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.

Labour leader Andrew Little says he will withdraw New Zealand troops from Iraq if his party is elected to power next year.

Sir Jerry Mateparae has agreed to hold a ceremony at Government House in Wellington to honour Kiwi soldier Rory Malone who died in Afghanistan in 2012.

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.

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.

Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee has launched a high-level review of New Zealand troops' role in the fight against Isis.

Warda Jawad came to NZ as a child when her family fled war in the Middle East.

New Zealand's top military science secrets are attracting million-dollar investments from allied defence forces.

Space activities will be on the agenda at a joint conference between New Zealand, the US, the UK, Canada and Australia being hosted in Wellington over the next two days.

The New Zealand Defence Force spent $600,000 defending itself against the defamation case brought against it by investigative journalist Jon Stephenson.

The Defence Force has settled a long-running defamation claim against it by war reporter Jon Stephenson.

New Zealand Defence Force engineers and tradies are helping counterparts in Papua New Guinea build a 350km highway that will link more than 100 remote mountain villages.

New Zealand soldiers have taken part in urban warfare and amphibious training exercises with three other Pacific nations.

New Zealand's new Defence Force chiefs have been announced after Cabinet approved Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee's recommendation.

A Kiwi soldier has lifted the lid on life inside Iraq's fortified Camp Taji and the fight against Isis terrorists.

16 years after her last visit, former spokesperson for the Auckland East Timor Independence Committee Marie Leadbeater finds it a study in contrasts.

The New Zealand Defence Force is participating in an exercise that will see almost 30,000 troops training in multiple locations in Australia and the US.

Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee has just paid a secret trip to visit