Dear New Zealand Defence Force,

I wish to request information about No.5 Squadron's record of detecting naval submarines outside of exercises in New Zealand waters since it was equipped with the P3K Orion aircraft in 1967.

For the purposes of this request:

1) A naval submarine is a military underwater craft or suspected military underwater craft not engaged in a military exercise, or visiting New Zealand, at the invitation of the government of New Zealand.

2) New Zealand waters are defined as anywhere within the bounds of the New Zealand Search and Rescue Region.

3) Timeframe. The time frame for this request is 1 January 1967 to 31 December 2010.

4) Detection status may be:
Intercepted - It is observed and air to sea communication with the vessel was established
Identified - It is observed, it's position recorded and it is identified by its class or type
Suspected - It is observed, it's position recorded, and a sonar buoy was dropped to establish it is a craft of some sort.

Please supply a CSV file containing the following information:
A table of all No.5 Squadron submarine detection incidents logged in the above timeframe, formatted in columns with the following information:
Date
Latitude
Longitude
Detection status
Submarine Class (if known)
Operating Navy (if inferable from class)

Thank you for your assistance

Yours faithfully,

Peter King

Dear Ministerial Services,

Thank you for your reply OIA 2018 3162. I seek a clarification as to the status of available information,

You state "...Defence Force is unable to supply the precise information you have requested as a consequence of the disposal schedule for 5 Squadron documents."
Does this mean there exists some information in addition to that supplied, but not all the precise information requested; or that no additional record of submarine contacts by no.5 squadron exists other than that supplied?

Does this also mean that there were no further non-exercise submarine contacts between 1998 and 2010? I ask because it is unclear whether this information exists or was simply not within the scope of the previous request. It would however be within the scope of the current request, if such records exist even if all the precise information was not available (e.g location).

You state "More recently, information about submarine detections from the beginning of Financial Year 2010/2011 to the present have not been recorded... non exercise submarine detections have been largely unalerted and occurred during missions tasked for other purposes"
Thank you for this additional information. Does this mean that no.5 squadron has not been required to report non exercise submarine detections since 2010/11 or was that year only mentioned because I nominated it in my OIA request?

For clarification what does an alerted detection mean?

Thank you very much for your assistance

Peter King

You state that records

Yours sincerely,

Peter King