Judith Collins tells security summit NZ setting up space squadron
Photo:
RNZ / Calvin Samuel
The Defence Minister has told a security summit New Zealand is setting up a space squadron against a backdrop of rising threats.
Judith Collins told the high level Shangri-La inter-governmental conference in Singapore the Air Force's 62 Squadron would be reactivated.
She also told the summit that as New Zealand doubled its defence spending, "We need to ensure that we are building capabilities that are effective into the future and this is particularly true for the domains of space, cyber and undersea warfare."
In World War Two 62 Squadron ran radar operations in the Pacific in Bougainville and the Solomon Islands, including in the Guadacanal campaign.
"The 21st century 62 Squadron will again turn to the skies, it's just going to be a little bit higher this time," Collins said,
appearing on a panel
talking about cyber, undersea and space challenges.
Reuters
previously reported
the squadron would be reactivated in July with 15 personnel in what was a symbolic step to formalise the significance of the space work the Air Force was already doing.
Collins told the summit New Zealand was also working with its partners to "leverage out launch capabilities and our other unique advantages such as a lack of immediate neighbours, to support our shared security interests".
The United States recently confirmed it was in talks with several partner countries, including New Zealand, about the potential for more military satellite launches in future - though Collins had said she was not "directly" engaged with that, and the NZ Defence Force said launch contracts were a matter for the US and private company Rocket Lab that has spaceports at Mahia and in the US.
"No nation can work on space alone," Collins told the summit, while pointing out "we beat Russia" for the number of rocket launches last year.
Transparency around space, cyber and undersea developments was key to avoid misunderstandings, she said.
China's senior colonel Shen Zhixiong said the militarisation of space and other emerging technology domains had accelerated, undermining collective security, asking the panel how the international community should resolve that.
Collins herself had noted New Zealand's reliance as a small state on a rules-based order.
Also, she noted satellites were increasingly crucial and "increasingly attractive targets for hostile action" despite the big downsides of using weapons in space.
She singled out Russia, and claims from US lawmakers that Moscow was developing a nuclear weapon for use in space, for special mention.
The $12 billion defence capability plan that covered till 2029, and aimed by 2032 to double New Zealand defence spending, would make the NZDF "increasingly lethal", she told the summit.
The plan featured investment in space systems (up to $600m by 2029), cyber (up to $300m) and "for the very first time" in maritime surface and subsea drones (up to $100m) to surveil what was happening in New Zealand's vast ocean surrounds, she said.
However, Budget 2025 provided only $30m for space shared with a range of other "small-scale" projects; it had
no funding for maritime drones
, only for aerial counter-drone systems.
There was an undisclosed amount for "an initial uplift to the defensive cyber capabilities" from 2025-29,
Budget 2025
said.
A lot of money is still having to be poured into conventional kit - replacing both the Navy's maritime helicopters, and the old, breakdown-prone two 757 planes operated by the Air Force.
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Asteroids are incredibly faint and hard to see because rather than emitting their own light, they only reflect sunlight. And because of their relatively tiny size, interpreting observations is not a clear-cut process like looking through a telescope at a planet such as Mars or Jupiter. "For asteroids, we only see them as a point of light, and so by measuring how bright they are and measuring their temperature, basically we can get a size based on how big do they have to be in order to be this bright," Rivkin said. For decades, astronomers have had to search for faint asteroids by night, which means missing any that may be on a path coming from the direction of the sun - creating the world's biggest blind spot for ground-based telescopes that can't block out our star's luminosity. 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Asteroids that can't get any closer to our planet than one-twentieth of Earth's distance from the sun are not considered to be potentially hazardous asteroids, according to NASA. When the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located in the Andes in Chile, released its first stunning images of the cosmos in June, researchers revealed the discovery of more than 2,100 previously unknown asteroids after seven nights of observations. Of those newly detected space rocks, seven were near-Earth objects. A near-Earth object is an asteroid or comet on an orbit that brings it within about 190 million kilometres of the sun, which means it has the potential to pass near Earth, according to NASA. None of the new ones detected by Rubin were determined to pose a threat to our planet. Rubin would act as a great asteroid hunter, de Wit said, while telescopes such as Webb could be a tracker that follow up on Rubin's discoveries. A proposal by Rivkin and de Wit to use Webb to observe YR4 in the spring of 2026 has just been approved. Webb is the only telescope with a chance of glimpsing the asteroid before 2028. "This newly approved programme will buy decision makers two extra years to prepare - though most likely to relax, as there is an 80 percent chance of ruling out impact - while providing key experience-based lessons for handling future potential impactors to be discovered by Vera Rubin," de Wit said. And because of the twists and turns of YR4's tale thus far, asteroids that have potential to affect the moon could become objects of even more intense study in the future. "If this really is a thing that we only have to worry about every 5,000 years or something, then maybe that's less pressing," Rivkin said. "But even just asking what would we do if we did see something that was going to hit the moon is at least something that we can now start thinking about." - CNN
