Editorial: After Skyhawk folly, let's look closer to home

The mothballed Skyhawkes. File photo / Simon Baker

There will be a hint of irony if one of New Zealand's Skyhawk fighter jets ends up being given to a museum across the Tasman. Australia was strongly opposed to the scrapping of the Air Force's combat wing by the previous Government.

The Skyhawks, it said, were essential if New Zealand was to have a credible, well-structured and versatile Defence Force which was compatible with that of Australia and able to deal with a range of contingencies. The Clark Government did not listen.

So began a process that Prime Minister John Key yesterday described, quite accurately, as "a disaster" for taxpayers.

Today, State Department approval to sell the 17 Skyhawks to an Arizona company, Tactical Air Services, expires. In reality, it is the last chance to get anything much for the aircraft, which have been mothballed since December 2001.

But the Government seems resigned to the $155 million deal falling through. The prospective buyer appears to have fallen victim to the global credit crisis. State Department consent for this sale took four years to eventuate, and there appears no chance of another buyer being interested.

In fact, the chances of selling the Skyhawks were always slim. Their airframes date back to the 1960s, and they were due to be phased out by the Air Force in 2007. Any further interest in them would centre on their upgraded avionics, but these cannot be detached and sold without separate State Department approval.

Further, anyone wanting to buy Skyhawks can always get them from the United States, where they are stored in the desert for better preservation.

Even if New Zealand's Skyhawks were sold now, the Government would have to spend up to $35 million to overhaul them. That cost would be in addition to a similar sum for keeping the aircraft in storage for the past nine years.

The Defence Minister had good reason to suggest the Labour Government needed to take responsibility for that. "They are the ones who thought they could sell effectively 45-year-old aircraft. That has proven not to be the case."

That was not of too much concern when the air combat wing was scrapped. The Clark Government, convinced New Zealand resided in a benign environment, had decided it was superfluous.

Peacekeeping contingents and maritime surveillance were the extent of its defence vision. An American offer to replace the Skyhawks with cut-price F-16s was rejected.

It seemed not to matter that this approach meant New Zealand was in no position to pull its weight in regional security. Understandably, Australia was annoyed. That fissure, with the taxpayer bill, was a significant cost of the Skyhawk debacle.

A defence review looking at how this country's armed forces should operate in the next 10 to 20 years and the capabilities required is being prepared. A reborn air combat wing will not be part of the prescription.

It would be too expensive and too complicated to start that process from scratch. But the review should pay particular attention to the most recent Australian defence white paper, which shifted that country's focus closer to home and suggested much greater integration with New Zealand in the region, especially in transport and logistics.

This process should not go as far as the Anzac rapid deployment task force proposed by the Australians. But the Defence Review should centre on the merits of greater transtasman co-operation.

After a decade of taking different roads, both countries' priorities would make more sense.

If Australia erred by becoming little more than a deputy sheriff to George W. Bush, the presence of a once-valuable New Zealand Skyhawk in an Australian museum would highlight this country's equally rash detour.