The benefits of our ‘Three Services, One Force’ approach have been far reaching with the concept of joint forces being brought into focus by our missions to Bougainville and East Timor. At the time a permanent joint headquarters for joint force operations did not exist and instead forming an operational joint headquarters was done on a contingency basis. These missions were planned and executed as a joint operation with the three services of Navy, Army and Air Force working together to provide an efficient and effective response.  

HQ JFNZ was established in 2001 based on the principle of being clear on what we want the Defence Force to do. It means we make the most effective use of the resources, equipment, and personnel when we tackle a job. For any operation, either in New Zealand or in other parts of the world, the Joint Forces headquarters works with the relevant Services to determine the combination of Services and respective capabilities required to do the job.

The tactical levels of command are provided by each of the three Services, and it is still the responsibility of the Navy, Army and Air Force to raising, training and sustaining their own Service. But joint operational planning, deploying and controlling the NZDF resources achieves greater synergy through a permanent, dedicated, operational joint headquarters.