Exactly what I meant about snide remarks from people who should know better.
Defence of a country does not have to purely about war. As I have tried to explain, economic defence, such as the preservation of our waters and fisheries from poachers is a primary concern for New Zealand. We have a large country with a vast piece of ocean to patrol and monitor to ensure our companies and those we’ve sold fishing claims to get their fair share, and that rogue boats are not destroying the ecology of the area by over fishing and poaching.
But we as a country of 4 million people, despite our large landmass and waters, are a small fish in a big pond when it comes to economic as well as military force. Trying to maintain our little piece of that big pond when less scrupulous countries like Japan, China, Taiwan and others don’t give a toss who’s water they steal from is getting increasingly difficult when only two Orions can cover that expanse.
Meanwhile we also uphold our international duties under the Search and Rescue pacts, and we do more than our fair share every year in relief work in the Pacific and other regions. We also maintain a presence in Antarctica, and the RNZAF carrie out many peace keeping missions around the world constantly, both in the air and on the ground. The first New Zealanders into the Bosnian conflict were RNZAF, not the Army who got all the glory later. The RNZAF has been serving in Bougainville to stop that country killing itself, and they were very active in East Timor. We still have an RNZAF presence in the Sinai too and many other regions.
And the helicopters do medivacs, SAR, anti drug sweeps, rescues of ill saiors from ships, and much more at home.
The Boeings ship troops, politicians, media groups and goodness knows what else all over the world too, and also have the great job of returning veterans to visit battlefronts on regular occasions as anniversaries arise.
These are the duties taht the RNZAF maintains. The Government chose to decide that the duties of the Combat Wing were no longer required, so they no longer need to maintain those duties, do they? It is no longer a duty if not required.
My biggest concern with the downscaling of the RNZAF is not the loss of the Skyhawks, not the loss of our whizzy-do new F16’s we’d been promised and had bought. It is the loss of skills. In every field, from pilot to avionics mechanic to chef, every trade in the RNZAF was highly trained and highly skilled. They could match it with anyone in the world and proved this regulalry in competitions for aircrews such as the Fincastle Trophy, Exercise Skytrain and many others where the RNZAF had great records of triumph. I was told while in the RNZAF that in an annual excercise where the USS Enterprise invited an elite squadron each year from different countries, to come and attack them and see if they could “sink” her in an exercise, the Skyhawk pilots of No. 75 Sqn RNZAF were the only squadron to successfully accomplish it during their turn. They came in at sea level behind Hawaii and then at the last minute climbs and splashed the carrier. I’d love to know more on this and if it is true or just line shooting. I think it’d be true, I heard it a few times.
Even the chefs regularly won international awards in both military and civil competitions and were always highly sought after by hotels as far away as London.The training was second to none, and we had an entire air force full of well above average IQ staff, all highly trained, who eventually would filter back into the civil world in whatever trade they did.
Pilots, Navigators, mechanics and all number of technical staff would finish their RNZAF career and move onto New Zealand’s airlines, or the world’s. Chefs went to hotels. Accounts and Admin clerks went into businesses. So on.
Now so much of these trades has been farmed out to civil contractors, some with terrible reputations, so to start with they were likely to be much less skilled and capable than their RNZAF counterpart, and they do not go through anything near the training levels achieved in the military. As civilians they can go on strike if they don’t like things, Airmen can’t.
So now the level of skill and training in the RNZAF is much lower. And the stream of skilled fully trained peiople that used to come out the other end of the RNZAF for NZ’s workforce has dried up. That is what worries me. I am now at university. Their ‘teaching’ methods and administration in comparison to the military are appauling. To schools and univerities these days, education is a business, not about passing on skills and educating people. It is all about getting the maximum number of Chinese students in the class room because their fees are four times us Kiwis. It is no wonder this country is fast going down the tubes.
I guess there isn’t a lot left to defend so we didn’t need the F16’s after all.
Sign In
