Airbus is making a play to replace NZ's ageing Hercules by showing off its big military airlifter this week in a bid to woo the public and Defence chiefs.

A team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel have a big job ahead of them: helping off-load 3000 tonnes of cargo in the coldest, windiest, driest and most remote continent on Earth.

Grannies poured tea as part of a peaceful protest at Auckland's Queens Wharf today.

It may be up to a year before the Defence Force can get back into its Wellington headquarters after Monday's earthquake caused structural damage.

The New Zealand Defence Force is mourning the loss of one of its most respected leaders and a veteran stalwart of its support operation in Antarctica.

It was a faulty switch that left an air force plane grounded in Australia and Prime Minister John Key and 80 delegates stranded en route to India.

A peacekeeping deployment to Sinai has been renewed until 2018 despite earlier concerns about terrorist attacks.

Prime Minister John Key has told an RSA national council meeting that the Government has listened to criticism over its policy not to repatriate the bodies of some soldiers killed overseas.

The 100th anniversary of the First World War in France has been marked in a formal ceremony in Wellington this morning.

Witnesses at an inquest into the death of a Linton-based soldier have been cautioned not to let their fear of being criticised cloud their evidence.

The Government is to buy a $493 million naval tanker which will be custom-made for use in the Antarctic.

Bastille Day is a French national holiday and is commemorated across the country with military parades and celebratory activities.

Twelve sexual assault and harassment complaints have been reported to New Zealand's military police in less than a year.

A trainee Air Force crew joined a search for a missing boat in the Pacific earlier this week, but failed to find it.

New Zealand Defence Force personnel provided direct medical care "shoulder to shoulder" with locals in a recent Timor-Leste humanitarian mission.

Prime Minister John Key has done so many u-turns this week he is in danger of coming to the attention of his boyracer-car-crushing minister Judith Collins.

COMMENT: For those who travelled to Taji with PM, his decision to extend the deployment of 120 troops to train Iraqi forces had a sense of inevitability.

Prime Minister John Key says he remains confident New Zealand troops based at Taji are as safe as they can be despite a car bomb outside the military compound yesterday.

An explosion has occurred within two to three kilometres of Camp Taji in northern Baghdad where 106 NZ Defence Force personnel are currently deployed.

Kiwi soldiers sent to help train Iraqi security forces back in New Zealand.

Three Air Force staff were put under scrutiny after investigations into their connection to a company carrying out work that potentially saved the military's reputation.

The New Zealand Defence Force said that the unnamed soldier was a national liaison officer at coalition headquarters in Jordan.

NZ Defence Force is living to regret its suggestion that Jon Stephenson had fabricated an important element of his 2011 story on the SAS in Afghanistan.

Labour's defence spokesman this morning said that the Defence Force needed to explain why it had wasted $1 million on a defamation case.

A failed challenge to the credibility of a journalist by the Defence Force has blown up in its face, cost taxpayers more than $1 million

The New Zealand Defence Force's awarding of a contract to a company owned by serving personnel broke conflict of interest rules, the Auditor-General has found.

Iraqi troops trained by the New Zealand Defence Force were part of a force that has retaken the city of Ramadi from the Islamic State (Isis) terrorist group.