The NZ Initiative, who gave us neoliberalism, says we need to buy four to keep one at sea. Just Defence says there are a lot better uses for the money. I’m with them.
The Initiative’s report is compiled by a retired Army Major-General, and is appropriately titled “Adrift.” Just Defence’s title is “Charting a new Course.” Every bit of evidence from the recent exercise of so-called “sea power” in the Near East where the once-mighty US Navy is running for cover from missiles suggests that a new approach is imperative.
Frigates are not cheap. So what purpose do they serve? In the end, both the NZ Initiative and Just Defence come to the same conclusion; their main purpose is to play a minor support role for greater powers.
Just Defence says:
“The key design and equipment specifications for the frigates have been determined by their role as warships operating within an aircraft carrier strike group helping to protect the strike group from aerial (plane, drone and missile) and submarine threats.”
The Major-General reaches for the cliches and invokes the interests of the lanyard class:
“New Zealand’s access to the global commons is not guaranteed. It has been maintained for the past eight decades, by the maritime power of the United States and its allies. That maintenance requires contribution.
A New Zealand that cannot deploy a combat-capable surface combatant is a New Zealand that free-rides on an order it is unwilling to help defend, and one that, in the long run, cannot expect to continue benefiting from it.”
The flaw in this unguent is the fact that the United States is increasingly less able as well as less willing to provide any guarantees on anything, and is in fact demanding that its “allies and partners” play and pay a proxy role in its coming war against China. China is our major trading partner, not our enemy, and we should have nothing to do with other peoples’ wars. Even more so with a serial loser such as the United States.
Even Ron Mark, who is keen to be the next Defence Minister, and who considers we are already in WW3, thinks that frigates are obsolete. We may also be glad that former Navy officer Chris Penk, the inventor of the boomerang torpedo, is no longer in the role. Before his fortunate self-immolation, he was keen to open up a discussion with the US about nuclear-propelled warships in our harbours.
Just Defence spells out the alternatives, as well as all the opportunities if the money is more wisely allocated.
“The most compelling arguments against the frigates are the enormous, inter-generational lost opportunities for us, Aotearoa New Zealand’s people, in favour of preparing for, and deploying to entirely avoidable wars alongside the US.
New frigates will create a massive financial burden, estimated to be a staggering commitment of at least $22 billion over three decades. This is equivalent to $700 million per year. This is money that could—and should—be used to address genuine. security threats including climate change, inequality, and collapsing access to health care and education.”
The NZ Initiative is clearly aware that the US is increasingly seen by New Zealanders as a greater threat to our security than China. And climate change is the biggest threat of them all. Popguns in the Pacific are not much help in combating that.
They should defer the decision until 2029, so they can be informed by the result of the 2028 US election.
Indications we would go with the 2 Mozami and place them in the planned defence spending forecasts would suffice till then.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/frigate-project-progress-key-maritime-security
Why should our defence capabilities and requirements be determined by the outcome of US elections?
We should decide what capabilities New Zealand needs based on our own strategic requirements, geography, commitments and relationships. If we're concerned about dependence on US supply chains, that's a procurement and sovereign-resilience question. There are plenty of non-US platforms available — the Mogami and Type 31 being two obvious examples already under consideration.
I'd also argue that we need more than two hulls if we're going to make this investment properly. Personally, I'd argue for something like five.
Two ships gives you a nominal capability, but very little depth. Ships need maintenance and refits, crews need training, and deployments can last months. If we want to be able to maintain a meaningful presence while retaining another vessel for training, maintenance, regional commitments or contingencies, we need enough hulls to sustain that.
That doesn't necessarily mean five identical high-end frigates. There may be a sensible high-low mix of combatants, patrol vessels, autonomous systems and other platforms. Maybe three VLS-equipped frigates plus a couple of beefed-up OPVs to replace the two Otago-class vessels?
But I'd rather start by asking, “What maritime capability does New Zealand need, and how many hulls are required to sustain it?” than “Who won the latest US presidential election?”
2 indicates a continuance of existing capability, the type is in accord of their own move from ANZAC class to Mozami, thus also that interoperability* (once again they are building some of their own – this provides for some of our own future needs & maintenance cost forecasts).
We can barely crew two frigates now (the Mozami class helps with this – this might allow a third crew to operate an Australian ship/training & development*).
2 because we are discussing frigates here – not the rest of the fleet – see 2.1
As for the timing of a decision, are you unaware of the pressure to conform to defence spending levels expected from the current administration?
An indication of a continuance is the bare minimum required.
GOP again might mean a third frigate (of this, or another type).
A Democratic administration might prefer a Pacific adjunct to military alliance role – a second multi-purpose ship for the Pacific, a Pacific patrol boat (train up locals) – cable protection, sea bed mapping etc.
I understand the argument for two as continuity of the existing frigate capability. I just don't think continuity should necessarily be the objective.
Two hulls gives us very little resilience. Maintenance, refits, training or an unexpected casualty can remove half the combat fleet. Modern, lean-crewed ships like the Mogami potentially let us operate more hulls without anything like a proportional increase in personnel — while also creating more sea time, command opportunities and institutional experience.
And I still don't understand why the 2028 US election should determine our force structure.
I suppose that logic holds if US pressure is the sole reason we're investing in defence at all. But I don't accept that premise.
Our geography, alliance with Australia, Pacific relationships and responsibilities, maritime trade, EEZ and infrastructure don't change when the occupant of the White House does.
Nor is it frigates or Pacific capability. Three combatants plus a couple of cheaper general-purpose vessels could provide both.
The US administration is one factor in our strategic environment. It shouldn't determine the design of a fleet intended to serve New Zealand for the next thirty years.
Two frigates has sufficed for ANZAC's.
It is $22B for 2 Mozami, an extra $11B …
The Mozami smaller crew structure allows proper crewing of the rest of the fleet and staff secondment for experience on the Oz ships.
We are an ally of Australia, continuity there is reliability.
Beyond the 2 hulls is budget and choice – is one multi-purpose vessel enough, is 2 patrol boats enough etc.
Missing the point. We have chosen to continue with a security alliance with Australia and contribute to global security. We also have an EEZ that goes north and also South Pacific responsibilities.
But the government of one party in the USA has recently decided to dictate spending terms for their security partnership (and mention us, when they provide no direct guarantee).
Managing that is an art. Peters has "put up Enzed dollars" for the recent Cook Islands deal, that is in accord with the concept of our Pacific role separate from military confrontation in East Asia.
We've operated two ANZACs. That's not quite the same thing as two having been considered sufficient.
The original 1997 defence assessment (which we should remember was written in a far more benign strategic environment) concluded that four frigates were required to fully meet the government's output requirements, while three couldn't guarantee that all tasks could be met and sustained.
The government nevertheless reduced the planned Naval Combat Force to a minimum of three surface combatants, substantially as a question of what it was prepared to fund.
We then didn't buy the third ANZAC either.
There was even a Treasury-commissioned operational-research study at the time which concluded that a two-frigate force couldn't meet the government requirement and that three was marginal.
And the reason isn't particularly mysterious. Ships spend substantial periods unavailable because of maintenance, refits, upgrades, training and work-up. With two ships, losing one for an extended period immediately removes half the combat fleet, and a defect or overlapping commitment can remove the capability altogether.
So I'd be wary of taking the force structure we ultimately funded and working backwards to conclude that it must therefore have been the force structure we needed.
That's why I'm attracted to four rather than two. It isn't because Washington says we should buy four. It's because, if we've decided that high-end surface combatants are a capability New Zealand needs, I'd rather fund enough hulls to make that capability reliably available.
I'm quite open to the alternative you're describing: perhaps the optimum is two high-end frigates plus more multi-purpose ships, patrol vessels and unmanned systems. That's a perfectly serious force-design proposition.
But then I'd want to compare that against three or four common frigate hulls, potentially with different equipment fits, and ask which gives us the best combination of availability, combat capability, Pacific utility, crewing, training, logistics and cost.
That's the comparison that should determine the number of frigates, rather than starting from two because two is what we eventually chose to live with.
Our 2 frigates are a contribution to a group of 13. A pro rata share.
We send a ship to joint exercises, RIMPAC and others. We join UN role fleet missions. This is episodic contribution – not obligatory (as in requiring constant availability).
I think there is a perfectly reasonable argument to be had about whether frigates represent the best use of New Zealand's defence budget. If there is a better force structure for the money, then by all means make that case.
But this doesn't really make it.
“China is our largest trading partner, not our enemy” isn't a defence policy. Neither is saying that we should have nothing to do with other people's wars. Those are statements about the foreign policy we would prefer New Zealand to pursue. They don't tell us very much about the strategic environment we will actually have to operate in over the next 30 years.
We don't get to decide unilaterally whether the world becomes more dangerous.
China being an important trading partner doesn't make strategic competition, coercion, territorial disputes or growing military power disappear. Equally, believing the United States is becoming less reliable doesn't make the problem go away. There is something rather contradictory about arguing that the power which has underwritten much of the maritime order is becoming less willing and able to do so, and concluding that New Zealand therefore needs less ability to contribute to its own security.
And even if I completely accept the argument that climate change is the greatest security threat New Zealand faces, I don't see how that gets us to the conclusion being suggested here.
Why is climate change a security threat in the first place?
Because its consequences don't stop at higher temperatures. They include natural disasters, displacement, food and water insecurity, infrastructure failure, disrupted trade, pressure on fragile states, competition over resources, political instability and potentially conflict. For New Zealand, a great many of those consequences are likely to occur in the Pacific and the maritime domain.
Those are precisely the second-order effects that a serious security policy needs to think about.
Perhaps frigates aren't the answer. Perhaps we need more sealift, patrol vessels, maritime surveillance, aircraft, drones, long-range weapons or some completely different mixture of assets. Fine. Show your working. What missions does New Zealand need to perform? Against what contingencies? What capabilities do those missions require? What does the alternative force structure look like, and what risks are we accepting by choosing it?
But if we conclude that a serious blue-water surface combatant is one of those capabilities, then buying four seems much more sensible to me than buying two. Preferably five.
A warship sitting alongside in refit is not a warship available for deployment. Neither is one undergoing maintenance, training or work-up. If you actually want to be reasonably confident of having one ship available when it is needed, you need enough hulls to sustain the capability rather than merely owning it on paper.
And yes, $22 billion over three decades is an enormous amount of money. Defence capability is expensive.
But the relevant comparison isn't between $22 billion and zero. It is between the cost of possessing that capability and the cost of discovering, during a serious conflict or crisis, that you needed it and chose not to have it.
You cannot improvise a modern naval combatant after the shooting starts. There is no Bob Semple Tank solution to a capability that takes years to procure, crews that take years to train, and institutions that take decades to build.
That's what bothers me about the “we could spend it on hospitals instead” argument. Governments don't get to select one category of risk and pretend the others cease to exist. Insurance always looks expensive right up until the thing you insured against happens.
Ultimately, this seems to begin with a preferred moral order for New Zealand foreign policy — we shouldn't align ourselves too closely with the United States, China isn't our enemy, and we shouldn't participate in other people's wars — and then constructs the defence policy around that preference.
But the rest of the world gets a vote.
Other states have interests, capabilities and ambitions of their own. Climate change may increase instability rather than replace conventional security risks. Economic interdependence can create vulnerabilities as well as benefits. Conflicts we would very much prefer not to participate in can still affect our trade, our region, our partners and ultimately us.
Defence policy has to begin with the world as it exists, including the parts of it we don't particularly like.
Otherwise we're not charting a new course. We're sticking our fingers in our ears and hoping reality eventually conforms to our preferred foreign policy.
If it maintaining our current contribution, it is 2 frigates that are interoperable.
If we want more hulls in our economic zone and in the South Pacific, there are options other than frigates (and for mine we will need more than we have, but that may not be in the form of frigates).
The delay would help us make the right choice (and the Mozami extra option will remain available).
The geo-political situation is in flux. It is better to wait.
We will need more independent capability – it may be that our utility will be in support for the South Pacific remaining an adjunct to super power rivalry in East Asia.
One or two multi-purpose ships, 2 or 4 patrol boats, 2 ships without the interoperability functions required of the frigates.
I agree that having China as our current friend isn't any more reasonable argument than having had the US as a friend, nor even Australia about how we should run our defence capabilities. These are commitments made over and for many decades and who we're friends or or foul of simply isn't the way to look at defence spending.
You don't have to look far in the historical record to know that your fervent ally one decades can be an aggressor against you within a few decades. Also that military capabilities take time to develop and put into service.
Alliances may be worth consideration if we were in a close defensive alliance. But the only ones that we have at present is a bilateral set of military alliance agreements with Australia. A few defence and security relationships for specific purposes, like the FPDA ties to a few nations with sharing exercises and training. 5 Eyes for signals intel.
What is clear at present especially from the Black Sea experience is at frigates are great targets for sleathy drones, and probably swarms of drones in the air, on the seas and under it. Moreover their range and effective firepower is increasing at a rapid rate. At the same time the cover of being at sea is rapidly diminishing as satellites are so common, and now the increasing use of unmanned drones for surveillance and mesh comms networks is starting to make an impact.
Frigates can be platforms for new generations of drones. But it seems far more likely that they will become a target for them if they are solitary and not running interlocking and overlapping defensive shields. Plus having a few frigates covering the vast expanses of out economic zones and our trade routes hardly seems worth having. Better to invest in the cheaper and far more upgradeable unmanned drone systems.
Yep. It takes lots of time to gain capacity to defend yourself, not only in the procurement, but simply building the training and support structures.
Indeed. And you need to look at the aggressive capabilities of others rather than their benign intentions. In fact you should just ignore 'intentions' altogether. Intentions can change in a few days. Capabilities do not, and what capabilities that other nations, organisations, and even individuals have is what you build defence postures and often diplomatic postures on. The US is currently displaying that in a spectacular way.
At present trusting them on making decisions about our defence would feel like thinking Russia is a misunderstood peace loving empire. Or that ….
You'd have to laugh at yourself for even thinking that bullshit
I think the drone argument is a good one, but I'm not sure it gets us all the way to replacing frigates with drones.
I'd imagine any future frigate-sized combatant would generally be doing one of three things: operating as part of a larger multilateral force with layered protection; operating in a lower-threat environment where sophisticated drone swarms aren't a significant threat; or acting as one of the sensor, command-and-control and air-defence nodes for a distributed force containing drones and other systems.
In other words, I don't think the choice is really “frigates or drones”. It's much more likely to be frigates and drones, with the balance between expensive crewed platforms and cheaper distributed unmanned systems changing considerably.
The Black Sea certainly demonstrates that relatively cheap unmanned systems can make traditional surface operations extremely dangerous. That's an important lesson.
But “surface combatants are increasingly vulnerable” and “surface combatants are obsolete” are two quite different propositions. Before replacing one with the other I'd still want to know which missions we're giving up, which drones can actually replace, and what the resulting force looks like as a system.
I see the main roles for our Navy.
More than enough to keep the Navy.
What I can't see, is us being involved in fleet operations with anyone apart from Aussie. Maybe operating in concert (ie not close fleet operations) in 2 & 4.
I'm not proposing dropping manned surface craft. I just think that frigates are the wrong platforms fro what we need to be able to do.
The primary problem with frigates is that we can't afford enough to be useful. With the usual maintenance cycles, especially after they head towards the end of their life, you need 5 to keep 3 available. One is usually in maintenance docking. Another is getting a refit.
A third is probably in transit to a role. Effectively making it more than a token force than an effective one.
There simply aren't enough manned platforms to fufill the critical roles even when assisted with coverage by the P8s. Also a P8 really only has two roles – detection and destruction. You can't board a vessel from a P8 or a drone.
Drones allow surface vessels to start taking over a role as surveillance, one that doesn't depend on potentially fraught allies to feed info from satellites (or to supply dependable GPS).
Quite simply, to be effective we need more platforms – ones that can carry drones for surveillance and attack, plus 'marines' or ratings for boarding.
Speaking of Russia, Putin and his desperate plan to keep both Saint Petersburg and the Moscow mob happy. Looks like it's falling apart, bread the old leveler.
We are in a hell of a spot down here in NZ. NZ first want to crawl up the US ass, because they know how much of the land is owned by yanks. Labour keep pretending they don't know. And national can neither confirm who owns the land, sighting, labour did it…
Act are effectively the party of white nationalists. Top are nothing more than Teals, the nice people who use to be in national. More specifically Tory without the top layer of SCUM.
Thats what the coalition are by the way TORY SCUM. They have never condemned the IDF for their genocide. Nor have the called out the yanks for the war they have started with Iran. Good on them for keeping Russia at arms length.
Actually Lprent – what are your views on what the US did and continues to do to Iran? As I always enjoy your opinion, especially when I get you grumpy 🙂 Like my view we need to end the war in Ukraine – it is a slow genocide – the pop-replace rate has collapsed. Russia the dumb asses, are not far behind.
It is a stupid conflict and has been since 1979 (and 1951) largely due to the US repeatably never learning the lesson about self-determination and wanting to interfere in the internal workings of sovereign nations. Eventually and probably sooner rather than later, they will have to withdraw having achieved few if any of their objectives.
Same problem with Russia and Ukraine. `We' can't end it. Russia started that war with a pile of spurious propaganda, that when you broke it down, were just another variant of imperial manifest destiny.
The simple minded (you as I remember) sucked it down and repeated it like parrots. But the resistance of the last nearly 5 years and a mincing machine that is now the front-lines and increasingly the industrial infrastructure put a lie to all of those pretensions.
Realistically it has to be Russia having to decide to pull back from its imperial ambitions, and their invasion of another state. Like the WW1, the post WW2 Warsaw Pact, Afghanistan or the Chechen wars, the Russian power structures are reluctant to give up on their futile dreams of puppet governments and 'victory'. It'd probably take another revolution to cause them to pull back for a while.
Problem for them is their accretion the numbers of hostile border states keeps making it harder and harder to rebuild their economy.
I did not buy the propaganda. I just argued any and all wars are stupid. And for reasons of demographics, the war against Ukraine should be stopped as quickly as possible. The alternative was to force Ukraine into a slow form of genocide.
OH, and that is happening now.
On a positive note – I hearing things are getting bad inside Russia, for the oligarchs. They can no longer hide how bad this war is for the average citizen. The dead are too many. Also the boarders are shut to exit for anyone under the age of 30 – what that means, who knows? My friends speculate they going to call up the under 30 age group soon.
Not sure if revolution is in the air in Russia, but more disquiet than when they started this evil bloody war.
There is an even better option – joining NAM (Non-Aligned Movement): 120 nations choosing neutrality, sovereignty and working for global equity over being party to superpower military conflicts.
The organization which has both Russia and China with "observer status" doesn't seem that non-aligned, to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement
Because if we simply declare ourselves non-aligned, potential conflicts and security risks will politely go away?
Non-alignment is a foreign-policy choice. It isn't a force field.
You can choose not to regard another country as an enemy. You can choose not to join a military alliance. You can choose neutrality.
What you can't choose is whether another state threatens your interests, coerces you, or decides to use force against you.
Ukraine might have a few observations about how much protection declaring yourself non-aligned provides when a more powerful neighbour decides otherwise.
Yeah, the Budapest memo come to mind.
No, we shouldn't join the organisation with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea.
What do say to Australia, our one formal ally?
That they can’t count on us at all?
Do you think Australia will do nothing? How long would all our special rights, that no other nation has, will last?
Over the years I have thought a lot about this. I can see the appeal of being more independent. However, I also think the Australian relationship is fundamental. That no longer being an ally is not realistic. As a consequence we do have some defence obligations commensurate with our size. Being interoperable and being able to make a meaningful contribution. East Timor demonstrated that.
So in short frigates will be necessary. They don’t have to be the Mogami class. The Type 31 might be more appropriate being a more general purpose ship able to work well with our South Pacific partners.
There is a tad of inconsistency in noting the relevance of interoperability with Australia and going with type 31.
I think you're missing Singapore, Malaysia, the UK, and quite a few Pacific states.
Australia is certainly our only formal defence ally, and by far our most important defence relationship. But our defence relationships don't begin and end with Australia.
We're also part of the Five Power Defence Arrangements with Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and the UK, have longstanding defence and security relationships throughout the Pacific, and actual constitutional defence responsibilities for the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau.
Which rather reinforces your broader point: whatever force we maintain needs to be able to operate effectively with other countries.
For a country of five million people, interoperability isn't some concession of sovereignty. It's how we turn a relatively small military into something capable of making a meaningful contribution.
And there's a fairly basic principle of reciprocity here. If we expect other countries to consider New Zealand's security worth contributing to, it's reasonable that they expect us to contribute to their security as well.
I'd agree with all of that. I like the current mix because the nations are like-minded enough, and with teh exception of Aussie largely unentangled with Great Power hubris.
I just don't think that requires frigates. I think that frigates going forward just means that purchasing another commitment of 30+ years, we'd be less effective in the changed tactical environment and less usual to those we cooperate with.
Plus NZ is ideally suited to leveraging drones of all kinds, mesh comms sytems, and semi-autonomous robots. There is already a lot of experience in-country. Whereas there is a deepening dearth of expertise in the heavy engineering that is a frigate.
Is that required, if Oz is building them and maintaining their own?
I don't see anything particularly wrong with beginning with a preferred moral order. Most of the world is realising the wisdom of not aligning too closely with the erratic United States. China isn't our enemy – they have offered us the hand of friendship. We certainly shouldn't participate in other people's wars. Climate change and disaster defence is the biggest challenge in our region – that's the way the world is. So a defence policy based on meeting that challenge ticks all the boxes.
There's nothing wrong with having a preferred moral order. I have one too.
The problem is confusing what we would like other states to do with what we should reasonably plan for them being capable of doing.
China offering us the hand of friendship is welcome. I sincerely hope that continues. But we're talking about defence capabilities that will exist for perhaps 30 years. Governments change. Intentions change. Strategic circumstances change. Military capabilities are rather more persistent.
Likewise, saying we shouldn't participate in other people's wars doesn't mean those wars can't affect us. We are a small trading nation sitting in the Pacific, dependent on maritime commerce. We don't get a veto over whether instability, coercion or conflict reaches our interests.
And I agree that climate change and disaster response will be among the largest challenges facing our region. But that strengthens rather than eliminates the need to think about security. Climate change brings second-order consequences: displacement, resource pressure, state instability, disrupted trade and potentially conflict. A serious defence policy has to account for those as well as disaster relief.
By all means argue that frigates are the wrong capability. I'm genuinely open to that argument.
But then we need to specify the alternative: what missions do we expect the NZDF to perform, against what risks, with what capabilities, and what risks are we consciously accepting by not having others?
Good thoughts RP. NAM sounds like a good idea. The idea is idealistic of course, and can't count as something to be tied to. It would provide a good reason to meet with other countries and be informed about the rest of the world, not so far under the thumb of allies that we would hound a good civil servant to Court and illness as with Dr Sutch.
A time for sizing each other up and seeing which people seem to have some nous. And find out what they are up to. If 120 countries belong it sounds like there would a good dinner and some interesting meetings to follow. What could be better.
The NAM membership would not be an option if still a defence ally of Australia (given their connections).
Beating up a peril? War as a growth industry!* Frigates, nuclear, beggar ourselves and bugg.r ourselves. That is what our lovely aliens (sorry Freudian-slip allies) offer us.
This from Scoop is a point. https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2609/S00037/on-how-the-pentagons-colonisation-of-australia-affects-us.htm
The concept of "perpetual war" has been discussed by scholars and critics such as Noam Chomsky, who argued that perpetual war helps maintain the dominance of political and economic elites, and Robert Fisk, who described Western conflicts in the Middle East as a new form of perpetual war after the Cold War.
Also 1795 Immanuel Kant – a German philosopher who we humans managed to ignore as with most other conceptions requiring restraint.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Peace:_A_Philosophical_Sketch
JSTOR https://www.jstor.org › stable › 3748024
Kant's Doctrine of "Perpetual Peace" – JSTOR
Kant makes the further important point that no question of right or wrong is ever decided in war; war is a mere trial of strength, and "victory" the favourable result for one side, proving doubtless who was stronger, but not…
The only reason to have frigates beyond what's needed to patrol or marine economic zone would be if we thought we where going to get inundated with boat people due to climate change.
Better we have shit hot armed forces and serious drone capability.
5 frigates would last five eigths of @#$% all if a shooting war with the big boys.
I had a memory about Sweden being practical with its shipping assets, post WW2, and have 'trawled' through shipping and defence/fishing vessels and pass on links of interest for anyone who is in my uninformed situation.
AI assist – good general info I think. After World War II, Sweden repurposed some fishing vessels into naval defense roles, particularly for coastal defense and patrol duties. These conversions were part of a broader strategy to enhance the Swedish Navy's capabilities without significant new shipbuilding investments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_equipment_of_Sweden_during_World_ War_II#Navy
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe//se-marinen-doctrine.htm (Cold War-2025)
https://nordicdefencesector.com/en/article/sweden-orders-four-new-auxiliary-ships
https://www.bairdmaritime.com/fishing/fishing-boat-world-reviews/vessel-review-nordsoen-danish-fisheries-enforcement-vessel-built-for-extended-patrols-in-north-sea
ScienceDirect : https://www.sciencedirect.com › science › article › pii › S0308597X24000757
New Zealand Defence Force https://www.nzdf.mil.nz › nzdf › our-equipment › ships-and-watercraft
China – https://asiatimes.com/2026/02/chinas-fishing-fleets-are-beijings-secret-naval-weapon/
(I thought of drones being airborne but seaborne also!) https://www.riskintelligence.eu/background-and-guides/the-sea-of-drones-how-unmanned-technology-is-remaking-naval-warfare
https://thedefensepost.com/2026/03/31/norway-standardized-vessels/ – Norway has contracted Salt Ship Design and Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace for the design and concept development of a new standardized vessel class for the Norwegian Armed Forces…
2021 Report apparently by the USA. Prepared by the Office of Naval Intelligence. (Has a lot of references to China in the index.) https://www.oni.navy.mil/Portals/12/reading_room/20210616_Congressional%20 Report_Final%20-%20%2019AUG21.pdf
Sweden had 28 destroyers in 1945. Not to mention the rest of their extensive navy. One of the benefits of being neutral – no one was sinking your navy.
I'm not sure what the relevance of their post-war naval policy is to NZ. We're certainly not starting from the same point.
Military equipment of Sweden during World War II – Wikipedia https://share.google/MRBOuergP8CVM4rMf
You are so sure about everything Belladonna. Stand for PM please and give us some fibre and direction.
Goodness, you really don't want to debate issues, do you.
Quoting facts from the same Wikipedia article that you linked to, doesn't require a lot of intellectual heft.
Did you actually read it? Or just relied on AI to do the heavy lifting for you?
Of course I just skimmed through it. I have to try to live my life as well as argue for better political decisions, while people like yourself Bd seem quite sanguine.
But to remind ourselves of different matters than are right under our noses would round off our views, those that are thinking and questing that is.
I've now thought that the fishing companies here are doing well and may queer their own pitch with their enthusiastic catch volumes. We have largely sold our nation's assets and have gone in for PPP; so we could lease some of their big fishing vessels for frigging frigate purposes while closing some areas from all fishing on a number of breeding seasons basis.
That would save the country from unviable debt and also the fishing stock might get boosted. Let's wade into the argument with that – it might be an 'Eureka' moment.
Your version of 'skimming' clearly doesn't involve comprehension (let alone "thinking and questing")
Are you referring to Moana New Zealand the predominantly Iwi owned fishing company – with joint ownership of Sealords?
Why you would think that a fishing vessel and a frigate have anything in common (apart from the fact they both float)?
Sweden also invested heavily in its own indigenous military-industrial capability throughout the Cold War.
They built their own fighter aircraft, submarines, armoured vehicles, surface combatants, artillery, missiles, radar and other weapons systems. Their neutrality wasn't based on not having conventional military capabilities; it depended upon having a remarkably substantial military for a country of Sweden's size.
Repurposing civilian vessels for auxiliary roles can be perfectly sensible. So can drones, patrol vessels and other relatively cheap platforms. But none of that demonstrates that you don't also need high-end combat capabilities.
This a key overlooked aspect of Swedish defence. The cost of modern weapons and equipment is prohibitive if you buy it all from overseas. If we want to modestly re-arm, it needs to come with a wider industrial policy that includes local production of defence related material. A joined up policy might encourage the local manufacture of all sorts of things – uniforms,personal equipment, rations, short/mid range drones etc to manufacture of small arms, crewed served weapons, ammunition and potentially even (given our local expertise in the area of solid rockets) short (up to 1000km) and medium (up to 3000km) range ballistic missiles. With a proper industrial policy the creation of such a industrial base with government defence spending would create a lot of jobs and could kick off all sorts of downstream, non-military related industrial activity. We could then easily find ready export markets to offset the purchase of bigger ticket items. Australia already has a burgeoing military-industrial complex that employs 65-100,000 people. Scaled to NZ, that is potentially 15-20,000 jobs here! Lets get on the bandwagon.
Somewhere in my reading about Sweden it referred to Sweden's neutrality and that it did not end up with ruined infrastructure, coping with war recovery as did other nations! So Sweden walked the tightrope with Hitler's bunch and continued maintaining and building its strength and independence after the war as you point out RP.
And included in the list of links I gave is mention of new shipping for the Nordic countries and the fact they are building their own. We might be able to hook into their designs if suitable, and get a good price while they are 'tooled up' for themselves?
Sanctuary refers to the cost and work that should be carried out 'in house'. It will be just another drain on our dairy earnings etc. if we get them built overseas, while at home able men and women sit and chew their nails because we aren't allowed to do much for ourselves any more.
If NZ Initiative want to pay for them no problem!
We need waka to mitigate the heavy weather we keyed in with our fetishistic devotion, to burning shit.
Quite frankly a frigate is too slow, too weak, and at best, just a target to distract.
So my question for Ron baby and the others who vote NZ1ST, if we in WW3 – and the yanks started it, why are we even bothering to getting our troops killed for yanks? RON!! – Don't you think the heavy weather and working just to survive that is not war enough?
We have been very lucky only getting 100 Year storms only once every 4 to 5 years so far. But event's like this are on the rise, and their is nothing we can do about it, but survive, and mitigate.
Please, tell me from your obviously extensive military experience and genius: what defence capabilities should New Zealand be buying, then?
You've ruled out frigates because they're apparently just targets. Presumably the same objection applies to aircraft, helicopters, armoured vehicles, bases and anything else sufficiently expensive that an enemy might consider destroying it.
So what does your proposed NZDF actually look like?
Because “climate change is a serious threat” isn't an answer to that question. I agree that climate resilience matters. It doesn't follow that New Zealand therefore has no need for maritime surveillance, sea control, protection of shipping, anti-submarine warfare, air defence, disaster response, sealift or the ability to operate alongside Australia and other partners.
Nor does buying frigates somehow commit New Zealand to fighting every American war. Decisions about what military capabilities we possess and decisions about when and where we deploy them are two different things.
So by all means argue that frigates are the wrong capability. But what's the alternative force structure?
What do you buy, what missions can it perform, what threats is it designed against, and what capabilities are you prepared to give up?
Because “waka” is a funny answer (hat tip to Te Wiki o te Reo Māori), but it's not a defence policy.
So your a kill kill kill type. Fair enough.
I've implied that the war we have, is with – what nature itself will throw at us. To think all we need is some sort of basic resilience is just wild. That might have been the case 20 years ago, but we done fucked up and kept burning shit.
We have blown past 1.5 and are rushing head long towards 2.5. And 2.5 is not twice as worse, if the conservative models are correct – then it's a nightmare which will collapse society.
I see our defence as helping keep our society and country operating under more extreme, violent and destructive weather.
To engage in traditional war, burn more carbon, or engage in acts of militaristic paranoia – will condemn future generations – to at best, an extremely ugly existence – just to survive. At worst, the total collapse of society – where any jingoism is with spears and stones.
Your liberalism and that of most who comment here, is a bitter pill to swallow.
And what, exactly, do you think 2.5°C of warming will cause? A spontaneous outbreak of peace, love and eternal human brotherhood?
If we're facing the kind of climate disruption you're describing, then we're also potentially talking about food and water insecurity, mass displacement, disrupted trade, infrastructure failure, resource competition, political instability and increased pressure on already fragile states.
Those are security problems too. And some of them create conditions in which conflict and interstate coercion become more rather than less plausible.
I've never argued that climate change isn't a major security threat. Quite the opposite. I just don't understand the leap from “climate change could be catastrophically destabilising” to “therefore we no longer need to think seriously about conventional security.”
But, again, you seem much more interested in deciding what sort of person I must be for holding that view, and attributing motivations to me that I simply don't possess, than actually engaging with the argument I'm making.
If your response to disagreement is to insinuate that the other person must be morally suspect, then maybe foreign-policy debate isn't going to be very productive.
Because I don't think you're a bad person. I think your analysis is wrong, I find your writing almost impenetrable, and throwing “liberal” at me like it's some devastating DSA insult doesn't actually answer anything I've said.
And if my views, or those of other commenters on this site, are genuinely that odious and offensive to you, you're entirely free not to engage with them. But disagreement isn't evidence of moral failure.
Are you smoking crack? Or is that you get off on being that obtuse to show how clever you are?
Then your solution – burn more carbon, engage in more and more conflict, and finally the cool one. Ramp up the state military apparatus and deepen the issue – by playing from the same play book.
Liberalism – you might wanna go check what it means.
I did not call you a liberal, just to clear that up for you.
And yes there is a moral argument here – because this is a moral argument. Do we continue down this paranoid path of self destruction or not?
And you have argued yes we should, or some version of it.
I'm pointing out that road will not work, and you took it personally – chin up. You have the majority on your side. I expect at the end of the day, while what is left of humanity, is scraping a living in Antarctica whilst the rest of the globe is uninhabitable for our species.
Your ghost will go, but it was the rational thing to do…
No, I understand what you're saying perfectly well. I just think you're well intentioned but shipping profoundly stupid ideas: the kind that get people killed in conflicts you are too smug and ignorant to prepare for
I don't think you do understand the fundamentals of the science I'm talking about. Nor my position at all, we are at the start of El Niño, which regularly triggers extreme weather. And this is the largest we have have ever seen.
If you have the time, this is just one example of that – a phenomenon that has only been observed in the last 50 odd years. And they are getting worse.
Another example is the rising sea temperatures, and the death of key stone creatures. To many marine scientist friends and acquaintances – have committed suicide over this, to make me take it as lightly as you do. Please do take the time to read what they we're, and now I am deeply way past the point of being worried about.
My aim and desire is for us to turn inward in our defence. To protect what is local and close to home. We are already in a war for survival, and to embrace a war amongst ourselves at this juncture, is akin to species suicide.
Look my solution to jingoist leaders – I can not say on this web site. But I'm not alone in thinking that dealing with this type of leader at this point of history is an imperative. So don't think for one minute I'm wishy-washy, there are just rules here and I'm not going to break them.
Adam, you're still arguing against a position I don't hold.
I don't dispute the seriousness of climate change, El Niño, ecosystem collapse or any of the other risks you're describing. You can provide another hundred examples and I will probably agree with most of them.
What I dispute is the leap from “climate change represents an enormous threat” to “therefore New Zealand doesn't need to prepare for conventional military threats.”
Climate change doesn't make geopolitics disappear.
In fact, it is widely regarded as a threat multiplier: something that can exacerbate conflict, resource competition, state fragility and geopolitical instability. A deteriorating climate is therefore an argument for taking the future security environment more seriously, not less seriously.
Nor does preparing for the possibility of war mean embracing or wanting one. It is simply Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Purchasing frigates does not constitute tacit support for whatever US/NATO/Australian/bogeyman-du-jour imperialism you happen to object to. Because interoperability with our allies and partners is not the same thing as uncritical political support for everything they do.
We can disagree with an ally or partner and still recognise that, if New Zealand ever has to operate alongside them, having ships that can communicate, coordinate, replenish and fight effectively together is rather useful.
Still missing the point…
Your arguing for a system which I’m arguing will kill us all.
I say fight to save our species. You say fight each other because that’s what we do.
You are in the majority view – so we are going to die as a species.
The USV and OWA strikes on Russia's Black Sea fleet have occurred in the context of a war being fought in a confined inland sea. The local "if it's an armoured vehicle it's a tank, if it's painted grey it's a battleship" pacifists and defeatists love drones, because drones means you can dismiss anything as a waste of time in the face of this new wunderwaffe.
The Russian flagship Moskva was incompetently handled and was sunk by two land launched conventional anti-ship missiles. Drones pose a minimal threat to a warship at sea. A Geran-4 jet powered drone flies in a straight line at about 400km/h with a small (50kg) warhead. Performance wise this is about the same as a WW2 fighter, except it flies in a nice straight line at a nice medium altitude. They would easily be handled by 1940s technology.
A Mogami class frigate, if fully spec'd out with the right weapons, isn't just a juiced up Leander. It has a strategic dimension. It can carry missiles capable of intercepting ballistic missiles in the outer atmosphere, long range (1500km+) cruise missiles, 400km+ range anti-ship missiles and advanced anti-aircraft missiles easily capable of intercepting anti-ship missiles.
It isn't a sitting duck for anything.
One where the Russian Navy has had to pull their remaining still mobile ships and support systems back to the other side of that inland sea about 400-500km away to prevent themselves being attacked. And they still being attacked.
If you load it with ordnance and have enough onshore to resupply for a war or sustained military action, that will easily double the cost of the platform. Which leaves less to provide the platforms that actually to the primary tasks for NZ of patrolling the EEZ and protecting trade routes. War isn’t about just the gear, it is largely about logistics – which why only drooling over tech specs is a bloody stupid idea.
Yep just like the conventional anti-ship missiles, cruise missiles of yesteryear.
The difference being that drones are way way cheaper, and are mostly typically designed to not just power forward relying on speed. They tend to have remote piloting and frequently autonomous evasions and attack routines. They are built and designed as loitering munitions that take advantage of mistakes and are often swarmed to help make those mistakes happen.
They are not only in the air. They are increasingly being deployed as surface, semi-submerged and submersibles with low profiles and much heavier payloads. They are also starting to be developed as intelligent stealthed mines with powered local attack profiles.
Most of these developments have happened in the last 5 years under wartime pressures in limited budget situations and almost as a cottage industry. The refinements over the next decade are probably going to enhance this much much further.
Plus they are just starting to use LLMs in their attack and loiter patterns. Now that I have been using those for a while, and with my previous experience using device level sensors, clearly signals a whole new qualitative level of attack patterns is likely to evolve very rapidly.
The main limitation with the current generation of UAVs, as I understand it, is that they generally don't carry a large enough warhead to pose the same sort of threat to a modern warship as a conventional anti-ship missile. They can certainly damage sensors, start fires, contribute to saturation attacks and potentially achieve a mission kill, so they're hardly irrelevant.
A USV or UUV can carry a much larger warhead, and Ukraine has demonstrated pretty spectacularly how dangerous those can be. But I think the operational conditions in which they're employing them are fairly contingent: a relatively small and congested sea, a Russian Navy which spends a great deal of its time in port, ships moving between a relatively small number of known locations, good intelligence coverage, and comparatively short distances over which to find, track and attack them.
You'd have to think a much smaller version of Russia's Poseiden system isn't far away. A small undersea drone running on nuclear power and using LLM for targeting would be a nightmare for Naval ships. Even more conventionally powered small drones smart enough to identify and target steering or propulsion systems will make traditional Naval ships obsolete unless they find ways to electronically hide from the drones.
I understand what you are saying, but submarines already exist.
Yes, they're large and crewed by people with all the contraints that involves. Imagine much smaller, indefinte power, able to identify targets autonomously.
But I still don’t see how that revolutionises ASW.
You’re essentially describing the threat profile of an SSN without the people aboard. If you can build cheap autonomous loitering torpedoes in large numbers, then I can also build cheap autonomous sensors, decoys and countermeasures in large numbers.
That may change the economics and tactics of ASW considerably. It doesn’t make ASW disappear.
You can’t assume offensive autonomous systems improve dramatically over the next decade while defensive autonomous systems remain frozen in 2026.
The Just Defence report makes points that need to be answered, if NZ frigates are going to be replaced. In particular:
So at minimum new frigates need to do the job of patrolling from the ice shelf to the equator which is where our realm extends. If they aren't doing that then it's reasonable to ask what their role is other than sucking up to US-based exercises up and down the Chinese coastline.
I have loved seeing the Canterbury do so many useful tasks around the place and honestly I think we need three of them: Otago harbour, Auckland, and one up in Marsden Point. There's just too much seismic risk and cyclones now not to have some proper littoral support for all those coastal communities that get smacked so hard and so often both NZ and Pacific islands.
Even the UK's Vice Admiral Moorhouse has said that frigates aren't enough and at minimum need a whole bunch of drone support:
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/08/17/uk-pitches-military-tech-role-and-navy-frigate-deal-to-nz/
So Mike I don't always agree with you but I think those report writers have good points that a left government should squarely answer before they take that volume of taxpayer funding out of my behind.
The 31 salesperson, who supports the Oz sub deal, was promoting a role for us in AUKUS development of add on fire power to those frigates.
The need for another
Canterbury type ship will only grow (as will the call for a Pacific patrol vessel).
The smaller crew size with the Mozami frigate would allow crew for offshore patrol boats.
"China is our major trading partner, not our enemy…"
It's both of the above. Please read 'The Open Society and its Enemies.' TL/DR = NZ is one of the open societies, China is one of the open society's enemies.
And you bet the other open societies will see us as a freeloader if we don't have any combat forces that can work with them. They probably do already.
Conclusion from an article in today’s Naked Capitalism: Armed Madhouse – Ocean Presence: A New Model of Naval Power https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/09/coffee-break-armed-madhouse-ocean-presence-a-new-model-of-naval-power.html – 09/15/2026 – Haig Hovaness
"For most of naval history, sea power has meant putting scarce ships in important places. Technology changed the ships dramatically, but not the underlying model. From sailing fleets to carrier strike groups, naval power remained something assembled, deployed, concentrated, sustained, and eventually withdrawn.
Autonomy, global communications, proliferated sensing, long-range precision weapons, and increasingly capable unmanned systems now permit a different model. Functions concentrated aboard the warship can be separated physically while remaining integrated operationally. Sensors need not travel with weapons. Weapons need not travel with command centers. People need not travel with most of either.
The resulting force would not simply be today’s navy with the sailors removed. It could consist of a predominantly unmanned maritime infrastructure organized around different principles: no privileged nodes; distributed failure tolerance; dispersed assets with concentrated effects; capability through quantity; and deterrence through assured residual capability. Its components could be individually less important precisely because the system is designed to survive their loss.
The strategic consequences extend beyond survivability. Persistent sensing can turn distance into warning depth. Dispersed weapons can threaten concentrated forces without concentrating themselves. Industrial capacity can make regeneration part of combat power. An unmanned architecture can treat platforms as consumable without making sailors casualties.
The warship will not disappear. The more consequential question is whether it will remain the organizing unit around which naval power is constructed. That will ultimately be determined by comparative strategic efficacy: which architecture can produce the greatest quantity of persistent, geographically relevant, integrated combat power for the resources devoted to it? If distributed systems win that competition, naval power will reside increasingly in the integrated network of assets across sea, seabed, air, space, and shore.
That transformation may eventually challenge one of the oldest concepts in naval strategy: command of the sea. Traditional naval power seeks to establish control by moving sufficient force into a maritime region, defeating or deterring opposition, and preserving freedom of action there. Control is consequently something a fleet acquires, exercises, and can lose when the balance of forces changes or the fleet departs.
Ocean Presence suggests another possibility. If sensing, communications, weapons, reserves, and regeneration are persistently distributed through the maritime environment, naval power need not travel before it can be exercised. An adversary instead faces the problem of suppressing an extensive network designed to survive attrition. Command of the sea begins to give way to something closer to persistent control through ubiquitous operational denial.
No network will literally own the ocean. Maritime space will remain contested, systems will fail, adversaries will find countermeasures, and geography will continue to matter. But the relationship between naval power and geography can change. Traditional fleets seek to control maritime space by concentrating sufficient force within it. Ocean Presence seeks to make military power a persistent property of the maritime space itself. The future of naval power may therefore lie not in commanding the sea with fleets that periodically arrive, but in creating a naval ocean presence that never leaves."
Eeh. What about the fishies and their sensors, whales, porpoises etc. Humans are getting too big for their boots, invading every corner with their incompatible systems. The sea is the world of other creatures.
I remember a song about it from childhood sung in French, very popular. It was 'La Mer' by Charles Tenet, recorded in 1946. Here it is presenting the beautiful sea and music with English subtitles as well though they seem not good translation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2kuW4Kz6hs
The question further on as things regress inevitably for the losers who think themselves winners, will be how to almost destroy the planet and still keep bits of it pristine for the golden gargoyles?