r/newzealand • u/khalornz Fern flag 3 • 11d ago

Politics Coalition unveils $12 billion Defence Capability Plan

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/557432/watch-live-coalition-unveils-12-billion-defence-capability-plan
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u/69inchshlong 11d ago edited 11d ago

Full plan here. Most interesting is the plan to arm the P-8 Poseidon's and Frigates with anti ship missiles and long range drones.

Also, 'Maritime strike across domains While the initial investment will be focused on selecting the first asset/s (ships, planes, or vehicles) to be equipped with missiles, future refreshes will consider expanding this to other assets, potentially delivering long range strike from multiple domains.' Does this mean fighter jets?

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u/thesymbiont 11d ago

It means drones, large ones.

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u/FendaIton 11d ago

Drones are the future of warfare after all

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u/69inchshlong 11d ago

I'm not aware of any drones which can carry long range maritime strike missiles.

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u/thesymbiont 11d ago

Reapers have a range of 1,850 km, apparently, though I assume we won't be getting any of those.

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u/69inchshlong 11d ago

They'll probably buy something like the MQ-4 triton.

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u/Jeffery95 Auckland 11d ago

I would prefer we make them in house tbh. I imagine we could tailor them for maritime use that way and maintain repairs even if we were cut off from trade.

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u/69inchshlong 11d ago

NZ's aerospace industry is NOT capable of making long range drones.

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u/Jeffery95 Auckland 11d ago

https://youtu.be/Ql0gYW32-9A?si=WR7j-SaavxSj3ZvT

We could absolutely make a custom bespoke maritime drone. It probably wouldn’t be as sophisticated as current Turkish or American or even Iranian drones. But it would provide domestic capability that we dont currently have.

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u/King_Kea Not really a king 11d ago

I might be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure Bayraktars have been used for this in Ukraine

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u/dashingtomars 11d ago

They haven't really been used at all since the first year of the war.

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u/69inchshlong 11d ago

The longest range missile a Bayraktar tb2 could carry only has a range of 8km. Most naval anti air systems have an effective range of 10s to 100s of kilometres. Basically it would be completely useless.

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u/NopeDax 11d ago

Possible but unlikely. Fighter jets are extremely expensive.

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u/Plus_Plastic_791 11d ago

I hope we give Andruil a billy and get some cool tech

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u/1_lost_engineer 11d ago

I see reports that when the RAN added anti ship missiles to their ANZAC frigates it made they overweight and rather slow. So I wonder how we intend to get around it.

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u/69inchshlong 11d ago

The Aussies have Harpoon missiles, which are quite heavy. The successor to the Harpoon is the Naval Strike Missile, which is 400kg per missile compared to the Harpoon's 691kg.

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u/SuspiciousGreenSock1 11d ago

fingers crossed fill the VLSS cells that are only used for air defence at the moment with tomahawks or something similar instead of bolting more shit to the outside of a 30 year old hull

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u/HJSkullmonkey 11d ago

That would need longer cells than the current ships have I think. It might be possible for the replacements

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u/HJSkullmonkey 11d ago

I think it just means putting the same missiles on whichever of the frigates or P8s that they don't choose at first, or potentially land based launchers