Why no to frigates
What do frigates do?
The sensors, weapons and expensive high-speed capacity of the frigates are all focussed on their primary role of acting as defensive picket ships on the outer edge of United States aircraft carrier strike fleets.
Since they were commissioned, this has been the main role that the ANZAC frigates have preformed during their many deployments in the Persian Gulf in support of the United States’ invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the regular RIMPAC war-games exercises in the northern Pacific.
A review of New Zealand’s maritime patrol needs in the early 2000s revealed that the frigates spent very little of their time doing maritime resource and fisheries surveillance patrols within our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) or in support of our Pacific neighbours.
Much of the time recorded as local maritime patrol was actually found to be just the time it took the frigates to traverse our Exclusive Economic Zone on the way to or from far away deployments in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, or war-game exercises such as the annual Five Power Defence Arrangement exercises in Malaysia and Singapore and the 2 yearly RIMPAC exercises in Hawaii.
The Frigates represent the on-going commitment by the military and foreign affairs establishment to keep New Zealand firmly attached to the United States’ war fighting structure.
Spending Billions on new frigates
There is much to critique in the Government’s recent commitment to spend an extra $9 billion on defence over the next 4 years.
The single most expensive items of defence equipment that need a decision to either scrap or replace are the ANZAC frigates.
The recent Defence Capability Plan suggests that we should replace the two aging ANZAC frigates and our two more recent Ocean Patrol Vessels with four frigates.
It is certain that any frigates we might buy will be the same as the new frigates that Australia is about to purchase at a cost of around $1.4 billion each.
This would be a huge waste of money for warships whose main purpose is to protect American aircraft carrier strike forces. Instead we should scrap the ANZAC frigates and replace them with more long-range Ocean Patrol Vessels that will protect our maritime resources and those of our Pacific neighbours.
Alternatives to frigates
If we are to pursue a really independent foreign and defence policy that is not shackled to questionable United States and Australian strategic objectives, we should sell or scrap the ANZAC frigates and replace them with more long-range Ocean Patrol Vessels that will protect our - and our Pacific neighbours’ - maritime resources, assist in disaster relief, etc.
In the 1980s the Navy had planned to replace the Leander frigates with OPVs. However, when the opportunity came to join in with the Australian’s frigate programme, the Navy buried their OPV work from the NZ public and politicians and lied to the country about the specifications of the sort of vessel that would be able to do maritime surveillance work in our Exclusive Economic Zone.
HMNZS Te Kaha (F77), conducting operations with the United States nuclear powered USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group in the Western Pacific mid 2017.
HMNZS Te Kaha (the small vessel on the upper left) participating in Exercise Bersama Gold 2021 exercising and training with ships from Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, including the aircraft carriers RN Queen Elizabeth and the nuclear powered USS Carl Vinson and USS Ronald Reagan.
The frigate’s primary role is to act as a defensive picket ship on the outer edge of aircraft carrier strike fleets.