DEFENCE
Modularity and the Shape of New Zealand’s Next Naval Fleet Emerging naval doctrine supports the idea of a future navy based on modularity, writes maritime capability specialist and former Royal New Zealand Navy Officer Andrew Watts.
In an over three-decade career in the RNZN, CAPT Watts RNZNR commanded HMNZ Ships Pukaki, Wellington, Resolution and Te Mana, and served as Director, Capability Development and Programme Director Network Enabled Capability, and Captain, Fleet Personnel & Training. He is a Defence Adviser at KPMG based in Riyadh.
In recent months, several highly regarded defence and security commentators have drawn attention to the geostrategic realities that New Zealand now faces in the AsiaPacific region. This commentary has included speculation about the level of naval capability needed to meet our commitments to collective security while at the same time performing the wide spectrum of other defence and security missions required of our navy. There have been some interesting social media exchanges, most of which have been constructive. Nonetheless, among the commentary there has been a disturbing tendency to assume that “high end” naval capability is beyond New Zealand’s reach, and to advocate a naval force structure based around patrol capabilities. This article discusses emerging technological and doctrinal opportunities that offer a much wider and potentially affordable range of naval capability choice.
In the past, warship platforms and the weapon and sensor systems that they carried were tightly coupled in design terms. Ships were designed around specific systems and they were seldom much larger than they had to be to carry those systems over a specific distance, within a specific speed range, and in a specific range of environmental conditions. When systems became obsolete and had to be replaced, ships had to be subjected to very expensive, time consuming, and technically (and thus financially) risky midlife upgrades, because the new systems placed an entirely different set of demands on the basic platform for space and weight and for power, cooling, data, and other services. In addition, acquisition and sustainment funds had to be spread over all the systems permanently fitted to the fleet – every frigate (for example) always carried all the systems that it might need for all possible missions, no matter how it was likely to actually be employed.
Offshore support vessel HMNZS Manawanui - one of ten ships and six ship classes in the RNZN fleet
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Line of Defence
