Royal New Zealand Navy Discussions and Updates

[Rob c]

How?

The governments priorities are wack. They choose announcements and delays over prioritising budget announcements.

I have my unprofessional bias. Perhaps you have a professional opinion for how to prioritise so.. how?

There are several levels to be considered for this and the end result could go on for some time so breafly. We must also consider tha an attack against us is likely to be in conjuction with an attackon Australia, which means they will have their own problems and won't be able to help us.
To protect against a direct threat to our sovereignty we need to to be able to control the air and sea aproaches to NZ. In this respect we have a 2000km moat, this puts us outside the combat radus of land based strike or fighter type aircraft.
Howeverthe first priority is to know what is happening in our regon, so we need to improve survaliance and inteligance abilities. the next priority is to provide a credable ability to deter or destroy both air or sea based attacks and it is my belief this is best covered by reforming an ACF as this can carry out e defence against either air or sea borne threats at a significant distance fro our shores and it has the ability to carry the apropriate weapons to the apropriate location quickly.
The next priority is to maintain critical comunications like fuel importing in which the navy and airforce have the major imput and additional frigates and P8's are required. in this respect maintaining the Tasman sea communication would be a priority.
Regional defence requires a whole extra layer of abilities which would involve all 3 servicesI and I will leave at this time.

 

[StingrayOZ]

Australia has a fair amount of high end capability, but in a conflict to our north, NZ is likely to be vulnerable to grey zone pressure, and even the asymmetric threats. Australia isn't going to redeploy all of its key assets that are protecting both countries to help with a lesser threat.

But I am less enthusiastic about rebuilding ACF capability within NZ. It would take a long time for that to happen. Deliveries of aircraft are what a decade away? How long would the money and political support last? The F-35 requires expensive upgrades and maintenance, training, weapons. For NZ, I am not sure stealthy is that much of an advantage, because its unlikely to engage other smaller fighter jets anyway.

The F-35 has no modern maritime strike weapon capability that is tied into block IV. No LRASM. No JSM. The P8 has that capability today. The RNZDF should definitely acquire LRASM/NSM immediately to stock its own aircraft for its own missions. Australia gets that from the F-18s and its P8s.. Manned fighter concepts are under pressure, and they aren't getting any cheaper to buy or operate. IF Nz is desperate, perhaps looking into classic hornet acquisition, US/Australia etc could basically give these away. But operating and keeping them operationally relevant would cost superhornet/F35 money anyway.

Drones are coming on line that arguably would be a better fit for NZ and its huge distances, and these can be based out of islands. Or even on ships themselves. It is the drone era now.

Something like the Baykar Bayraktar TB3 could be ordered, and operate NZ could also feasibly crew. $5m each. A Ghostbat is going to be similar prices and may end up having similar/superior capability.. 24 of these could be acquired for just the basing upgrade costs of a F-35. Even deploying these from forward bases in the Pacific would be huge. These are real here today options. Even a small flight of 6 would be operationally useful.

Ghostbat could provide a real kill chain with the ability to find, identify and destroy targets out to long range fighter distances. They could escort P8s. Etc. They can integrate with Australian assets. Kiwis could deploy on E7s to control them, perhaps even control them from a NZ P8s. Germany is looking to acquire them, and make them, so if that happens there will be big users, supporting upgrades and deployments.