Demoralised troops fed up with air farce

By KEVIN TAYLOR

Morale in the Royal New Zealand Air Force has reached the point that staff are calling themselves the "air farce".

And a leading defence academic says with the RNZAF's combat capability being gutted, big job losses looming and planes breaking down, faith is at an all-time low.

By the end of the year 95 per cent of its combat capability will be gone and the whole military will suffer, says Dr David Dickens, director of Victoria University's centre for strategic studies.

But while the RNZAF admits morale is fragile, it says the public is wrong to think that the Air Force is being canned.

In May the Government announced its defence policy, which involved axing the glamorous Skyhawk jets and Aermacchi jet trainers by the end of the year so money could be spent on doing fewer things better.

The 3000-strong RNZAF will be cut by 700 jobs over the next three years - about 350 this financial year alone.

Soon, the Air Force will consist of a handful of Orions for maritime patrols, Hercules and Boeing transports and the Iroquois helicopter fleet.

The passing-out parade of the latest batch of 52 recruits on course R2/01 at Woodbourne air base near Blenheim last week was a bittersweet moment. The Air Force can no longer guarantee them all a career and some will never be given jobs.

Group Captain Neil Highgate, the director of Air Force personnel and the reviewing officer at the parade, could not say how many of the recruits would eventually become surplus. But from now on recruit courses would be only three-quarters the size of R2/01.

Since May more turbulence has struck the RNZAF, including:

* The grounding of some of its Vietnam War-era Iroquois helicopters with serious rotor blade cracks. Just six of the 14 Iroquois were serviceable yesterday.

* The permanent grounding of six Ohakea-based Skyhawks because of cracks in a component holding the tailfin to the fuselage. They will not be fixed.

* A review of bases, with Whenuapai, not Ohakea looking the likely casualty.

* An inquiry found stress may have been a factor in the death of the commander of the soon-to-be-axed 2 Squadron in Australia, Squadron Leader Murray Neilson, when his Skyhawk crashed while practising an air show manoeuvre in February.

Dr Dickens said the gutting of the combat capability had also gutted morale and created enormous stress. Many staff were leaving because they could see no future.

"People don't know if they will have a job and they don't know what their future is. They think of themselves now as the air farce, not the air force."

RNZAF spokesman Squadron Leader Ric Cullinane said although morale was fragile and recruitment had been affected, there was an incorrect public perception that the Air Force was being shut down.

"What we have lost is the air combat capability," he said.

Fragile morale was not universal in the force, which could expect upgraded helicopters, new Hercules planes and a possible limited upgrade for the Orion maritime patrol planes in the next few years.

But the most ironic event in the latest Air Force woes came last week when Prime Minister Helen Clark had to endure a 10-hour Hercules flight to Nauru for the Pacific Island Forum because an ageing Boeing 727 transport plane broke down.