Military training trial - 'Then the panic sets in'

Seven Sharp reporter Julian Lee tested himself in freezing waters at the Waiouru Military Training Area as part of a Defence Force exercise, leading him to wonder where the NZDF is heading.

The Skill At Arms competition tests soldiers' skills and endurance to the maximum.

Over 42 hours, sleep-deprived teams of 10 soldiers compete against each other in arduous conditions, covering something like 40km with 35kg packs on their backs.

They must complete all the tasks (or "stands" as they call them), including an infamous tactical water crossing. The water crossing involves swimming across a freezing body of water, using a pack as a floatation device, while avoiding detection by a potential enemy force on the other side.

It's the only stand the army were willing to let me try, and it was tough.

Looking across the 84m body of water, it seemed eminently easy. Most of us know how to swim. And even when you enter the water, for the first 10m or 20m, you're optimistic. It's cold but seemingly bearable.

When your feet leave the ground as the water gets deeper and your body begins to shut down from the chill, you realise you may be out of your depth. You start losing your breath. And then the panic sets in. Somewhere around the middle of the lake, the remaining 40m or so might as well be 40km.

Captain Taare Dewes and WO1 Stephen Montgomery's encouraging words got me across the remaining distance. Then again, these men have served New Zealand in multiple deployments and to whom this exercise was like a balmy dip in a kid's paddling pool in the middle of summer.

This year's winner of the Skill At Arms was the Queen Alexandra's Mounted Rifles (QAMR), the oldest Regular Force unit in the New Zealand Army. Completing a Skill At Arms is an enormous achievement, and winning it is an incredible source of pride in self and unit.

The Skill At Arms is meant to be an annual competition. It always has been. It's been going in one form or another since WWI. But the military hasn't had one since 2018. They've been caught up mainly in Covid and Cyclone Gabrielle.

Not only was this the first Skill at Arms in half a decade, but I got the sentiment that this one felt different. The soldiers were keen, happy and excited. It felt like a new energy in the NZDF that hadn't been there for a while.

To find out why, though, you'll have to ask the military. And the military doesn't like to say things as they are.

For an organisation based on the blunt use of force, the military can be surprisingly vague in its language. That's because soldiers try to protect civilians from the realities of war by avoiding upsetting or distressing language.

"Neutralising a target" can mean disabling or killing the enemy. "Collateral damage" often means the unintentional killing of civilians. "Blue-on-blue" — when armed forces accidentally injure or kill their own or allied troops.

Some say this all started in the Vietnam War, largely considered the first-ever televised war in which the public was able to witness the horrors of the front lines from the comfort of their living rooms. But it goes back further than that in a different way, especially in New Zealand.

Our grandads and great-grandads would go to the RSA for a pint with old warmates to keep the discussions about their wartime experiences confined and away from family and the general public. They'd seldom discuss it with civilians out of respect, and civilians wouldn't have understood anyway.

Official defence plans released to the public are equally vague but for additional reasons.

For one, it's a diplomatic exercise. No government wants to say so-and-so is a direct threat to our nation, and we're deliberately training our troops to deal with so-and-so because so-and-so might be a large trading partner, or so-and-so might be good friends with one of our friends and we don't want to upset that particular friend.

Militaries also don't want to confine themselves to boxes just in case the global situation suddenly changes — which it always does.

These plans are usually a pretty dull read for most. They tend to say many apparent things — technology is changing, and we need to adapt; threats to national security are changing, and we need to adapt; the world is becoming more interconnected, and we need to adapt. Sometimes, the language is infuriating.

One recent document, the Defence Policy and Strategy Statement (these documents all sound very similar), vaguely describes itself as a "new proactive, strategy-led approach".

I mean, come on. That's literally what the defence command is paid to do. When has any military top brass ever in history not had a "strategy-led approach"? Can you imagine Alexander the Great or Napoleon not caring much about strategy?

This is where reading between the lines comes in. The word "proactive" is much more interesting. By itself, it is a dull corporate word. But it's used again and again throughout the document. What does that mean? Could it mean things are looking pretty dire out there, and the New Zealand Defence Force needs to get its A into G pronto?

The Defence Policy and Strategy Statement was one of three such documents released in August last year. If you're looking for some delightful bedtime reading, go for gold here, here, and here (note: links open as PDFs).

Unlike other such documents released in the past, these are unusual. They're pretty blatant. In the greater scheme of official documents, they're still excruciatingly vague, but in the world of defence documents, they're like someone graffitied the words on a wall in bright red paint with lots of swear words.

These documents discuss making the Defence Force "combat-ready" and "combat-focused". To most of us, so what, right? Isn't that what the military's meant to do?

But, again, reading between the lines, this is a unique moment in New Zealand's history. Fifty years ago, the disaster of the Vietnam War shocked everyone and, in particular, scared New Zealand off a combat role in future wars (even though New Zealanders performed exceptionally well in that conflict — they had half the casualty rates of the Americans.

Since then, the New Zealand Defence Force has been focused on peacekeeping and disaster or humanitarian relief. Think East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq — patrolling, building schools, destroying explosives, training troops.

The New Zealand military couldn't have been further away from the front lines in the last few years. It has been a demoralising and almost embarrassing time for Defence Force personnel.

During Covid, the Government had the military guarding hotels. Soldiers were seen pushing hotel luggage trolleys and sending wayward guests to their rooms like naughty children. During Cyclone Gabrielle, they tried to distribute water to people but were stopped because they weren't a "certified water supplier".

For the first time in two generations, these new defence documents make it clear that combat is now a top priority. Talk to any of the soldiers about it, and you'll quickly see a pep in their step. That's why they joined the military in the first place.

Apart from combat, the Strategy Statement document also mentions another 'C' word, one which you'd have barely seen in such a document 10 years ago. China. A whole paragraph. Here's a bit:

"An increasingly powerful China is using all its instruments of national power in ways that can pose challenges to existing international rules and norms."

China aside, it's hard to see where things are heading.

Global tension is escalating. On top of the expansion of Chinese influence in the Pacific, there are Ukraine, Gaza, and Yemeni Houthi rebels blocking international trade in the Red Sea.

Venezuela appears to be gearing up for war. A few days ago, their government officially declared that 2/3 of neighbouring country Guyana, in fact, belongs to Venezuela. Africa is always a shot in the dark. And who could forget our favourite troublemakers, North Korea and Iran, up to their old shenanigans?

Where the New Zealand Defence Force plays a role in all this has yet to be decided (or has it already been decided?).

In January this year, the Government sent six personnel to the Red Sea to help deal with the Houthis. This is not out of nowhere. New Zealand has had a traditional role in that theatre for a long time. Will there be more sent? You best consult a fortune teller.

Regardless of what happens next, one thing is clear: For the first time in decades, it's not only OK to use the 'C' word again — it's cool.