New Zealand will buy US helicopters in a $1.6B military aircraft spending package

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand 's government announced new military spending Thursday of 2.7 billion New Zealand dollars ($1.6 billion) to replace aging aircraft, including helicopters it plans to purchase from the United States, senior officials said.

Cabinet ministers unveiling the package cited rapidly growing global tensions and a deteriorating security environment. New Zealand’s military spending has trailed that of its larger partners in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing group of countries — which includes the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia — and the bolstered budget reflects a shift in how the remote island nation is responding to strategic competition among major powers in the Pacific Ocean.

“We face the most challenging strategic circumstances in New Zealand’s modern history and certainly the worst that anyone today working in politics or foreign affairs can remember,” Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who entered Parliament in 1979, told reporters.

The purchase of military planes and helicopters was the first procurement announced in a government plan, disclosed in April, to double defense spending from 1% to 2% of GDP in the next decade.

The package includes five MH-60R Seahawk helicopters to replace the existing maritime fleet and two Airbus A321XLR aircraft, allowing the retirement of Boeing 757s that are more than 30 years old and were already secondhand when purchased. The helicopters accounted for more than NZ $2 billion of the spending, officials said.

Defense Minister Judith Collins said her government would “move at pace” to procure the helicopters directly through the United States' foreign military sales program instead of going to a wider tender. Cabinet ministers were expected to consider the final business case in 2026, she told reporters in Wellington on Thursday.

It would take “a few years” to acquire the helicopters, Collins added, because buying new meant New Zealand would need to “wait in line.” She denied the choice to buy from the United States was an attempt to rectify the trade imbalance that has seen New Zealand goods targeted for an adjusted 15% levy when arriving in the U.S. under the Trump administration's global tariffs plan.

Collins said she didn't know whether New Zealand's trade minister would seek to use the purchase as leverage when making a case for lower tariffs to U.S. officials. The same helicopters were used by Australia, the U.S. and seven other countries, she said.

The leaders of New Zealand and neighboring Australia this month pledged closer military ties as they are increasingly confronted by great power competition, particularly the rise of China's influence, in the South Pacific Ocean. The region was once neglected by other Western nations, an attitude that has reversed sharply in recent years as the extent of Beijing's attempts to vie for sway with Pacific leaders has become more apparent.

That's proved a challenge for leaders in New Zealand, where use of military ships and aircraft has often been primarily in humanitarian and disaster situations. It has also required a fresh sales pitch on military budgets to a country of 5 million people where the need for defense spending in a remote country with few enemies has traditionally been a difficult sell.

“Distance no longer provides New Zealand the protection it once did,” Collins said. “And defense is not something that can be mothballed until you need it.”

The aging Boeing aircraft have frequently broken down while transporting New Zealand prime ministers abroad in recent years and now can only be flown short distances. The episodes are among an awkward string of incidents that have highlighted the rundown state of the country’s military hardware and persistent difficulties in maintaining it due to recruitment shortfalls.

The maritime helicopters New Zealand will retire are Seasprites made by American aerospace firm Kaman.

FILE - New Zealand's Defence Minister Judith Collins, speaks during a press conference on the sidelines of the Shangri-la Dialogue for the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) Defence Ministers' Meeting [FDMM], in Singapore, Friday, May 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian,File)

UTICA, N.Y. (AP) — A New York prison guard who failed to intervene as he watched an inmate being beaten to death should be convicted of manslaughter, a prosecutor told a jury Thursday in the final trial of correctional officers whose pummeling, recorded by body-cameras, provoked outrage.

“For seven minutes — seven gut-churning, nauseating, disgusting minutes — he stood in that room close enough to touch him and he did nothing,” special prosecutor William Fitzpatrick told jurors during closing arguments. The jury began deliberating Thursday afternoon.

Former corrections officer Michael Fisher, 55, is charged with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Robert Brooks, who was beaten by guards upon his arrival at Marcy Correctional Facility on the night of Dec. 9, 2024, his agony recorded silently on the guards' body cameras.

Fisher’s attorney, Scott Iseman, said his client entered the infirmary after the beating began and could not have known the extent of his injuries.

Fisher was among 10 guards indicted in February. Three more agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges in return for cooperating with prosecutors. Of the 10 officers indicted in February, six pleaded guilty to manslaughter or lesser charges. Four rejected plea deals. One was convicted of murder, and two were acquitted in the first trial last fall.

Fisher, standing alone, is the last of the guards to face a jury.

The trial closes a chapter in a high-profile case led to reforms in New York's prisons. But advocates say the prisons remain plagued by understaffing and other problems, especially since a wildcat strike by guards last year.

Officials took action amid outrage over the images of the guards beating the 43-year-old Black man in the prison's infirmary. Officers could be seen striking Brooks in the chest with a shoe, lifting him by the neck and dropping him.

Video shown to the jury during closing arguments Thursday indicates Fisher stood by the doorway and didn't intervene.

“Did Michael Fisher recklessly cause the death of Robert Brooks? Of course he did. Not by himself. He had plenty of other helpers,” said Fitzpatrick, the Onondaga County district attorney.

Iseman asked jurors looking at the footage to consider what Fisher could have known at the time “without the benefit of 2020 hindsight.”

“Michael Fisher did not have a rewind button. He did not have the ability to enhance. He did not have the ability to pause. He did not have the ability to get a different perspective of what was happening in the room,” Iseman said.

Even before Brooks' death, critics claimed the prison system was beset by problems that included brutality, overworked staff and inconsistent services. By the time criminal indictments were unsealed in February, the system was reeling from an illegal three-week wildcat strike by corrections officers who were upset over working conditions. Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed National Guard troops to maintain operations. More than 2,000 guards were fired.

Prison deaths during the strike included Messiah Nantwi on March 1 at Mid-State Correctional Facility, which is across the road from the Marcy prison. 10 other guards were indicted in Nantwi's death in April, including two charged with murder.

There are still about 3,000 National Guard members serving the state prison system, according to state officials.

“The absence of staff in critical positions is affecting literally every aspect of prison operations. And I think the experience for incarcerated people is neglect,” Jennifer Scaife, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, an independent monitoring group, said on the eve of Fisher's trial.

Hochul last month announced a broad reform agreement with lawmakers that includes a requirement that cameras be installed in all facilities and that video recordings related to deaths behind bars be promptly released to state investigators.

The state also lowered the hiring age for correction officers from 21 to 18 years of age.

FILE - This image provided by the New York State Attorney General office shows body camera footage of correction officers beating a handcuffed man, Robert Brooks, at the Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County, N.Y., Dec. 9, 2024. (New York State Attorney General office via AP, File)