Pacific 2008: NZ Navy - Looking to the future | ADM Dec 07/Jan 08
By Nick Lee-Frampton
The Chief of the Royal New Zealand Navy, Rear Admiral David Ledson, wants his service to be the best small navy in the world.
And he's keenly aware the RNZN will be judged on its results, rather than its ambitions.
ADM interviewed RADM David Ledson, the Chief of Navy, at NZ Defence Force Headquarters in Wellington in November.
The interview covered a lot of ground and in the space available ADM has highlighted his comments on specific topics, rather than reprint the interview in full.
Recruitment/retention
Motivation sometimes doesn't work, sometimes it is just not enough.
For some people there are other issues.
When we look at the factors that people consider important [regarding] the Navy there is a whole range of things, it is not just a silver bullet.
A lot of it is perceptions and some of those perceptions are wrong, but people hold them.
If I had all the people I needed then the Navy would be able to focus on a whole lot of other stuff.
We have a vision - to be the best small nation Navy in the world - and we have a mission, and the reality is that no one is interested in whether or not we achieve the vision if we do not achieve the mission!
We are manned to execute the mission, we are not manned to achieve the vision.
Project Protector and the RNZN's new ships
The Off-shore Patrol Vessels will allow us to do work around NZ and in the South Pacific and further afield if required.
They are 85 metres long, they are not small ships!
It's like the In-shore Patrol vessels, they are 55m long so ... to keep them within 10 or 12 miles of the coast [would be] crazy.
We have to be careful we don't get into mission creep.
But it's never been in our tradition to get something and to accept the limits that someone puts on it for us without us testing those limits for ourselves.
That's the culture of the NZ Defence Force.
We have got challenges right now because essentially we are structured and resourced [only] to operate and maintain ships [but] right now we're assisting the Ministry of Defence to buy ships, we are introducing new ships to service and we are operating ships, so that is putting pressure on the organisation to do three things when [usually] our focus is on just one of them.
At the end of the journey we [will] have 13 ships in the Navy and we are able to operate right across the spectrum of operations from constabulary type activity right up to combat operations with the Anzacs.
The driving requirement for the IPVs and the OPVs was for us to support the whole-of-Government approach to security and so the Navy has to be very careful that we don't do too much stuff that isn't supporting [those] expectations.
Some people say [supporting Governed agencies] are not military tasks, but my view is that if the Government says the Navy will do this then that makes it a military task.
It is not up to the Navy to say we don't think that is a military task, the fact that the Government tells you to do it makes a task that you do.
I've said to many people that the paradigm many navies bring to the table, that this is Navy stuff and this is Coast Guard stuff so they shouldn't do it, is not appropriate in our context: we don't have a Coast Guard.
Is the RNZN too focused on the US Coast Guard instead of the US Navy?
I don't think it is inappropriate at all that we look at the USCG to set the benchmark for some of the stuff we do, especially around the multi-agency part of the business.
We have a relationship with the USCG that ... is now around doing operations better.
When our ships went up to the [Persian] Gulf for boarding operations a few years ago, the people who taught them how to do boarding operations were from the USCG!
The USCG has served in Vietnam, the USCG is currently in Iraq.
So I have said that around the multi-agency activity, [that] we should look at the USCG as a benchmark because this is one of their core activities.
It is the range of capabilities we have that defines us as a Navy, not a component of it.
It is important that the Navy has an international profile with the USCG and the USN and all the other Navies and Coast Guards, they are all equally important.
Emerging technologies
In the NZDF we tend to favour proven technology rather than leading edge; there is no doubt a lot of focus is on net-centric warfare and where I sometimes struggle to agree with my contemporaries ... there is a focus on maritime domain awareness almost as though that is an end in itself.
My view is that maritime domain awareness is just providing a situational context that allows you to make better operational decisions and that is why we are focusing on sharing information.
The ability to exchange information to a degree offsets some of the limitations we may have in the sensor/weapons area because information becomes a capability multiplier for the RNZN.
So it is technologies across a range of capabilities, [including] military capability, releasing personnel potential and quality of life so that service at sea is [less] onerous.
The primary challenges of the job
It's people, people, people!
One of the challenges too is trying to free up time to think strategically, trying to free up time to think about how to get to the top of the mountain rather than scrubbing around in the rocks at the base.
One of the characteristics of this job is the number of teeth-grinding moments you have when ... you just grind your teeth and get on with it!
At the end of the day the expectation is that you will execute Government policy.
In NZ we have a very strong tradition of that being the case.
Characteristics of a small navy
One of the advantages is that most people know most people.
The decision cycle is very small so [often] we can make decisions very quickly.
The disadvantage of course is that if you rub people the wrong way, it is easy for people to spread the message.
[Moreover] we have no 'fat' so a sudden efflux of people is very difficult to cope with because we are operating in the margins and have been for many years.
I think too that our size is such that we don't get every single benefit of being small and every single benefit of being large, because we are not so small and we're not so large!
What distinguishes the RNZN from other Navies
I know we have a fantastic reputation internationally and that is because of the quality of our people.
People of different cultures are not an issue for us.
In 1990 I had to go into Bougainville for peace talks ... and I did what no other Commanding Officer in the world could do, I went ashore with some Maori sailors.
No other Navy in the world can do that - so that's a significant point of difference.
What I find is that there is a remarkable degree of commonality between navies as well.
There is the emotional thing about just being at sea, the natural things that you see and the opportunities for reflection and ... how you deal with separation and the countdown of coming home.
Heroes
I have Navy people that I admire, there are two New Zealanders; there is Commander Bill Smith (who was the navigator of the midget submarine that attacked a Japanese cruiser in Singapore in 1945); also a guy called Kiwi McDonald who ended up commanding a Motor Torpedo Boat squadron in WW2 aged 26 ...
And Captain 'Johnnie' Walker RN, he died of over-work (destroying German U-boats) before the war ended.
I also am a great fan of some of the US carrier admirals from [that era], Admirals McCain, Halsey and Mitscher and their contemporaries; they made war personal and they're just very admirable people.
The interesting thing is that these Americans were all men in their late 50s or early 60s and yet they went to sea to exercise their commands.
That is a unique aspect of the Navy, which the operational level of command will often be at sea in task groups.
When I hear people talk about littoral operations and joint operations, I say just study the Pacific campaigns in the Second World War, it was all joint, it was all in the littoral!
People tend to forget that in many cases you have to go across the blue to get to the brown!
Who rules the waves?
You could argue the US Navy, but then the 1,000 ship argument is maybe an indicator that they don't.
The type of conflict we have today has an element of it being 'this is the right thing to do' underpinning it.
Whereas when Britannia ruled the waves Britain had its national interests, and who gave a damn about anyone else's?
I think the geo-political context is a little bit different today.
Rear Admiral David Ledson joined the Royal New Zealand Navy as a Cadet Midshipman in January 1967.
After initial training at the Royal Australian Naval College and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History from the University of Auckland he served aboard the RNZN's frigates in various roles including navigator and operations officer before being appointed Commanding Officer of HMNZS Waikato.
After supervising the Anzac frigate project in Hamburg he was appointed Chief of Naval Development and in 1994-95 attended the US Naval War College at Newport.
He was appointed Deputy Chief of Naval Staff in 2000 and promoted to Rear Admiral and Chief of Navy in April 2004.
Copyright - Australian Defence Magazine, December 2007/January 2008