Alternative buys for New Zealand

[Rheged]

Not wanting to be a killjoy but if New Zealand even considered 10% of these purchases the birth rate would need to go through the roof just to pay for them let alone man them  Volunteering Zac ?  Either that or the price of my favourite meat would go through the roof. 

Semi serious point as I've just been reading a very interesting piece on the relationship between population/birth rate/national defence policy throughout history.

It's a very serious point.  A country has to have the education system to educate the staff to run the  industries to produce the tax revenues to pay for the kit, and to train and pay the people to man it.  If there is only a medium sized total population, the country will only have a small cohort of adults who are willing to volunteer as potential service personnel (unless you go in for universal conscription).  Then there's the matter of the support services and infrastructure. As a possible example:-  It's great to have huge carriers, but only if you have the dry docks to berth and maintain them.  Then there's training facilities........I'm minded of the artillery that Lichtenstein bought in the late 19th/early 20th century.   The country was too small to fire it at any more than 40% of maximum range.

[kitnut617]

Not wanting to be a killjoy but if New Zealand even considered 10% of these purchases the birth rate would need to go through the roof just to pay for them let alone man them  Volunteering Zac ?  Either that or the price of my favourite meat would go through the roof. 

Semi serious point as I've just been reading a very interesting piece on the relationship between population/birth rate/national defence policy throughout history.

It's a very serious point.  A country has to have the education system to educate the staff to run the  industries to produce the tax revenues to pay for the kit, and to train and pay the people to man it.  If there is only a medium sized total population, the country will only have a small cohort of adults who are willing to volunteer as potential service personnel (unless you go in for universal conscription).  Then there's the matter of the support services and infrastructure. As a possible example:-  It's great to have huge carriers, but only if you have the dry docks to berth and maintain them.  Then there's training facilities........I'm minded of the artillery that Lichtenstein bought in the late 19th/early 20th century.   The country was too small to fire it at any more than 40% of maximum range.

And it should be kept in mind, New Zealand went broke only about 30 years ago ----

[DarrenP2]

buying into other commonwealth programs is a good strategy for New Zealand

[Weaver]

Not wanting to be a killjoy but if New Zealand even considered 10% of these purchases the birth rate would need to go through the roof just to pay for them let alone man them  Volunteering Zac ?  Either that or the price of my favourite meat would go through the roof. 

Semi serious point as I've just been reading a very interesting piece on the relationship between population/birth rate/national defence policy throughout history.

Well certainly the aircraft options I presented were various alternative time lines: the idea isn't that NZ buys all or even most of them, just that it huys different aircraft from it's RW choices, in about the same quantities. Maybe in some versions it's a little richer and/or willing to spend more GDP on defence.

Given that for most of the period in question (late 1960s on) NZ's airforce had only two or less jet squadrons, I suspect monet rather than manpower was the limiting factor. Another factor semi-unique to NZ is UK emigration. The country's always been high on the list of desirable destinations for Brits, so it should be relatively easy to tempt ex-RAF pilots to move there to fill any shortfalls in local recruiting.

[Weaver]

Here's a thought:

Late 1980s, NZ replaces Skyhawks (or Mirage IIIOs in an alternative timeline) with ex-Nigerian Jaguar Internationals, either the delivered and retired real aircraft, or from a never-delivered second batch.

Early 2000s, NZ buys Hawk 127s from the Australian production line to replace the Strikemasters (or MB.326s in an alt. timeline), thus giving it an all-Adour fleet.

Post 2006, NZ replaces the Jaguar Internationals with recently retired ex-RAF Jaguar GR.3As (with all their tasty post-GW1 mods). They buy excess airframes (24-36) to ensure good spares supply and allow the 12 operational airframes to be rotated to reduce individual flying hours. The technical support contract is shifted to HAL in India, who support the IAF's Jaguars.

[DarrenP2]

thats a nice scheme Weaver couldn't the Strikemasters have served as a lead in for the Jaguar

[Weaver]

thats a nice scheme Weaver couldn't the Strikemasters have served as a lead in for the Jaguar

Their wings were mostly knackered by the time they were replaced by the MB.339s.

Thanks though: just realised I put MB.326s instead of Strikemasters in the story!  It's obviously such a natural thing that it's hard to imagine it didn't really happen...

[DarrenP2]

HVM-Starstreak instead of Mistral

[rickshaw]

And it should be kept in mind, New Zealand went broke only about 30 years ago ----

Being a nearer neighbour than yourself, I can't remember them ever going "broke".  I can remember them hitting a low spot in their economy after the EU was formed and their primary market - the UK decided it was better to buy their dairy and meat from Europe, at European prices, than New Zealand.  "Rogernomics" carried them over that slump and brought quite a vicious "pay as you earn" mentality to their government policies.

[DarrenP2]

the UK really did make a mistake turning its back on the commonwealth in the 1970's.

we might have then seen New Zealand Jaguars, Hawks, and Lynx and they possibly would have bought westland built Puma and Gazelle. Doubt they would have gone for nimrod

[DarrenP2]

always found it interesting New Zealand went for the GPMG & LMG whilst the Aussies went down the route of the M60 and L2. Inspite of having used both operationally in Borneo. The Kiwis did use them in Vietnam but had to be re trained.

[kitnut617]

And it should be kept in mind, New Zealand went broke only about 30 years ago ----

Being a nearer neighbour than yourself, I can't remember them ever going "broke".  I can remember them hitting a low spot in their economy after the EU was formed and their primary market - the UK decided it was better to buy their dairy and meat from Europe, at European prices, than New Zealand.  "Rogernomics" carried them over that slump and brought quite a vicious "pay as you earn" mentality to their government policies.

Maybe I should have said 40/45 years ago, but what I remember was it wasn't long after me and my family arrived in Canada in 1980.  New Zealand was at the top of our list to moved too, but in 1978/79 they were only taking in 1000 to 2000 new immigrants a year and the criteria for entering was quite strict. And as a job appeared to work in Alberta came up first, that's where we ended up.  We'd only been in our new country a year or so when newspaper reports began appearing about how New Zealand's various embassies around the world had been instructed to apply for loans and not long after a report was about how all New Zealand's social programs had been drastically cut or eliminated altogether because the country had almost gone broke (their Armed Services were really drastically cut about then too).  Me and the missus just looked at each other and said, 'thank the f&%^ we didn't get there'.  Not long after that there was an influx of New Zealanders arriving in Canada, all looking for work ----- got to know quite a few of them in the industry I worked in, and they all told of tales of losing the homes/businesses etc

[rickshaw]

always found it interesting New Zealand went for the GPMG & LMG whilst the Aussies went down the route of the M60 and L2. Inspite of having used both operationally in Borneo. The Kiwis did use them in Vietnam but had to be re trained.

Different national outlooks.  Australia was much more tightly tied to the US than New Zealand was.  New Zealand was still heavily influenced by the UK.  The M60 GPMG actually lost the Australian GPMG competition in 1959-60 to the FN MAG58 but the politicians got involved and ordered the M60 instead.  The M60 got replaced in 1989 by, yes, you guessed it, the FN MAG58.  The L2 was an odd choice being a version of the Canadian C2 AR.  It was never terribly reliable (although I have to admit I developed a bit of a soft-spot for it when I used one in the 1980s although, I never liked the bipod foregrips).

[kitnut617]

the UK decided it was better to buy their dairy and meat from Europe, at European prices, than New Zealand.

BTW, I think the plan was to continue dealing with Australia and New Zealand, but France put a scotch on it and said, you're in the EU, you buy our stuff.  What really happened was Britain couldn't sell any of their stuff to the other countries of the EU, but we had to buy their sub-standard product, Britain was swamped with the crap -- one of the reasons me and the missus decided to move away.

[rickshaw]

And it should be kept in mind, New Zealand went broke only about 30 years ago ----

Being a nearer neighbour than yourself, I can't remember them ever going "broke".  I can remember them hitting a low spot in their economy after the EU was formed and their primary market - the UK decided it was better to buy their dairy and meat from Europe, at European prices, than New Zealand.  "Rogernomics" carried them over that slump and brought quite a vicious "pay as you earn" mentality to their government policies.

Maybe I should have said 40/45 years ago, but what I remember was it wasn't long after me and my family arrived in Canada in 1980.  New Zealand was at the top of our list to moved too, but in 1978/79 they were only taking in 1000 to 2000 new immigrants a year and the criteria for entering was quite strict. And as a job appeared to work in Alberta came up first, that's where we ended up.  We'd only been in our new country a year or so when newspaper reports began appearing about how New Zealand's various embassies around the world had been instructed to apply for loans and not long after a report was about how all New Zealand's social programs had been drastically cut or eliminated altogether because the country had almost gone broke (their Armed Services were really drastically cut about then too).  Me and the missus just looked at each other and said, 'thank the f&%^ we didn't get there'.  Not long after that there was an influx of New Zealanders arriving in Canada, all looking for work ----- got to know quite a few of them in the industry I worked in, and they all told of tales of losing the homes/businesses etc

That was when "Rogernomics" took over.  It was a bad period but I don't remember it as being as bad as all that.  David Lange (pronounced "Longe") was the PM at the time and the economic policy was named after Roger Douglas after his appointment in 1984 as Minister of Finance in the Fourth Labour Government of New Zealand.   Basically a lot of social security was cut because the Kiwi economy was going down the gurgler.   It was a case of cutting their sail to suit their cloth.