Hi everyone, in the interests of not starting yet another NZDF thread Dr Wayne Mapp has been appointed opposition spokemans for Defence and made these comments at a Foreign Affairs Seminar...
http://www.waynemapp.co.nz/Speeches%20and%20Articles/Foreign%20Affairs%20seminar.htm
"November 2006
Presentation to the Foreign Affairs Seminar
This speech was presented at the Foreign Affairs Seminar on 30 November 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The end of the Cold War was supposed to have heralded an era of peace. Instead, there has been more conflict and instability than anyone could possibly have imagined. Policy makers have had to scrabble to change their thinking.
In New Zealand the initial response in the early 1990s was simply to cut defence spending. But this occurred without any fresh thinking. The first serious effort was the Select Committee Report, Defence Beyond 2000. This was started in 1997 and was produced in 1999. The Select Committee heard from numerous people, the defence forces, and other countries’ representatives. Professor White provided great insight during the Committee’s trip to Australia.
At the time the report’s recommendations were controversial; today they seem conventional. The essence was that the defence forces faced a new, more complex environment, and that the old answers would no longer be sufficient. The defence forces needed to be more agile and more focussed. This was summarised as “depth, not breadth”.
The current defence force came out of that report. It is now time to ask, how much of the thinking was right?
To answer that question you have to know the nature of the security environment. Are defence forces merely an insurance policy, or do they have a more immediate application?
Insurance to me spells preparation for disaster. You hope you never need it, but it would be imprudent to take the risk. In defence terms, the disaster is the invasion of your country, or at least a serious threat to your country. This can be seen as the deterrence value of defence.
However, New Zealand has not faced invasion for 60 years. But our defence force has been exceptionally busy over the last 10 years. These deployments have not been based on the principle of deterrence, so what has been their purpose?
I would suggest that our defence forces have been primarily concerned with securing stability, especially in our region. Only Australia and New Zealand can take the lead in our region. Only these two countries have deployable and credible defence forces. If we don’t act in our region, then no one else will.
So what does securing stability in our region require? As a general rule, it does not require having high intensity combat capabilities. However, it certainly does mean a credible level of military force is required. Soldiers are not just police officers in green, they have to be prepared for combat. But air strikes, sinking submarines, fighting off opposing air forces, is not part of the scenario in our immediate region. Lighter forces are more relevant. The possible exception was East Timor. A visible high level force was intended to have a deterrent effect against any renegade Indonesian forces. However, it should be recalled that the deployment to East Timor did require the co-operation of Indonesia. Would the intervention have occurred without their consent?
Outside our region, we have been heavily engaged with a wide variety of forces. In contrast to our own region, we are only required and expected to provide a specialist contribution, within a much larger coalition force. This has become known as niche capabilities. For New Zealand these have been substantially frigates, Orions, engineers, and special forces. All these have serious combat capabilities, and they have been actually used. We have also provided a particularly Kiwi approach to peacemaking, as is evident with the PRT in Afghanistan. The quality of our people is held in high regard by friends and allies.
What is the lesson we can draw from this in terms of the capabilities and composition of our armed forces? They appear to be:
· First, these operations are manpower intensive. We typically have over 500 people deployed at any point in time, sometimes as many as 1,000. That stretches a force that has only 7,000 full time personnel. Increasingly, reserve forces are being called upon. But the serious question has to be asked, do we need significantly more people?
· Second, some of the critical equipment is being heavily used. For example, our two frigates are tasked at a much higher rate than originally envisaged.
· Third, we need a better understanding of the usual range of military capabilities. For several years we have parked up the 20 Aermacchi air training aircraft. How do you effectively train naval, army and air force personnel when we have completely denied ourselves the use of relatively cheap jet air training aircraft?
It is now nearly a decade since the last serious review of defence, Defence Beyond 2000. New Zealand’s current defence force is the outcome of that review. But the world is much less stable than anyone envisaged in 1997. It is time to think afresh about the challenges that lie ahead.
A small defence force like New Zealand’s can never have everything, so our choices have to be as flexible and realistic as possible. In politics we are in the business of making choices. After three terms in opposition we can be expected to come up with fresh solutions. That is our task over the next two years."
, although the education requirements for NZDF Pilots is lower than the ADF....