Editorial: Breakdowns embarrass the nation

Twice last week this country's contribution to international tsunami relief was affected by the Royal New Zealand Air Force's failure to maintain its aircraft in sound operational condition. The first Air Force Hercules dispatched to northern Sumatra was grounded in Indonesia when a crack was discovered in the manifold. A few days later the second Hercules on the tsunami mission struck mechanical problems, preventing Foreign Minister Phil Goff from making an intended excursion to the disaster zone after the Jakarta aid meeting.

The mechanical faults were minor, easily fixed and the aircraft were soon back at work. But they have been happening too often for too long. Within the past two years Hercules transports have broken down on a cyclone relief mission to Niue, on a homeward journey from the Solomons and, most embarrassing, not one of the four Hercules in New Zealand at the time was able to answer the call when the country decided to send a military policing mission to the Solomons in 2003. Our best military and humanitarian endeavours seem incapable of getting further than Darwin or Jakarta before the standard of our defence equipment shows itself to be shoddy.

It is automatic to blame parsimonious Governments for the state of the armed forces. It is true that defence budgets were slashed in the early 1990s, from 2.3 per cent of gross domestic product to 1.2 per cent. But most countries were cutting defence expenditure at that time, just after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. It was called the "peace dividend". The savings contributed to fiscal improvement in Western economies which helped to produce a decade of remarkable prosperity.

In the latter half of the decade, though, it became apparent that the end of the Cold War was not the end of costly military obligations, especially in the name of "peacekeeping" when genocidal conflicts erupted in regions such as the Balkans. In this country, as in others, policy-makers began to reorganise and re-equip their armed forces to meet newly foreseen needs and contribute to international security. New Zealand's rethinking was done largely by a select committee of Parliament and its conclusions were enthusiastically adopted by the Labour Government elected in 1999. The defence forces were reconfigured for more mobile and small-scale operations in the region and to be able to contribute to international peacekeeping.

The Air Force suffered some casualties to the strategic review, notably its strike wing of ageing Skyhawks. A replacement order of F-16s was cancelled. But reconfiguration did not reduce the need for transport aircraft. To the contrary, they became even more central to the deployment of small, highly mobile, rapid-reaction forces. And the aircraft itself is hardly out of date; the familiar C-130 Hercules still features in the air divisions of many nations' military forces. Eight of them have been involved in Australasian tsunami relief efforts. Four, including one of the troubled New Zealand aircraft, are moving stores within Indonesia while another four are ferrying material and personnel from Australia.

The RNZAF's five Hercules are nearly 40 years old but two years ago the Government announced an upgrade that was expected to extend their use by 15 years. If the aircraft are not obsolete, not peripheral to modern military requirements and not forgotten in defence spending, why are they continually breaking down? It may be that the Air Force overall is suffering from the Army's capture of the lion's share of Labour's defence investments. But it could also be that something is amiss in the maintenance and planning at their home base, Whenuapai. The main purpose of the Air Force in peacetime is to keep these aircraft and crew in a condition to answer the country's call. They should be constantly ready for an emergency, and reliable. They are plainly neither. Their breakdowns are now well beyond a joke. They are becoming a national embarrassment.