Soon after Labour came to power in 1999, the planned purchase of 28 F-16s by New Zealand’s air force was cancelled, and the A-4K Skyhawk squadrons, Nos. 75 and 2 – which represented NZ’s only attack or fighter capability – as well as the jet-training squadron, No. 14, were disbanded. Since then, 17 Skyhawks and 17 Aermacchi MB339s have been in mothballs (at a cost of $12 million and counting, according to Heather Roy) in a hangar in Woodbourne. I’ve seen them – they aren’t in bad condition despite their age, and in fact are packed with useful avionics. In 2005, a buyer was found: an American company which takes jet-training contracts from governments around the world (Blackwater’s planned purchase of a light attack aircraft is by no means unprecedented!). They would have taken the old jets off our hands for $155 million, if not for the intervention of the security-conscious US State Department. Every month they stay in storage costs us money. And as time passes, it will get even more expensive and difficult to restore an air-combat capability to the Air Force.
Today I heard some good news - the Air Force will consider reactivating the Aermacchis as an advanced-trainer squadron if the sale is finally declared dead. The Aermacchis are being kept in flying condition, and are not as old and decrepit as the 1960s-vintage Skyhawks. While they would be used for training purposes, they would also offer a land attack capability which the Air Force currently lacks (Air Force helicopters carry nothing more than a door-mounted machine gun, while the P-3 Orions and the naval Seasprite helicopters can be armed with torpedoes and depth charges).
Why do I think this is good news? While I originally disagreed with Labour’s decision to scrap the sharp end of the Air Force, I have come to believe that New Zealand faces almost no conventional threat, and that the future of the defence force is not in UN peacekeeping, but in low-level conflicts and counter-insurgencies like in Afghanistan and East Timor recently. I don’t have any problem with the Air Force prioritising transport, helicopters and maritime patrol – these unglamorous capabilities are always extremely useful. But close air support may well be important in the future. While in Afghanistan air support is provided by the US, and in Timor air support hasn’t yet been needed, the Aermacchis would be ideal for such a role. Their predecessors in the RNZAF were BAC Strikemasters – another slow jet trainer, which proved vital for the Omani and British defeat of insurgents in Oman. Time and again the most useful aircraft for COIN have proven to be slow, cheap attack aircraft, often converted trainers. In fact the last time the RNZAF attacked anyone was in the 1950s when they used De Havilland Venoms against Communist insurgents in Malaya.
Why we don’t need fast jets to defend ourselves
Even if New Zealand was attacked by a conventional enemy using bombers and fighters, we could never hope to have the resources to fight them conventionally. The most effective defense would not involve a few expensive fighters, but rather a large number of cheap missiles and anti-aircraft guns, well camoflaged, as well as underground bunkers and lots of improvised decoys. Such an assymetric strategy saved the Yugoslav army from airborne annihilation during the NATO bombing campaign in 1999. The air defences won’t save you from being bombed (as the recent Israeli strike into Syria demonstatred), but it can make the bombing less effective - over Kosovo, NATO aircraft flew at 15,000 feet to be safe from missiles, which was too high to find Serbian forces or distinguish them from civilians. Meanwhile, we should keep our forces in camouflaged bunkers or small camps in the hills, and put out decoy tanks and trucks for the enemy to waste their bombs on, while preparing for 4GW including an international campaign to gain sympathy and support for our cause. (For more ideas, including how to sink enemy ships before they even reach our shores, see The Strategist’s Hedgehog series, parts one, two, three and three (a)).
Good post Phil, and thanks for the links.
I really agree with the thrust of your ideas. It doesn’t sound glamorous, is low tech, and to some would seem old school. But the point is that it works, and is a practical strategy for a small country with limited means.
Someone once said to me that in future conflicts, even conventional war, the side that will come out best will be that which is relatively low tech. By this I think he meant a side which can fight effectively without relying on high tech systems. A key vulnerability for the US way of war appears to be its inordinate reliance on computers, satellites and sensors -if these are disrupted, or key nodes taken out, chaos could ensue.
Even the credible threat of an adversary being able to do this might deter the US from intervening. This may be part of the PLA strategy in relation to cyber-war and satellite killing capabilities.
Left by strategist on September 29th, 2007