Staff shortages will confine the Navy’s flagship multi-role vessel to port during this year’s cyclone season, limiting the military’s ability to respond to natural disasters.

That means the Navy will have to find other ways to transports vehicles and helicopters where they’re needed. It may have to ask Australia for support from its C-17 air transport.

A briefing from Defence Force chief Air Marshal Kevin Short, obtained under the Official Information Act, warns the military will be able to provide a range of responses over the 2023-24 cyclone season, but at reduced capacity.

The original briefing was to former defence minister Andrew Little in September, and has since been updated by a new briefing to the incoming minister, Judith Collins.

Collins tells Newsroom the declining personnel levels in the Defence Force are “extremely concerning”.

“I’m appalled at the lack of transparency from the previous government over this,” she adds.

Recruitment has replaced some lost personnel, but she says it will take many years to generate suitably qualified and experienced staff.

The concerns echo comments this week from the Chief of Navy, Rear Admiral David Proctor. He told Australian Defence Magazine: “I would describe the Navy as hollow at the moment.

The frigate Te Mana and tanker Aotearoa have just returned from exercises with defence partner navies off Malaysia – it may be the last action some of these sailors see for a long time.

“We don’t have enough sailors, particularly in the specialist trades, to get all of our ships off the wharf and into the sea.” 

Attrition had soared as high as 17 percent after Covid restrictions lifted, before settling around 12 percent towards the end of this year.

Proctor said he needed to attract trained sailors who had already left, and persuade them to re-enlist, or the Canterbury and three patrol ships would remain laid up – some until 2027. “Whilst we are getting on top of attrition, it is really risky and we need to find options to get people to re-recruit,” he says. 

The briefing says the Navy will be “generally able” to support domestic emergency response requirements but its vessel best suited for the task, HMNZS Canterbury, will likely be unavailable due to workforce shortages.

The high risk weather season, when cyclones form in the South Pacific, runs from November to the end of April.

In February, Canterbury sailed from Lyttelton to Napier to deliver bailey bridges, vehicles, supplies and relief workers in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle.

The dive and hydrographic ship HMNZS Manawanui will instead take over Canterbury’s disaster relief role. As Manawanui is a smaller vessel which cannot sail with a helicopter, the ability of the Airforce to deploy helicopters would be hampered, the briefing said.

Potential alternative options for bringing helicopters to disaster zones include commercial sealift, Australian C-17 transport aircraft or having them fly themselves, although each option came with major limitations.

Likewise, without Canterbury’s sealift capacity, the Army’s ability to deploy would be limited, as it would need to transport people and cargo ashore via small boats if a wharf was not available for Manawanui.

While the Army would be able to support both domestic and regional disaster relief efforts, in both cases there would likely be “significant limitations” on the scale of a response, and almost no ability to support more than the most basic concurrent deployments, the briefing said.

The serviceability of the Navy’s Seasprite helicopters also remains a major concern.

While the Airforce will be able to meet its expected disaster relief and search and rescue duties, its fixed-wing outputs will come under pressure when its C-130H Hercules fleet is reduced to three aircraft, as happened this month.

Sustaining the C-130H fleet while transitioning to the newer C-130J Hercules, due for first delivery next year, is an “emerging challenge”, the briefing says.

There will also be reduced Boeing 757 availability at times due to maintenance.

Airforce helicopters would be available to support disaster relief, but low crew numbers put sustained deployments at risk, the briefing says.

A similar warning was provided to the minister last year, prior to Cyclone Gabrielle. In the event, almost 1000 Defence personnel were deployed, albeit with some platforms substituted and expectations of civil authorities managed.

Significant numbers of Defence Force staff have left since the Covid-19 pandemic for reasons including poor living conditions, relatively low salaries and frustration with deployments at managed isolation facilities during Operation Protect.

The previous Government boosted wages with a $400 million top-up in this year’s Budget, but it hasn’t been enough to stop the exodus.

A Defence Force spokesperson says the military has experienced record levels of attrition and had lost more than 36 percent of its full time uniformed personnel since April 2021. “The state of the NZ Defence Force continues to be of concern.”

A number of initiatives are in place to address ongoing staff shortages and there is some indication the attrition rate was improving.

For this year’s cyclone season, Defence could respond with the new P-8A Poseidon aircraft, which fulfils an aerial surveillance role.

However, all the Poseidon aircraft would not be able to operate at the same time until crews were fully trained.

Army engineers would be available at short notice, albeit in a reduced capacity due to high attrition and support required for ongoing operations, including Operation Antarctica.

“It should be noted that the entire Army, if required, can shift effort and respond as required,” the spokesperson says.

The Defence Force remains in frequent contact with Australian counterparts who are aware of its capabilities. “We regularly discuss coordination planning and how we would work together on response options to various events.”

The spokesperson had no comment to make on the possibility of commercial vessels being used to aid disaster relief, as other response options were available.

In addition to Canterbury, three Navy patrol vessels have been unusable due to staff shortages: HMNZS Wellington for a year; HMNZS Otago and HMNZS Hawea for longer, the spokesperson said.

Judith Collins says: “I want to thank the wonderful men and women of our New Zealand Defence Force for their service, and assure them they have a Government who cares about them.”

Oscar Francis is a freelance journalist focused on emergency services and defence.