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Mil News Australia, NZ, Oceania Military News

av405 said:
Are the AW109s up for replacement as well?
Click to expand...
No they came in with the NH90. That being said they lack utility as are too small for anything practical less initial pilot training. Something like the Airbus H135's the ADF use for this role or the H145's (UH-72 Lakota) the US use would be a lot more practical and versatile.
 
gafkiwi said:
And it lends more weight argument of why still maintain a fleet of 8 NH-90 along side the 5 Seahawks. Selling off the NH90s now when they are actually still worth something and purchasing UH-60M would give a common base platform helo within the NZDF and commonality with the ADF/US.
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100%

Buying the 5 Seahawks is the closest we’ll probably ever get to a “we screwed up buying 8 Ferraris instead of 20 HiLuxes.”

Australia threw their NH90 Taipans in the skip(for us to go dumpster diving for spares) and bought Blackhawks.

Norway sued Airbus over their NH90s and bought Seahawks.
 
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Buried in the joint statement of an Australia–Japan defence and foreign ministers’ meeting on 6 September was a step-change: Canberra and Tokyo would deepen cooperation on current and future deterrence activities, including flexible deterrent options (FDOs). That moves the partnership up significantly.

At last year’s meeting, the two sides went as far as acknowledging an understanding of each other’s approaches to deterrence. Now we see greater strategic alignment, including planning and moving more closely to deterring together. This is the prerequisite, after which joint FDOs would give both nations a shared ladder of military and non-military options to deliver coordinated and more credible collective deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.

FDOs are preplanned, deterrence-oriented actions used as an operational planning tool. FDOs are developed to facilitate timely decision-making by national leaders through calibrated options designed to signal resolve and influence an actor’s behaviour before or during a crisis. The US Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Planning frames their purpose simply: to send a visible, credible message to shape an opponent’s cost-benefit calculus and to position forces in a manner that, if deterrence fails, facilitates a military response. FDOs raise pressure gradually to avoid unintentional escalation.

While military-centric, FDOs are more effective when coordinated across instruments of national power—diplomatic, informational, military and economic—for combined effect. Practical examples of FDOs include increasing the tempo and visibility of exercises; show-of-force military deployments; threats of sanctions or imposing embargoes; publicising violations of international law; signalling support to allies and partners; and raising public awareness of an international issue and risk. While such options are not novel, what is new is the commitment to plan them with a key partner—by identifying triggers, roles, legal and logistics pathways and coordinated messaging—so they can be activated quickly and coherently, enhancing the credibility of deterrence.

Today, FDOs are a key fixture in the Japanese national security and defence framework and in the Japan-US alliance. They gained prominence in US planning in the 2010s when the Pentagon was identifying ways to harness deterrence for a wider array of unconventional scenarios across the competition continuum that could be tailored to a range of actors and regions for integration with the joint force, inter-organisational partners and allies. FDOs became a critical component of the 2015 Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation. This created the Alliance Coordination Mechanism for developing and implementing joint FDO responses, as well as synchronise strategic messaging for deterrence and de-escalation scenarios. Since then, the alliance has homed in on roles and missions, improved operational readiness and response capacities and capabilities. To deepen cooperation on posture, capability development and exercises, Japan and the US have sought to leverage their partnership network with other countries that support the rule-based international order.

The 2022 National Security Strategy of Japan and Defence of Japan 2023 reaffirmed Tokyo’s pursuit of a multilayered network with the United States and likeminded countries to strengthen deterrence. Japan does this through dialogue, training and exercising, information-protection agreements, reciprocal access agreements (RAAs), joint development of defence equipment, capacity building support, strategic communication and FDOs. This approach is part of Japan’s deterrence logic of a coordinated deterrence posture: using whole-of-government measures with allies and partners to shape a security environment that is resilient enough to resist attempts at unilateral changes to the status quo by force or coercion.

The latest Australia–Japan joint ministerial statement signals that our special strategic partnership is ambitiously and unambiguously a commitment to collective deterrence in our region, with FDOs as the tool to operationalise strategic alignment. Deterrence succeeds when, by raising the costs or denying the benefits of action, it prevents unwanted behaviour from a potential aggressor dissatisfied with the status quo. For deterrence to be effective, the threat of denial or punishment rests on having the capability to act, credible willingness to carry out the threat, and unambiguous communication of the signal of that threat. Doing that collectively is harder, demanding integration of planning, authorities, messaging and trust.

This partnership is positioned for the task. As Defence Minister Richard Marles said at the joint ministerial press conference, ‘There is no country with whom we have a greater strategic alignment than Japan. We are both democracies. We both support a global rules-based order. We are both allies of the United States [and] there is no country in the world with whom we have greater strategic trust.’ Australia and Japan share common interests and shared a vision, a will and capability to realise a free and open Indo-Pacific, and a stated intent to deter unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

The practical enablers are falling into place. The RAA is expediting mutual deployment processes; an acquisition and cross-servicing agreement standardises refuelling, medical, and logistics support; liaison officers are exchanging in operational commands; and force posture cooperation is broadening. Participation by Japan’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade in US Marine rotations in Darwin is expected to be regularised, as are reciprocal deployments of Japanese and Australian F-35s. The Australian destroyer HMAS Brisbane is heading to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force base in Yokosuka. This will be the first instance of Australian resupply and maintenance in Japan in many decades. Such activities greatly enhance interoperability between Australian and Japanese forces and strengthen their projection capabilities.

Both countries are increasing the number, frequency and scale of training and exercises. At the same time, they are bringing each other into their bilateral exercises with partners, laying the groundwork for a network of collective deterrence. Japanese and Australian recent observation of Exercise Salakinib between the Philippine and US armies will be updated to full participation in 2026, enabling Tokyo and Manila the opportunity to exercise their recent signing of an RAA. These examples are some the wide array of defence cooperative activities that point to enhanced interoperability with purpose.

As the 50th anniversary of the Australia–Japan Basic Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation approaches in 2026, both countries are seeking to elevate their defence cooperation as a central pillar of coordination among like-minded partners in realising a free and open Indo-Pacific through collective deterrence. Joint FDOs and the establishment of a standing coordination mechanism are practical next steps. These measures should translate into institutionalisation of bilateral planning with pre-cleared legal and coordination pathways, clear roles and burden-sharing, and calibrated military, diplomatic, informational and economic signalling that can be scaled with partners when required.

This is the partnership to watch as collective deterrence in the Indo-Pacific moves from aspiration to an operational coalition.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/a...take a big step towards collective deterrence
 
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Policing in the Pacific has never been about propping up governments; it has always been about serving communities. Yet Beijing’s introduction of Mao-era community policing into Solomon Islands last week was a sharp departure from this tradition. If Australia and its partners are serious about being the Pacific’s security partners of choice, they must act now to invest in and reinforce policing models grounded in community service, trust and accountability.

While China’s so-called community policing initiative in Honiara may sound benign, it’s anything but. At its core, it imports the Fengqiao Experience: a Maoist approach rooted in surveillance, neighbour-on-neighbour reporting and pre-emptive control of dissent. Fingerprinting, palm-print collection, household mapping and registration exercises may be presented as administrative necessities. In reality, however, they are direct intrusions into the lives of Solomon Islanders.

Pacific island nations have historically rejected precisely this kind of model. For decades, policing across the region has been defined not by regime protection, but by community partnership. From the early interventions of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) to today’s Pacific Policing Initiative, Australian Federal Police officers have built trust by embedding themselves alongside local police and investing in investigations, professional standards and community outreach. The legitimacy of policing in the Pacific has come from this principle: that police are there to serve the people, not to protect governments from their own citizens.

The contrast between these two models—Australia’s rights-based policing and Beijing’s regime-protection policing—couldn’t be starker. And yet, the risk is that the Solomon Islands becomes a proving ground for authoritarian practices under the guise of community service. The quiet collection of sensitive biometric data, absent any parliamentary debate or legislative safeguards, erodes sovereignty and undermines the democratic accountability that Pacific nations have fought to sustain.

Australia and its partners must recognise that the contest in Honiara isn’t simply about who can deliver more aid vehicles, training programs or infrastructure projects; it is about what kind of policing model will define the Pacific’s future. Will it be one rooted in transparency, rights and service to communities? Or one that normalises surveillance, submission and political control?

While Solomon Islands’ ‘friends to all’ outlook was adopted in response to this contest, it has also created space for competition to continue. Since switching recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in 2019, Honiara has welcomed Chinese investment in ports, stadiums and policing cooperation. A bilateral security agreement signed in 2022 opened the door for a permanent Chinese police presence. Today, around a dozen Chinese officers conduct martial arts and weapons training. This approach sits uneasily alongside the AFP’s contingent of officers focused on capacity-building. Rather than coexisting, these two models compete, with the potential to confuse citizens about what policing should mean in their society.

For Beijing, the stakes are clear. Exporting its surveillance-heavy policing model secures tactical influence over Solomon Islands’ politics and begins to reshape regional norms. A Solomon Islands that accepts biometric databases and household registrations without oversight risks becoming a precedent for others. The chilling effect on dissent, protest and activism could ripple across the Pacific, legitimising authoritarian practices in a region that has prided itself on community-driven approaches to security.

Australia cannot afford to be complacent. For two decades, its credibility in the Pacific was built on initiatives such as RAMSI, which demonstrated that external assistance could strengthen institutions while respecting sovereignty. But in recent years, those hard-earned relationships have frayed, leaving gaps that Beijing has eagerly filled with equipment donations, training schemes and community policing pilots.

Reclaiming that space will require more than matching China in material support. It will require reasserting the principle that Pacific policing is about people, not politics. That means doubling down on programs that build local capacity in investigations, accountability and rights-based practice. It means working with Pacific leaders to enshrine legal safeguards for data collection, privacy and oversight. And it means ensuring that policing cooperation is transparent, consultative and embedded in the values that communities themselves have articulated.

Critically, Australia and its partners must also call out authoritarian policing for what it is. The quiet collection of fingerprints and household data in Honiara isn’t a technical assistance program; it is a political intrusion. Framing it as such will help Pacific citizens and leaders recognise the stakes: sovereignty, far from abstract, is lived daily in the way police interact with their communities.

The contest for influence in the Pacific will not be won in stadiums or motorcades. It will be decided in the neighbourhoods where police officers knock on doors, gather information and engage with communities. If authoritarian norms shape those practices, then sovereignty is eroded from the ground up. But if they are grounded in partnership and accountability, then sovereignty is reinforced and communities are strengthened.

Pacific policing has always been about the people. To preserve that legacy and protect the region’s democratic future, Australia and its partners must act decisively. The choice is stark: a policing model that serves communities, or one that controls them.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/a...ritarian policing has no place in the Pacific
 
BravoZulu said:
Policing in the Pacific has never been about propping up governments; it has always been about serving communities. Yet Beijing’s introduction of Mao-era community policing into Solomon Islands last week was a sharp departure from this tradition. If Australia and its partners are serious about being the Pacific’s security partners of choice, they must act now to invest in and reinforce policing models grounded in community service, trust and accountability.
Click to expand...

I think Raelene might be preaching to the converted, everyone in government sees the threat and most of our foreign aid goes to our close neighbours.
 
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Debate over the Pukpuk treaty has focused on China and whether Australia’s military might one day use Papua New Guinea’s geography or fight alongside PNG forces in a regional contingency involving Beijing and Washington. But this lens distorts what the agreement is most likely to deliver.

Rather than binding Port Moresby to great-power rivalry, the treaty is more likely to deepen cooperation on regional humanitarian missions, bolster PNG’s capacity to manage its own security challenges, and ensure that Australia remains a reliable partner during moments of crisis. While future discussions about basing or strategic access cannot be dismissed, reducing the agreement to a hedge against Beijing misses its broader intent and ambition.

China’s growing profile in the Pacific has shaped much of the context. Since reports in 2018 that Beijing had explored the possibility of establishing a military facility in Vanuatu, Canberra has redoubled the diplomatic, defence and development engagement it committed to in its 2016 Pacific ‘step-up’.

The concern is not unfounded: Beijing has sought influence through infrastructure, policing agreements and access arrangements that could, over time, enable a more permanent military presence in the region.

Against this backdrop, the Pukpuk Treaty fits within Australia’s effort to ensure the Pacific remains stable and sovereign. Yet viewing it exclusively as a counter-China initiative overlooks its deeper significance.

The treaty is Australia’s first formal defence alliance in more than half a century, and it reflects the unique nature of Canberra’s relationship with Port Moresby. PNG is a young state facing considerable internal security pressures, from disaster response to law-and-order challenges, where Australian assistance has long been critical. In 2018, the Australian Defence Force deployed aircraft and personnel to support relief efforts following a devastating earthquake in PNG’s Highlands region that killed more than 160 people. That same year, Australia provided close security support for Port Moresby’s hosting of the APEC Summit.

PNG has shown that it too can lend a hand. In January 2020, it dispatched a contingent of 100 engineers to help Australia during catastrophic bushfires. The two countries have also partnered in regional missions, including a joint role in the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands beginning in 2003, as well as more recent deployments to assist Honiara during civil unrest in 2021 and in preparation for the 2023 Pacific Games. These cases highlight the pattern the treaty is designed to formalise: two neighbours providing mutual support in moments of need and working together to sustain regional stability.

The treaty’s text commits the partners to ‘secure mutual defence and security interests and contribute to regional stability and security,’ while underscoring the principle of sovereignty. This record of cooperation offers a strong indication of what to expect.

Australia and PNG will also remain attentive to Indonesia’s sensitivities, and it is highly unlikely that the agreement will result in ADF activity near Indonesia’s border. Canberra, always conscious of Indonesia’s interests, will be using all avenues of diplomacy to reassure Jakarta and reinforce that the treaty is positive for regional stability.

The document also pledges to ‘strengthen and expand defence cooperation through enhanced capability, interoperability, and integration.’ For PNG, that ambition is already visible. Its participation in the 2025 Talisman Sabre exercise, Australia’s largest multinational exercise, was a significant milestone. On a day-to-day basis, the Defence Cooperation Program sustains hundreds of engagements each year, embedding a network of training, advisory and operational ties. Scope for mutual recruitment pathways is a clever mechanism to not only address Australia’s recruitment shortfalls, but also to invest in PNG personnel who can one day return to play a bigger role in nation-building efforts.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape has detailed his aspirations for the PNG Defence Force: an expansion to 7,000 personnel, including new battalions in the Highlands region; a revived maritime capability to secure PNG’s extensive waters; and the establishment of an air wing capable of operating across some of the most challenging terrain in the region. The Pukpuk Treaty provides a framework for Australia to help PNG meet these goals—ambitions that are measured and realistic for a country confronting severe security pressures at home and in its neighbourhood.

Speculation about Australian bases in PNG remains premature. Marape has been careful not to commit to such an arrangement at this time, though the idea should not be ruled out entirely. PNG’s geography has enduring strategic weight: Manus Island and the northern coastline host facilities that could, in time, support joint operations.

In a regional crisis involving China, the United States would be the only actor able to match Beijing’s military scale, but Australia would have a pivotal role in protecting sea lanes and denying unfettered Chinese access to the Pacific. PNG’s geography could prove critical in that context, though always under Port Moresby’s terms.

The Pukpuk Treaty is therefore less about aligning PNG against China and more about formalising a partnership that has already proved resilient. It locks in habits of cooperation, creates pathways for PNG to professionalise and expand its defence force, and signals that Australia views its closest neighbour not just as a recipient of aid, but as a partner in shaping Pacific security.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/w...at to expect from AustraliaPNG defence treaty
 
TheKiwi said:
RNZAF to replace ancient Boeing 757's with a pair of Airbus 321XLRs.

Stuff: Latest breaking news | New Zealand

www.stuff.co.nz www.stuff.co.nz
Click to expand...
Those 757’s are getting pretty old.

I have read they are pretty high performing aircraft, albeit commercial aircraft.

And they have been used down on the ice.

It will be interesting to see if the Airbus 321XLRs can match or exceed the 757’s unusual(for commercial airliner) applications
 
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