Former defence chief scorns group’s policy

Press, 8 February 1986, Page 30

Former defence chief scorns group’s policy

PA Wellington A former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Sir Richard Bolt, criticised parts of the defence policy released last week by the pressure group, Just Defence, as "superficial waffle.” Just Defence’s plans relating to both the Navy and the Air Force showed that they failed to understand the idea of deterrents, said Sir Richard. These were not magical but consisted of collective defence arrangements to combat instability. Sir Richard said he did not think the distinction between offensive and defensive weapons used by Just Defence was a valid one.

“Offensive weapons are some of our best defensive forces,” he said. The group's insistence on scrapping the Navy’s four frigates and replacing them with corvettes (lightly armed escort warships) was unrealistic. By the time corvettes were outfitted for all the demands that would be made on them a frigate would be built, he said.

The problem had been considered many times but the same hard fact came up each time, he said.

“You just can’t get away with operating bluewater forces with little boats.” Sir Richard was also critical of Just Defence’s plans for the Air Force. These included the gradual elimination of Skyhawks, the return to an all-propeller fleet, and the replacement of Orions with less-complex surveil- - ~4ance planes. "T would love to see what offensive capability you would have in a prop ’aircraft,” he said. The group’s recommendations on the Orions had ' ' ' - • TF.

not taken into account the size of the area in which New Zealand was located, he said. To pursue Just Defence’s thinking properly would demand more, rather than fewer, Orions.

New Zealand had to accept that it could not provide wholly for its own defence and needed friends, said Sir Richard. “Inevitably we would have to do some of the dirty work in an alliance to make our full contribution.”

Brigadier John Mawson, of the New Zealand Army Association, also rebutted Just Defence’s distinction between offensive and defensive weapons.

The weapons which Just Defence had identified in its policy as offensive were available for both offensive and defensive work depending on what was needed, he said. “Attack or defence is a function of the task given, not the weapons themselves,” he said. The Scorpion reconnaissance vehicle, he said, was as relevant to the defensive as the attacking phases of war. The armoured personnel carriers criticised by Just Defence also had civil defence functions considered desirable by Just Defence. They had recently been used in floods and to help feed snowbound sheep, he said. Brigadier Mawson also rejected Just Defence’s assertion that -here was something inherently aggressive about the Ready Reaction Force. “Its employment is entirely dependent on political direction,” he said.

An Army Association colleague of Brigadier Mawson’s, LieutenantColonel Chris Brown, a former artillery officer, said Just Defence’s recommendations against buying r6smm field guns

and a 155 mm replacement for the Army’s 5.5 in guns were based on false assumptions. These artillery pieces were of as much use for defence as offence. The 105 mm was the. standard N.A.T.O. round and the 105 mm gun was used mostly for what the Army called “area neutralisation,” close to one’s own troops, he said. The 155 mm gun was field-branch artillery and, unlike the 105 mm, was designed for accuracy. It was used more than anything for defensive work, he said.

The 155 mm gave forces a counter-battery capability and, hence, defensive depth to a defending force, he said. “It is a very, very useful weapon.”

The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu was a classic case of a battle lost because of lack of good defensive artillery, said Colonel Brown. The French had no 155 mm

guns to knock out the Vietnamese artillery.

The specific recommendations of Just Defence on naval matters were praised by Captain lan Bradley, a former captain of H.M.N.Z.S. Waikato.

Frigates were not much use when A.N.Z.U.S. was inoperative, he said. Without A.N.Z.U.S. the Navy would have to completely restructure itself.

Just Defence’s suggestions “made a hell of a lot more sense than anything that had come out of the Ministry of Defence.” Although Captain Bradley said he favoured considering the option of replacing the frigates with corvettes, he conceded that the corvettes might end up as a similar-sized ship to the frigate.

New corvettes would still be far cheaper to run and have greater range even if this were so, he said.