per cent of GDP a year would add another one billion to the Defence spending, still less than health, education or transport. And though Australia may not have raised the spending level with Henare, it is a constant niggle between the two countries that Australia spends $48.6 billion and New Zealand spends $2.5 billion.
That is why our equipment is so old and unreliable." (Emphasis mine)
Richard Harman the article's author is a long time political journo and been around the Wellington beltway for decades. He's written a reasonably good article here laying out the case using the B757 as the exemplar. This is more ammo for the cause and it will increase the pressure on the government when they are 15 - 17 months out from an election. They don't like being forced into a debate about defence because they don't like defence and this is just creating more pressure for them to go where they don't want to go.
www.rnz.co.nz
