We are unlikely to have an essential defence need to fight a modern naval power, so the frigates are of limited use.

One option would be to sell them (if a buyer could be found) and build two more Canterbury-class ships.

And reckoned by NATO to be of limited effectiveness in the (vanishingly unlikely) event of their being called upon to defend Switzerland. Sure, they have lots of hi-tech hardware such as fast jets and an amazing system of underground fortifications. But those would be ineffective against Russian firepower, and it’s not much good having an impregnable defence of the mountain passes when an enemy can just fly over them.

Swiss defence is really a social exercise. It maintains traditional structures in society (military officers are favoured for promotion in many companies, for instance) and enhances the “difference” of Switzerland.

There’s a small movement in Switzerland to scrap conscription, and rely on the fact that any enemy would need to defeat NATO’s entire home forces before reaching Switzerland, and if they did that, anything the Swiss could do would be completely useless.

So if we always want to have the ability to have one frigate at sea at any one time we need 3.
http://www.nzdf.mil.nz/downloads/pdf/public-docs/2008/annual-report/ar08-pg36-38.pdf

Cab approval for $ to construct a capability was granted in May 1999, but not the number of vehicles (para 2.12)

MoD sought a tender for 2 battalions without authority. Cabinet had rejected the two batt idea (para 3.46)

Cab approves 105 LAVIII (para 3.60) for 2 batts.

Yes, I was a bit off. More accurately I think the army obfuscated until they got what they wanted

The AG comments include a section entitled :
Pursuit of the project diverged considerably from Cabinet approvals in a number of respects

I haven’t looked at the documenst for a while, but my memory is that the 103 LAVs were ordered before cabinet appoval. I’d be happier to be wrong and maybe its in the select committee report of the time. I’m pretty sure the intent wasn’t to outfit two battalions though.

Alright, I’ll hunt the select committee report to rely on that rather than my memory.

But in NZ it is a pretty major issue because we have a country that is liable to do the shakes, bangs, flooding, etc without notice. You have to have a trained disciplined and armed force available on stand-by just for that. If you don’t, then you have Haiti issues in the wake of a disaster. As someone trained in earth sciences I’m acutely aware of how vunerable we are in NZ to those.

In the military role, there is limited accessibility to us because of geography. However we are also on the end of a rather long supply chain, and earn almost all of our income from trade. It simply makes good sense to have a force to prevent threats to those trade routes.

Of course there is always a possibility of invasion. The best defence against that is to make it expensive and risky. You do that by maintaining defence forces.

A third frigate ?

Airwing ?

Look the reality is National will cut what we allready have. ( History lesson they have done this for the last 30 years)

One area that wont be missed is artillery. All western nations have too much and since we only went for 105mm they can be easily replaced by heavy mortars ( which ride in the back of LAVS )- brillant if I do say so myself

The idea was that would fully equip our two light infantry battalions.

But your premise that the army stuffed it up is true. It seems like they didnt expect the full order so they went for the best they could get and were surprised they did.
Of course its too expensive to run and maintain the full 103.

No chance of getting close to the high tech capabilities of the US/Nato as they arent involved in the provincial battles let alone the drones etc which are done out of Langley and Nevada.

The LAV3 purchase was a mess. I spent a bit of time trying to understand how we purchased more than cabinet approved. The vehicles themselves seem pretty good and much better than the M113.

I think inter-operability is a big issue. However wide or narrow we define our force we need to be able to work with forces we tend to work with. One point to remember is that we never used our airwing to cover our deployments – we always have had some other country doing that role. So being able to communicate and use SOPs with them is useful. So our equipment needs to work with them. None of that precludes an independent stance or saying no to particular deployments.

The material difference for this government might mean buying more American equipment, which isn’t necessarily bad. They might spring a surprise and go back to a third frigate. There is a reasonable argument for that. I can’t see how they save the money to buy the third frigate from current military purchases though, except some kind of convoluted PPP that sells off/ long term lease off of defence land.

Where they do excel is in Command and Communication. As they are cutting edge in this area and the SAS will have to be fully exposed to this as part of their deployment I’d say we are getting invaluable experience as a result of our combat deployment in Afghanistan.

I’ll shuffle off now and leave the lads to compare their firepower.