Harpoon is the best series for naval and Air warfare I’ve seen. Harpoon 3 is my favourite as it allows you to really micromanage things. It does however take a bit of effort to learn how to play it.

It’s not perfect, it has bugs for sure and the GUI is kinda dated but it has a good following on the net and the game is till being deveoped.

The ADF use a version of it in their simulation office.

Talking to some guys this weekend who maintain the Ex RNZAF Macchis. They are pretty confident that Malaysia will be buying them.

They are just haggling over the price , hopefully when after Malaysian budget is released they will be on their way

If the hijackers wanted to do that about 3 million new zealanders would brave wind and rain to hold candles to show them the best approach to hit it hardest…

The Skyhawks are subsonic. They were not based anywhere near Wellington.

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really? :rolleyes:

Ohakea was about 150Km form Welington. Unless it has moved since I lived there.

It was about 15mins flight time in an A-4 IIRC.

With enough warning the could intercept a plane anywhere in NZ. But I agree getting the warning time is the issue.

And what is your point? If we don’t need a fighter force why should what the rest of the world does have anything to do with it? BTW I think you will find that most 3rd world countries have plenty of useless fighters in their inventory, lots of palaces too. I really don’t see that affects what we have done or even what we should do.

Well you did mention that plenty of countries don’t have fighters, I just pointed out that all of them are third world countries except Eire

Except that operationally a dozen fighters would be worth zip and cost too much. Properly equipped soldiers make rather more sense. And which Oceanic war in 20 years time are we talking about? China-Taiwan? North Korea-South Korea? Japan-anyone? What difference would we make? What difference could we make? What difference would we want to make?

You could make the same argument about sennd 100 engineers here or there, what difference do they make? Properly equipped soldiers (and ours aren’t) will be useless in conflict bewteen countures (and it doesn’t matter who) in the Pacific rim

Yeah, that is really going to be a problem if we ever have to invade anyone. Besides now that we aren’t pssing money away on flyboys we might actually pay for some upgrades that are long overdue, like upgrading the orions, and the Hercs.

Sure , that should have been done years ago, but again these projects were cancelled/postponed by various governments. It suits NZ and this government in particular not to maintain any effective offensive force.

They replace both M113s and Scorpion light tanks. The difference in running costs alone will save a lot of money. Operationally wheeled vehicles can perform almost anywhere a track layer can… remember even track layers get stuck.

Sure tracks are more expensive than wheels, I don’t recall arguing any different

If we had fighter aircraft in the area do you really think we could command them? Generally when we have our own fighters in theatre… and admitedly this is a long time ago, they and our troops are generally under British command so we would have no direct control over them.

Despite being under the control of a coalition each country maintains its’ own distinct command structure, the countries commander has a veto on what their troops are used for.

A unit of LAVs has all weather vision with brand new Thermal sights and decent firepower with 25mm cannon and 30 cal MGs in an armoured turret. Rather better than an M113.

point being?

Bosnia, Afghanistan, if you look at their web pages we have had deminers and engineers all over the place.

Bosnia, I forgot that, shouldn’t have as my mate served their, but thats it. Until Bosnia the Army had done nothing as a sizeable unit

We can’t think like that anymore. Defence is expensive, you have to spend your money well or you will be spending money on something you don’t use and short changing the things you do use. Any NATO or UN operation or even joint NZ Australian peacekeeping mission or even intervention we take part in they are not going to need more fighters. With our Asian neighbours buying Flankers an early model F-16 is dead meat. .

As for the effectively of the F-16/A-4 vs modern fighers, well I have plenty of HUD film of A-4’s eating F/A-18’s F-16’s, F-5’s etc.

It’s not just the aircraft its the training of the pilots (and ground crew), and the RNZAF pilots were very very good.

As I have said an Il-76MF with a nice western engine or a new Russian efficient one would be the best solution but politics will kill any chance of that.

And common sense, a logistical nightmare operting Russian Aircraft to the airworthiness standards expected by Western air arms

Indeed every western airforce is having trouble keeping pilots but fighter planes are not in short supply.

Not the RAAF

So they have to sail to Australia to get some AAW practise… so what? Aren’t they supposed to “see the world” when you sign up? It isn’t like they never go over there anyway.

Who is going to train the NZ Army and SAS in Forward Air Control/Close Air Support now ? Likewise, who is now going to train our Navy in realistic low level air defence, and who is going to train what remains of the Air Force in fighter evasion tactics? OH we just head over to Aussie, do you think they don’t charge for that

That is why we only need two. BTW just as an Air force isn’t its fighter jets, a Navy isn’t just Frigates either.

Never said it was, we just need to look at the key roles and give the rest to cicy’s and rescuing yachtee and trampers isn’t the Defence forcces key role

That is strange… I heard there was a little bit of ground fighting in the pacific war during WWII. Skyhawks and even F-16s probably wouldn’t have the range for island fighting anyway.
The real problem still remains of who is the enemy. You can’t name them because A you don’t know and B even if you did know naming them exposes you to the problem that they can’t get here to fight us now and if they spent the money to change that we couldn’t afford to stop them.

No one is going to come here to invade. I never said they would. It’s about being aprt of a team, and being able to make a meaningful contribution. As for the enemy, as so as I know I’ll let you know, but I can’t read the future.

Hang on, you told me I was wrong and gave figures. I mentioned your figures matched what I actually said and now you change the arguement to the fact that it cost the NZ taxpayer nothing… so why don’t we just shift all our Skyhawks and macchis and pilots to Australia? Apart from them not wanting them. It wouldn’t be a case of them paying for our airforce because it would be their airforce.

The point being that having 6 of 20 overseas did no harm to the defence of NZ , in fact it enahnces it.This massive cost to mantain the fast jet fleet, well it was it was revealed in Parliament just before they retired that the cost of maintaining the Skyhawks and Macchi’s in service per year, was the equivalent of just TWO days worth of social welfare spending in this country. When put in that kind of perspective it seems a very small price to pay for a country’s future security.

The same arguement? Well we will have to see once the LAVs are fully operational if any UN or NATO or US or joint NZ OZ force turns them down or takes them but doesn’t use them.

I’m sure they won’t policitally it’s always good to have more countries on board.

Not every country does have one.

Yeah and all of them except Ireland are in the 3rd world…

I’ll assume you mean threats rather than targets… exactly what sort of difference will a dozen fighters make and how long will we need to pay out millions of dollars a year for this Insurance?

For as long as it takes, it shows we are willing to pay our way, it maintains a capability that is useful for all services

The airforce wasn’t canned. We have Orions… which we actually use.

Yeah but they have no real offence ability, no missile and no ASW gear that really works. You may as well buy a bizjet with decent radar. You’ll notice the offensive part of the upgrade was canned by Ms Clarke.

A LAV is perfectly suited to peacekeeping operations. It is just peacemaking ops it is not particularly suited for… but then the M113 wouldn’t be any better for peace making ops either… the Lavs will be much cheaper to operate than any tracklayer.

When they’re serviceable, but I suppose we abought enough of them..

Which tells me you aren’t paying attention. We don’t have the population base to afford a force that could operate globally as an independant force. Locally we have no need to do so.

Well lets hope our allies won’t be to busy looking after there own affairs when our guys on the ground need them

The reality is they never have had that. When was the last time we went to war alone? What is the point of Pssing money away on things we might use in some unforeseen future, when we can spend that money now on the things we do actually use.

It’s about having a well balanced force, for example how do you think the Army and Army will train effectively against a air opposition, Those warbirds working the Navy up won’t last forever. How often in the 25 yrs prior to Timor did a sizeable contingent of Army troops deploy operationally overseas?

Yes, a poor NZ Army and an AF with a dozen crap fighters is what they need. Australia would be better served by NZ having a strong Army than a strong airforce. Their airforce is much better than what we could ever achieve. If we ever went to war to aide Oz it would be ground forces they needed, not a few fly boys in crappy old handmedowns. (F-16s or Skyhawks).

Well you obviously don’t know how quickly hey snapped up our crappy pilots and how they miss the unique abilities of the A-4. having worked in and with the ADF, I do…

The F-16’s would have been brand new, and funnily enough their biggest critic, Derek Quiggly actually recommended we buy 12-16 of them. Clarke ignored his report after commissioning it and cancelled them anyway, bet she was pised of he didn’t give her the report she wanted. She wanted rid of them form the day she entered parliament

So the loss of fighters shafts the Navy… How? I would have said that with NZ pilots during the two World Wars tending to fight for the RAF or in commonwealth units that our RNZAF has pretty much done less than our army with regard to our defence. Since WWII what has the RNZAF actually done apart from pretend to be AShMs? The Navy patrols our waters every day and who knows how many yachties they have rescued, while our army has been used around the world on peacekeeping and other operations. Apart from a few exercises with our neighbours what has the NZAF done?

See above re teh Navy, know they have to sail to Austrlia to get some training in AAW . You obviously didn’t read the post above about the role 2 Sqn carried out.. But hey that’s fine….

As for Rescuing yachtees is a coast guard job, don’t need frigates for that, so we may as well get rid of them as well.

As for the RNZAF in WW2, well Perhaps you should check out their history, particularly in the Pacific. Not to mention the NZ Sqns in the RAF.

If you mean imposing NZs will on others the way the superpowers mean “defending their interests” then we have never had that and wouldn’t get it with F-16s either. If you mean defend NZ then the answer is basically the same. Any power that can get here would wipe the floor with anything 4 million people could afford to put up.

Theres no doubt the NZDF is incapable of defending NZ, but now it’s even less cabable of defending NZ’s interest in a high intensity modern conflict

Without the removal of fighters we’d have maybe a dozen F-16s we could spare. With the withdrawl of the Skyhawks and macchis we might actually be able to afford to send a ground force that would actually be worth sending because they will be properly equipped and trained.

Conflict in this area will be naval and Air, 100 LAV’s and associated grunts are pointless, 12-16 F-16s with their highly trained aircrew can provide more of a contribution than a few soldiers…

Yes, 6 of 20… that is 30%. Is that a large percentage of an airforces planes to be permanantly offshore?

Where they were based is immaterial, they were carrying out their primary role as an OCU and actually a real contibution on a day to day basis to defence of NZ. primarily but training the RAN, RAAF and RNZN to fight a martime battke, all this at 0 cost to precious taxpayer.

Desert Storm wasn’t a peacekeeping operation. If our forces don’t suit such roles the I actually don’t care. Back then I am sure they would have been really excited at the arrival of a dozen skyhawks… but only because of nostalgia. Even if we had F-16s back then it would have been more a case of “Ohh great… just put them with the other F-16s over in the corner”. Just like Christmas when that big interesting parcel turns out to just be socks in an unusual box

The same argument could be made for your precious LAVs. It’s all about paying your way….