NEW ZEALAND jet pilots made redundant by their government's axing of its fighter force are seeking jobs with the RAF and in Australia, it emerged yesterday.About 700 air force jobs will go when the 17 Skyhawks stop flying in New Zealand at the end of the year. New Zealand cut back the combat roles of its air force and navy in a new defence policy this week that concentrates on a modern army trained for peacekeeping roles.
The New Zealand Defence Force says it will offer alternative positions in the service to as many displaced personnel as it can but will not stand in the way of any airmen wanting to join the Australian or British services. Australia has a serious shortage of jet fighter pilots, many of whom leave the service once their contracts are completed for lucrative commercial jobs with airlines in Australia and South East Asia.
Australia is attractive to New Zealanders because of close economic and sporting ties between the two countries and the military links that were forged by Anzac troops at Gallipoli in the First World War. Both countries regularly engage in joint war games. Recent figures indicate that there are only 11 operational pilots for Australia's 34 F-111 fighter bombers and 42 for its 71 F/A18 Hornet fighters.
New Zealand soldiers resorted to stealing parts from allied troops when on joint exercises because they were so short of equipment, an MP said in Wellington yesterday. As the row rumbled on over the defence review, which will see the Royal New Zealand Air Force lose all its combat planes, Ron Mark, an opposition MP, complained that the country's armed forces had been underfunded for years.
Mr Mark said that, as a vehicle mechanic attached to 2/1 Battalion of the New Zealand army, he "stole" exhausts and starter motors from Australian army vehicles to keep his battalion mobile on an exercise in Queensland in 1976.
Mr Mark said: "Kiwis are known as hydraulics in Australia. They call us hydraulics because we can lift [steal] anything. That's been the state of our defences for years. You do whatever you have to."
Most of the air force personnel associated with fighter craft are the maintenance and support personnel; they far outnumber the pilots. The New Zealnd pilots probably don't comprise more than twice the number of fighters (17) in the unit with 700 personnel. Even in times of war and strong recruitment the number of pilots would still not reach as high as a tenth the combined total of technicians, air controllers, airfield guards, sensor and communications personnel etc.
We should expect similar numbers in armed forces associated with starfighters of the Galactic Empire, the Old Republic, the Rebel Alliance, and others. Droid labour might simplify some aspects of maintenance, but suitably qualified living personnel would remain essential. Droids are property and tools, and fundamentally a living person must assume ultimate responsibility and take decisions for the condition and use of the machinery. Perhaps the enlisted personnel and non-pilot officers outnumber the pilots by a substantial margin, though a smaller margin than on Earth. Perhaps five groundcrew per pilot, with a far greater number of droids.
However not all things are equal; the technology of a TIE fighter is quite unlike that of a Skyhawk. The shear power of a TIE is far greater, and the complexity may be greater too. However we have no way of knowing the development of the technological interface. Tens of thousands of advanced technological stasis may result in machine components that interact in ways that are inherently reliable as well as being comprehensible and sensible to human beings. On Earth the tacit fragility and corruptibility of computer systems contrasts with the dependability of ancient technologies like dykes, looms and violins which have been optimised through centuries and millennia of experience, without any inherent "progress". Starship technologies in the Galactic Empire may have achieved the same sort of robustness.
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