A Surplus Of Defence Riches, But Lack Of Skill And Experience

Phil
Pennington, Reporter

Analysis
– Heading into next week’s Budget, Judith Collins would
not want any more money for weapons, even if it was offered
to her.

Other ministers have been tightening their
belts under orders from high in the lead-up to Budget Day
next Thursday. But not the Defence/Space/Spy Minister, who
has at least $9 billion of new money to spend – and $12b all
up – by 2029.

“If you said to me, could we instantly
put it up even more, right now I’d say, maybe better not
just right now,” Collins told a Wellington audience early
this month, when asked if she wanted more
funding.

“It’s a really good question because if we
could have more, that would be great.

“But we have to
be able to spend it properly.

“So any fool can go out
and buy a whole lot of things. But you have to have the
personnel.”

A shortage of personnel is just one
problem facing the minister.

While Collins has a
surplus of defence riches to spend on weapons and capital
projects, she has inherited a defence force that is
demonstrably not ready to spend it.

It not only needs
more soldiers – and clever ones to buy and master new
technology – but more and better houses for the ones who
remain.

It is working with a “significantly
depleted… collective skill and experience base”, it said
10 months ago – an issue which would take several years to
fix – and it just sank a $100m ship off Samoa.

The
findings about the sinking were released on a Friday, just
three days before Collins put out the long-awaited Defence
Capability Plan on how to spend $12b.

The NZ Defence
Force (NZDF) learned this week that it would also get more
than half a billion dollars – $680m – more for domestic and
international missions and training over the next four
years, plus almost $160m for personnel allowances.

The
NZDF told
RNZ last week it was in a state of constant review of
its personnel, and was ready for whatever the government
asked of it.

That self-assessment jars with its own
reports to the public and MPs, and several points that
Collins made, including the reliance on second-hand planes
for three decades.

“We do need to actually get the
right equipment for our people and not have to spend the
entire time cannibalizing,” she said.

Six months ago,
NZDF confirmed an RNZ leak that it faced a $360m operating
deficit this year. It promised a number of cuts, but
confirmed that all missions would go ahead.

Now the
money tap has been fully turned on, starting with a
pre-Budget announcement last weekend of $2b+ for navy
helicopters (which comes out of the $12b) and the extra
missions spend (that comes out of almost $1 billion more
over four years for ‘housekeeping’, or operational
expenses).

“Our personnel are being called upon to go
more places, more often and for longer to play New Zealand’s
part in contributing to global security,” Collins’ said in a
statement.

‘Severely degraded’

But one of the
defence force’s most recent missions ended with the
Manawanui under water at a Samoan reef, and an inquiry that
found a host of inadequacies at crew, leadership and Navy
level.

At its most basic level, the crew were not
properly prepared to drop anchors as they motored on
autopilot towards the reef.

At a much more senior
level, the hydrographic survey ship had gone through
substandard preparation in the preceding
months.

Problems with training, experience, risk
management, supervision, “haste”, leadership, distraction
and “hollowness” – among others – all contributed to the
sinking.

The year before it went down, the Chief of
Navy said: “We don’t have enough sailors.”

The 2025
Court of Inquiry said: “The hydrographic capability within
the RNZN is severely degraded.”

The inquiry
recommended 11 reviews, but the defence force gets to decide
how to do the reviews – it will be marking its own
work.

As a mission “output”, the Manawanui was an
embarrassing failure. It shows among other things, that a
capital input – the ship itself – was not enough where other
less obvious inputs – training to use the autopilot, say –
were deficient.

Scaled up, the question becomes how a
defence force desperate for specialists will manage $12b of
inputs; and the extra $680m to “sail, fly, patrol and train
more often” through to 2029, takes on huge
importance.

The Office of the Auditor-General took a
close look at the NZDF’s ‘Sustainability Initiative’ to
improve capabilities, but that was almost 20 years ago. Its
recent audits have been about how Operation Respect – about
treating people better – has been going.

Other
militaries face similar pressures around hollowing out, and
face similar criticisms they are top-heavy with senior
officers.

‘But while the US, UK and Australia have
embarked on cutting senior officers or structural overhauls,
or are positioning for that, the NZDF has not.

The
rebuild – like the Manawanui reviews – will be led from the
top.

The very top level – Chief of Defence Force and
the three Service Chiefs in navy, army and air force – was
refreshed last year. The Public Service Commission managed
what candidates were offered to the government to
consider.

The chief must come from within the defence
force. Outside input is strictly limited.

“There were
no nominations received from government parties, no
communications from other MPs or ministers about the
appointment and no instructions were given to the ministry
or interview panel about ‘shortlists’ or who should be
interviewed,” the commission told RNZ in an OIA.

How
the top of the NZDF operates has its detractors. Sources
close to the front-line talk about “command
under-performance”, and frustration among senior people
pushing paperwork.

“Get most of these senior people
back with their troops,” was one message.

The
attempted rebuild will be unprecedented, having to manage
both massive budgets and huge volatility. The $12 billion
must be used upgrade old assets – frigates and decrepit
housing; procure new ones – missiles, space, cyber, drones
and to keep up with the US-Australia push for
human-machine-integration; and deliver enough skilled people
to maintain and master the new technologies.

And the
ranks are thinnest where they matter most.

“Critical
leadership and instructional rank brackets from Corporal to
Staff Sergeant, and from Captain to Lieutenant Colonel, were
particularly affected” by the post-Covid turnover, the
annual report said.

Collins called it an “appalling”
level of turnover.

Attrition – ‘knocked that one on
the head’

New weaponry aside, next week’s Budget can
be expected to deliver more mundane spending, such as on pay
rises in the lower ranks.

Competition on that front is
coming from the Australian Defence Force (ADF), which
recently extended a $670m recruitment bonus scheme until
2028, to try to fill up scoured-out reserve
forces.

Its enlisted numbers were 4300 below approved
levels in 2024, but the number of brigadiers – paid almost
$200,000 a year – was nearing 60 when the ADF has only a
handful of combat and support brigades.

As in other
industries, the other side of the Tasman can be attractive.
An NZDF veteran who retains close links with people still in
uniform told RNZ: “The conditions, the training and pay are
so poor, if you want a career in the defence force you’re
best to go to Australia.”

Advocates close to the front
line want the Budget to deliver $400m in better pay and
conditions at the NZDF.

NZDF’s reserves have also been
at low levels, a big problem for the likes of rotating out
peacekeepers in Ukraine.

In the regular force, Collins
told the Wellington audience the churn had stopped, with the
Navy at a “record low” 5.8 percent turnover now.

“So
we’ve actually knocked that one on the head,” she
said.

“The problem there though is that the ones, the
people we lost, a lot of them were people with 10 to 15
years experience, very senior capable trainers.

“And
so we have to make sure that we spend some time training
further and growing the people we have, as well as the new
ones that we’ve got money to come in to the
forces.”

The pre-Budget announcement had $39m to pay
people more on deployments.

A now-stabilised defence
force faces both old and new recruiting challenges. To
replenish its lower ranks it quietly reduced educational
entry requirements last year, as RNZ
recently revealed.

Yet by September this had not
helped – it was tracking to follow the five-year trend of
falling enlistments. At the same time, it will need many
more high-tech specialists to run things such as drones,
which will not come cheap and could cause a
log-jam.

Todd Newett – an analyst of defence economics
in Australia – has a suggestion for the Australian Defence
Force that could be relevant here: Delink pay from rank, so
that technicians can be paid enough to retain them, but
without having the high rank that might exacerbate senior
officer bloat.

Upgrades of housing and the NZDF’s
rundown estate are factored into the $12 billion spend by
2029.

However, the years-long projects to deliver on
these have hit delays, and advocates for the lower ranks,
such as Mission Homefront – co-founded by Waiouru military
mother Erin Speedy – are demanding more results.

But
the NZDF has a patchy record, with Treasury reports pointing
to its solid control of spending, but not of time – its
projects face some of the public sector’s longest
delays.

A long march

The expanding budgets of
defence forces around the world enable fixes, but do not
guarantee them.

Canada faces similar problems as New
Zealand with housing and pay, and soldiers voting with their
feet.

So does the UK, where a review of the military
ongoing since last year stated it would look at “how service
life can be improved for those who commit to serve their
country in uniform”. The UK also introduced policy to
“incentivise those at the lower soldier rank
levels”.

A whole other approach is exemplified by the
US under President Donald Trump. His administration has left
diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives crushed in
the wake of what defence media have called “one of [the
army’s] most consequential restructuring efforts in
decades”.

It was “slashing legacy systems,
reorganising commands, and accelerating the development of
technologies”, to deliver “streamlined force structures
aimed at future high-end conflict”.

Ultimately, all
the militaries have the same over-riding aim: To be more
lethal, more combat-ready, to have more strike
force.

Collins has embraced this. She stressed at the
Wellington forum that deterrence was the point, that it was
not controversial to acquire new missiles to achieve
that.

For now, the minister has $12 billion to work
with, and some idea of what to do with it, under a
capability plan she said took years of “focused work” by
agencies to prepare, after 35 years of “under
investment”.

The public might now demand more speed,
less haste.

But taxpayers might face their own
demands, for even more money, and in the not-so-distant
future.

“Our plan is to get to the two percent of GDP
by 2032 and 33,” Collins told the Institute of International
Affairs forum.

“But we’ve also said as part of that
plan that every two years we’ll do a check in to see if we
can go faster or put more into it.”

She pointed to
Poland aiming to get to five percent GDP on
defence.

“It’s a floor, not a ceiling, as the prime
minister likes to say, and I think that’s a good way of
looking at it.

“Will we do more? Well, we might have
to do
more.”

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