All IPV's being back in business is probably due to having three less operational vessels than this time last year with the realisation that sailors need sea time.
With respect to Te Kaha and Te Mana I am pretty miffed over the cost blowout of the FSU project. To go from $446m when the FSU contract first came to light in 2014 to now $638m is indeed poor contract management. In the private sector that would be a don't come Monday event.
What concerns me though is that it seems highly likely that the NZ Anzac replacement project wont see new vessels commissioned until well into the 2030's. Two frigates until then is frankly not just a capability gap but increasingly a capability vacuum as we near the 3rd and 4th decades of the 21st Century with obvious growing maritime tensions and unpredictability.
I discount as implausible any new Frigate type coming into service prior to the drumbeat of Te Kaha being decommissioned which I understand maybe 15 years away. However, my gut feeling is that the strategic necessity for a 3rd frigate and eventually 4th frigate will become as growingly obvious as the need for a 3rd and 4th OPV as we move through next decade. Any new 3rd (or 4th Frigate) wont happen until the replacements of Te Kaha and Te Mana are commissioned and not earlier.
This leads to the question of the disposal of the RAN Anzac's which will obviously begin around the delivery of the first of the nine SEA 5000 vessels over the next decade. It is a few years away, but it is worth contemplating that as they go offline in RAN service - could they be transferred, leased (or bought) and crewed by the RNZN with the WAMA sustainment contract for the vessel(s) in place yet now paid for buy the NZ Govt.
Their are some obvious advantages for both nations. The RAN will still operate the Anzac Class at least as long as our to Kiwi-ised Anzac's are in commissioned through the following decade, that the sustainment will be in place and it would beef up surface combatant numbers not just for New Zealand but also collectively on a Trans-Tasman basis from the mid 2020's thus adding to mutual strategic weight.
It would certainly be a better option than taking over old RN Type 23's or USN OHP's under strategic urgency. At least contemplating it now would give time develop a workflow that would provide RNZN crew the necessary training and familiarisation transition to what have evolved into similar yet different vessels. It would be certainly less problematic than operating two entirely different platforms, I know it would be far better to operate 3 or 4 vessels of exactly the same type, but it will be far worse to continue to operate just two if strategic events continue the way they are going. We have coped with operating Leanders alongside Anzacs for a few years as we once did in operating Lochs with Rothesay's and a Dido Class Cruiser in the early 1960's.
