New Zealand Defence Force

[Bernard Woolley]

New Zealand Defence Force Headquarters.
Wellington.

[Bernard Woolley]

Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN)

Frigates: (ANZAC class)
HMNZS Leander (F75)
HMNZS Te Kaha (F77)
HMNZS Te Mana (F111)
HMNZS Achilles (F148)

Offshore Patrol Vessels: (Tyne class)
HMNZS Taupo (P420)
HMNZS Hawea (P422)
HMNZS Pukaki (P424)
HMNZS Rotoiti (P625)

Inshore Patrol Vessels: (Moa class)
HMNZS Moa (P3568)
HMNZS Kiwi (P3569)
HMNZS Kaka (P3570)
HMNZS Tui (P3571)

Multirole Vessel: (Gallipoli class)
HMNZS Gallipoli (L421)

Auxiliaries:
HMNZS Takapu (A07) Inshore Survey
HMNZS Tarapunga (A08) Inshore Survey
HMNZS Manawanui (A09) Diving tender
HMNZS Endeavour (A11) Replenishment tanker
HMNZS Resolution (A14) Survey/Research

Training Ships
HMNZS Wellington (F69) (ex-HMS Bacchante)
HMNZS Canterbury (F421)
ex-HMNZS Waikato (F55)
ex-HMNZS Southland (F104) (ex-HMS Dido)

Note: F69 is based at Devonport, while F421 is at Lyttelton. Both ships are generally used as Harbour Training Ships, however they do carry out limited duration training cruises in local waters. They spend no more than 18 weeks per annum at sea. ex-F55 and ex-F104 are hulks, used as a source of spare parts and for training purposes. They are paired with the active TS (F69 with F55, and F421 with F104) and will never go to sea again, other than to the breakers.

RNZN Auxiliary Minesweeper Force

1st RNZN Minesweeping Flotilla

Requisitioned MSA (AMASS only)
All requisitioned prewar
Named after WWII MS

Breeze
Duchess
Futurist
Gale
Hawera
Kaiwaka
Kapuni
Matai
Muritai
Humphrey
Rata
Simplon
James Cosgrove
Wairua

Danlayers
Named after WWII Danlayers

Coastguard
Kaiwaka
Nora Niven
Phyllis

AMS
Note: Squadron formed mid 2005
Ships ceded by RAN from new longliner design (Japanese-provided). Named after RNZN MS lost in WWII and famous merchant ships with a NZ connection, lost in WWII. All 750t, 15kt. AMASS and Oropesa. All fitted with 1x 40/60 Bofors and 4x 20mm Oerlikon, open bridges and unmanned engine spaces.

Turakina
Puriri
South Sea
Niagara
Ceramic
Auckland Star

[Bernard Woolley]

New Zealand Army

2nd Land Force Group - Linton
Combat
1st Bn, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment: NZLAV
Territorial Force
Wellington Mounted Rifles
3rd Auckland and Northland Battalion Group (Countess of Ranfurly's Own)
6th Hauraki Battalion Group
Combat Support
16th Field Regiment, Royal New Zealand Artillery:
- 22(D) Battery (Wellington) (Air Defence): Mistral
- 161 Battery (Close Support): L119
- 162 Battery (Close Support): L119
- 163 Battery (Close Support): L119
2nd Engineer Regiment
2nd Signals Squadron
Force Intelligence Group
Combat Service Support
2nd Royal New Zealand Army Logistics Regiment (Duke of York's Own)
2nd Health Services Battalion
2nd Military Police Platoon

3rd Land Force Group - Burnham
Combat
2/1st Bn, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment: NZLAV
Territorial Force
New Zealand Scottish Regiment
2nd Canterbury and West Coast Battalion Group
8th Nelson and Marlborough Battalion Group
4th Otago and Southland Battalion Group
Combat Support
3rd Field Artillery Regiment RNZA (Territorial): [NOTE 1]
- 31(B) Battery (Dunedin): L119
- 32(E) Battery (Christchurch): L16A2
- 33 Battery: L16A2
3rd Field Troop, 2nd Engineers Regiment
3rd Signals Squadron
Combat Service Support
3rd Royal New Zealand Army Logistics Regiment (Duke of York's Own)
Medical Treatment Centre, 2nd Health Services Battalion
3rd Military Police Platoon
Training
Army Adventure Training Centre
3rd Regional Training Unit
Health Services School, 2nd Health Services Battalion

5th Land Force Group - Waiouru
Combat
Queen Alexandra's Mounted Rifles: NZLAV
Territorial Force
5th Manawatu and Taranaki Battalion Group
7th East Coast and Hawkes Bay Battalion Group
9th Wellington and Wairarapa Battalion Group
Combat Support
4th Field Artillery Regiment RNZA (Territorial): [NOTE 1]
- 4 (G) Medium Battery (Hamilton): L119
- 11(A) Battery (Auckland) (Close Support): L16A2
- 12 Battery (Close Support): L16A2
5th Field Troop, 2nd Engineers Regiment
5th Signals Squadron
Combat Service Support
5th Royal New Zealand Army Logistics Regiment (Duke of York's Own)
5th Field Troop, 2nd Health Services Battalion
5th Military Police Platoon

Force Troops
3/1st Bn, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment
1st New Zealand SAS Group - Papakura
Force Military Police - Trentham

Army Training Group
Land Operations Training Centre
1st Armoured Regiment: Centurion Mk.13/1(NZ), FV101 Scorpion, Centurion ARV [NOTE 2] - Waiouru
Officer Cadet School
Army Depot

Home Guard
Formed during the war, the Home Guard was administered, trained and equipped by the New Zealand Army. Once National Service was introduced, it became compulsory for those between 30 and 50 to serve in the Home Guard. Although, in practice, at a local level platoons and companies tended to only take on those they could equip. Those under 30 could volunteer to serve, and some exceptions were made for those over 50.
Weapons, equipment and even uniforms were in very short supply for the first six months of the Home Guard’s existence. Many units were forced to use whatever civilian firearms members already owned for several months. Even units with a higher priority, such as the platoon on the Chatham Islands, had to use a mix of older military small arms and civilian weapons for quite some time.
While platoons and companies were often widely dispersed, they were organised into battalions for administrative reasons. In cities like Wellington and Auckland, battalions were concentrated as single units. Home Guard Battalions were affiliated with Territorial Force battalions, e.g. Wellington Battalion (Wellington Mounted Rifles), New Zealand Home Guard.


NOTES
1) Territorial artillery regiments have a single battery of L119 Light Guns and two equipped with L16A2 81mm mortars.

2) Re-formed in 2000 as the 1st Armoured Squadron to train soldiers attached to the Australian Army Ambrose Squadron. Expanded to regimental size in 2001; formed of three squadrons - A (Light), equipped with 12 Scorpions and B (Heavy), equipped with 14 Centurions, and C (Medium) equipped with M60 Sherman and M24 Super Chaffee. 14 Scorpions and 6 Centurions are held in storage.

[Bernard Woolley]

Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF)

No. 2 Squadron - NAS Nowra, Australia
- 7 McDonnell Douglas A-4K Skyhawk
- 3 McDonnell Douglas TA-4K Skyhawk
- 2 McDonnell Douglas F/A-18B+ Hornet

No. 3 Squadron - RNZAF Ohakea
- 4 Bell UH-1H Iroquois
- 6 Eurocopter EC120B Colibri

No. 5 Squadron - RNZAF Auckland
- 6 Lockheed Martin P-3K Orion

No. 6 Squadron - RNZAF Auckland
- 9 Kaman SH-2G(NZ) Super Seasprite
- 2 Westland Wasp HAS.1

No. 14 Squadron - RNZAF Ohakea
- 17 Aermacchi MB.339CB
- 4 BAES Hawk MK.128

No. 40 Squadron - RNZAF Auckland
- 6 Lockheed Martin C-130J Hercules II
- 2 Boeing 757-2K2C

No. 41 Squadron - RNZAF Ohakea
- 12 NH Industries MRH-90

No. 42 Squadron - RNZAF Auckland
- 5 Raytheon B.200 King Air
- 4 HS Andover C.1
- 4 Douglas C-47
- 5 Gippland GA-8

No. 75 Squadron - RNZAF Ohakea
- 9 McDonnell Douglas F/A-18A+ Hornet
- 2 McDonnell Douglas F/A-18B+ Hornet

No. 1 CFTS - RNZAF Woodbourne
- 12 Pacific Aerospace CT-4E Airtrainer

[Bernard Woolley]

SPACE RESERVED

[Eaglenine2]

Question where does M60 Sherman and M24 Super Chaffee are in the New Zealand orbats independent troops in 1st Armored or Wellington Mounted Rifles?
Waikato Mounted Rifles lives in 6th Hauraki Battalion Group?

[drmarkbailey]

HMNZS Leander (F75)
HMNZS Te Kaha (F77)
HMNZS Te Mana (F111)
HMNZS Achilles (F148)

Important - the Clarke Government falls on 27 July 2002

The entire NZDF is a hollow shell until July 2002, so in TLW we can assume that the 2005 orbat is a powerful, almost 'knee jerk' reaction to the Clarke Governments incompetence.

The problem here is that the Anzac class frigates in RNZN service are in two different subclasses. There's no real political way that more than the first pair (Leander and Te Kaha) will be completed as frigates. Te Mana and Achilles will be fitted for but not with everything. I think they will be little more than OPV, fitted perhaps with a bofors gun forward of the bridge, not even a combat suite.

An Anzac class hull, completed, able to go to sea etc, was only 16% of the cost of the frigate, the other 84% was weapons and sensors.

So the NZ Anzacs are two original FF and two hulls used as OPV.

2002

So what does the NZ Government do with their frigate force?

They have 2 Anzac class frigates, two Anzac class OPV, and four Leander variants in reserve.

There's one obvious solution, put the two Anzac OPV into the ASMD upgrade program while two of the older frigates are returned to active or semi-active service.

This means that the first pair cannot be upgraded in time to meet April 2005. The Australians can't do it, they have a full program.

So they have to do it in Auckland at the main base. It would take a year to do the design changes and organise the components and suppliers. The RAN took 7 months per ship. I will assume that the Kiwis take 9 months per ship as they have a much thinner workforce and a lower skill base.

Now, what about the Tynes?

What does the RNZN need in a conflict? I'd say 'general purpose escorts able to work with the Australians and, marginally, with the USN'. The Tynes are not really useful in this, a minimum escort against a medium threat is an ASMD Anzac.

BUT. The RNZN also has two original Anzacs, obviously these will be slotted to the ASMD process. So what can the Tynes be upgraded to do?

There's two options, surface warfare or ASW escort. Given geography and the lack of an actual surface threat to NZ, I'd suggest the latter as follows:

Combat Suite: SAAB 9LV from Australia
Sonar: Thomson Sintra Spherion B same as the Anzacs
Two Triple tubes removed from the RNZN and from stored RD stocks from reserve frigates and refurbished
Thinline towed array - I'd suggest that a Kariwara variant be developed and used. It's small, slimline, and probably suitable. It would need a VDS system to get it to depth, and that means no helicopter for them at all.

This would give the RNZN two light escort groups in 2005, an unmodified Anzac and two Tynes.

More later

Cheers: mark




ANZAC Class FFH in TLW

Mark Bailey

The ANZAC class frigate was the standard RAN frigate when WWIII commenced. However, it was a vessel in different forms as it was part-way through an upgrade program.

On 14 August 1989, AMECON was awarded the tender to build the Blohm + Voss designed frigate. The frigates were to be constructed at the AMECON shipyard in Williamstown, Victoria (formerly Williamstown Naval Dockyard), but the modular design of the frigate allowed sections of the ships to be constructed throughout Australia and New Zealand, with final assembly in Williamstown. Each vessel was made up of six hull modules and six superstructure modules. All of lead ship Anzacs modules were assembled at Williamstown, but for later ships, the superstructure modules were fabricated in Whangarei, New Zealand, and hull modules were built at both Williamstown and Newcastle, New South Wales. Unlike previous shipbuilding contracts, AMECON was only contractually obliged to meet the navy's set commissioning dates for the ships; all other construction deadlines were to be determined at the shipbuilder's discretion.

The second, fourth, tenth and eleventh ships to be built were allocated to the New Zealanders. Project offsets meant that construction costs for the New Zealand ships were about 20% less than the Australian vessels. Steel cutting for the first ship, Anzac, commenced on 27 March 1992. Work on the first New Zealand ship, HMNZS Te Kaha, began in February 1993. Anzac commissioned into the RAN in May 1996, and Te Kaha into the RNZN in July 1997. Construction was accelerated in 1999 due to the outbreak of tensions with Indonesia. In early 2002, the first four ships found to have microscopic cracks in the bilge keel and hull plating, due to very heavy work in wartime overload conditions. The ships' hulls were repaired and reinforced. Construction of the final vessel, HMAS Perth, began in July 2002, with the vessel commissioning into the RAN in August 2004. Further construction was proposed but the expansion of the DDG program required the industrial capacity.

The RAN started plans to improve their frigates' combat capability as early as 1996, with the Warfighting Improvement Program (WIP). Upgrades proposed under the WIP included installation of a phased-array radar, a second Mark 41 vertical launch system. The WIP was paused and recast near the end of 1999, again as a result of the DDG program. It changed to a less ambitious and costly anti-ship missile defence (ASMD) upgrade program but on a higher priority. This was called the ‘Ship Weapons Upgrade Program’ or SWUP.

The two remaining destroyer escorts (Swan and Torrens) had been reprieved from disposal and retained in reserve. To speed up the process, Swan, being refitted (like Torrens) as a light amphibious ship with Mulloka and SLT was allocated as a (mostly) reserve-manned trials ship and in 2000, Tenix, Saab, and the Department of Defence formed a Private Public Partnership to upgrade the anti-ship missile defence (ASMD) capability of the Anzac class, through the installation of CEA Technologies' CEAFAR-1 S-band and CEAMOUNT X-band phased array radars, a Vampir NG Infrared Search and Track system, and Sharpeye Navigational Radar Systems. To de-risk this vital program, Swan was docked and rapidly fitted with a Celsius Tech 9LV combat suite and trials commenced that year. An 8-cell Mk41 VLS was installed aft of the new deckhouse and davits for 4 LCVP. Progress was rapid, the trials ship and wartime pressures greatly accelerating development. Swan was the first ship fitted to carry and fire the RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) as a replacement for the Sea Sparrow missile. ESSM were quad-packed into the Mark 41 launcher for a payload of 32 missiles. Even though only a trials ship, Swan was the first ship in the world fitted with the ESSM, and the first test firing was conducted aboard on 21 January 2002, off Jervis Bay. A CEA Technologies solid-state continuous wave illuminator was also fitted as part of the ESSM system, proving highly successful on trials.

On 18 January 2004, Anzac docked at the Australian Marine Complex in Henderson, Western Australia for the ASMD SWUP upgrade. Both of the frigate's masts were replaced, and the operations room layout was improved and two eight-cell Mk 41 VLS modules were fitted (for 64 RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile or ESSM). Additional ballast was required to maintain stability, and the combined weight increase brought the ship's full load displacement to 3,860 tons. After completion in August 2004, Anzac was used to test the modifications, with trials completed in October 2004. Approval to upgrade the other seven RAN Anzacs had already been granted, with work on the A$650 million refits already in train, the use of the trials ship Swan having removed all risk from the program.

From the start, the frigates had the ability to carry and fire the RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) as a replacement for the Sea Sparrow missile; these were quad-packed into the Mark 41 launcher for a payload of 32 missiles per eight cell unit. Anzac was the first fully operational warship in the world fitted with the ESSM.

From 2001 onwards, the RAN began fitting the Anzacs and the Adelaides with Harpoon Block II missiles in two quad-tube canister launchers. The Australian Anzacs were originally fitted for but not with the launchers, but the original planned location on 02 deck was found to be unsuitable, and the launchers were relocated to 01 deck, in front of the bridge. Around the same time, the RAN began to fit all frigates with two M2HB .50 calibre machine guns in Mini Typhoon mounts, installed on the aft corners of the hangar roof. Again, the trials ship Swan was used to test this positioning, with two TopLite EO directors are used with the guns.

The Mark 32 torpedo tubes aboard the Anzac class frigates were originally fitted with American Mark 46 anti-submarine torpedoes, but these were replaced with the French-Italian MU90 Impact torpedo prior to 2005, Swan conducting trials from 2003. Toowoomba was the first operational RAN warship to fire an MU90 torpedo, during a test firing in June 2004, followed that same week with a first 'warshot' firing of an armed MU90.







Name Pennant Number/ASMD Upgrade Status/ Completion Date
Anzac FFH 150 Completed 18 Jan 04 20 Jul 04
HMNZS Leander (F75)
Arunta FFH 151 Completed 22 Jan 04 25 Jul 04
HMNZS Te Kaha (F77)
Warramunga FFH 152 Completed 30 Jul 04 27 Jan 05
Stuart FFH 153 Completed 04 Aug 04 14 Feb 05
Parramatta FFH 154 Underway 06 Feb 05 12 Jul 05
Ballarat FFH 155 Underway 02 Feb 05 02 Jul 05
Toowoomba FFH 156 Not commenced
Perth FFH 157 Not commenced
HMNZS Te Mana (F111) Completed 15 Aug 03 10 Jun 04
HMNZS Achilles (F148) Completing 10 Jul 04 15 May 05

Swan DE50 Completed (32 ESSM only) Trials Ship Trials Ship

[Lordroel]

Start to do some digging using the Waybackmachine, hope its okay.

[Bernard Woolley]

It’s nice to see these again. Though, the RNZN Tyne class would be longer than those drawings depict.