WELLINGTON, June 8 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government set out a blueprint on Wednesday for overhauling the military valued at 20 billion NZ dollars (13.95 billion U.S. dollars) over the next 15 years.
Defense Minister Gerry Brownlee, launching the Defense White Paper 2016, said it outlined the current plans which would ensure that the New Zealand Defense Force had the capabilities it needed to meet the country's security and defense challenges up to 2040.
"These include new cyber support capabilities to improve protection of (New Zealand) Defense Force information networks, and ice strengthening for a third offshore patrol vessel and a naval tanker as we look to better support our interests in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica," Brownlee said.
The government would invest in a littoral operations support vessel to better support sea-to-shore operations; enhanced air surveillance capability for operations at home and overseas; a cyber security support capability for the protection of defense networks, platforms and people; and additional defense intelligence personnel.
The last Defense White Paper was issued in 2010, and a new one was necessary because the international environment had changed in the last five years.
New strategic challenges to 2040 included a rising sophistication, range and number of actors operating within New Zealand's exclusive economic zone, the Southern Ocean and the South Pacific; an increased likelihood of terrorist attack in New Zealand, although the risk was still assessed as low; a more rapid evolution and spread of cyber threats than anticipated; increases in military spending across Southeast Asia; intensifying turmoil across the Middle East and North Africa; and degraded relations between Russia and the West.
New Zealand's defense expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product was expected to remain on average at around 1 percent out to 2030.
More detail about the plans would be provided when the next Defense Capability Plan was published later this year.
