The revolving door of personnel between the military and weapons companies is a well-documented phenomena in the US and UK where 86% of former defence ministers and senior defence officials go on to secure lucrative private sector defence roles. Almost certainly the situation in Australia is very similar especially with $350 billion sloshing around AUKUS procurement.
With the NZ government poised to funnel an unprecedented NZ$12 billion to weapons companies the issue has become profoundly pertinent here. That’s because weapons companies aren’t neutral bystanders in the economy. They want to make money; they make money by selling weapons. In order to do that, they need to convince governments that they need to buy weapons, and not just once, but over and over and over again.
They need to influence the views of those who have the money to spend and shape the policies and budgets that detail how much, how often and what items are on the shopping list. They sell a convincing argument that there is an enemy who threatens us, that they have deadly weapons, and therefore we need bigger, deadlier weapons now to provide us with security.
Thus it is useful to employ people who have the knowledge and connections to provide the influence they require. Kevin Short, former Chief of the NZ Defence Force, is doing precisely that for Lockheed Martin where he serves as Managing Director of Strategy and Business Development.
Kevin Short, cheerleader for Team America
Short led the NZDF until June 2024 after 20 years service. Just six months later, in November 2024, he took up his role at Lockheed, the world’s largest arms dealer.
In April 2024, Short was awarded the US Legion of Merit . It is the highest honour that the US can bestow upon a foreign leader. Short was given his medal for leadership in expanding cooperation between the United States and the New Zealand Defence Force.
Among other things, Short was, “instrumental in New Zealand’s acquisition of P-8 Poseidon and C-130J Hercules aircraft,” a fact noted by US Admiral John Aquilino, commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command.
The P-8 Poseidon is the US Navy’s choice for long range surveillance and marine attack. The four planes were purchased for NZ$2.346 billion from Boeing. Meanwhile, the new C-130J fleet is worth $1.521 billion for Lockheed. Both are armaments that fully integrate the NZDF into the US military, and both were selected for this reason.
Short’s credentials in support of US wars is impressive. In 1999, he attended the US Air Force “Air War College” in Alabama. In 2002 he served as the NZDF Senior National Officer at US Central Command in Florida as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, the US attack on the people of Afghanistan post-9/11. More recently he has been involved in military training exercises such as RIMPAC, Cartwheel and Olympic Defender (new US military space training) to further advance interoperability with US forces.
The tight relationship certainly creates a view within NZDF that US interests are our interests, that US problems are our problems, and that US solutions are our solutions, in particular, buying US weapons, and lots of them.
Short is a useful tool for Lockheed to expand its sales to the NZDF, but also to sell the US world view to decision-makers in Parliament. Short is not exceptional in either his experiences or his new role. In fact, he has simply replaced Graham Lintott, the ex-Chief of Air Force who was in the same job at Lockheed, and who “has been pivotal to the growth of the Lockheed Martin New Zealand business both domestically and internationally.” He’s another career soldier helping the (mostly US) weapons industry cash in on their lifetime of experience and connections.
What’s wrong with doing (war) business?
Some would argue that Lockheed is simply doing good business by employing people who have what they need to sell the products that they make. But such reasoning is wrong: first, weapons dealers are not simply another business, and secondly, the weapons industry – and Lockheed in particular – have a very well-documented history of fraud, bribery and corruption. The entire industry is a case study of corporate bad actors.
Weapons dealers are not just another business because their entire operational model relies upon creating and sustaining a particular view of the world steeped in fear and terror, called ‘militarism’, which puts weapons and war front and centre of how we deal with problems in the world. Ask a lawyer to solve a problem and they will use case law and evidence; ask a doctor to solve a problem and they will use advanced healthcare and medicine; ask a writer to solve a problem and they will pen a great novel. But asking a weapons dealer how to solve a problem tends to get a lot of people killed and many more injured. Weapons don’t solve problems – they create new ones.
Within the current NZ government, belief in militarism abounds and has propelled us to a point where NZ’s largest trading partner, China, is now simultaneously, and bizarrely, regarded as the country’s largest military threat. This view has largely been driven not by domestic considerations of what challenges the country actually faces, but rather, by the US view of China as a strategic competitor.
Meanwhile the US, that is actively arming Israel’s genocide, engaging in extrajudicial assassinations in international waters and selling out old allies, is regarded as friend and key protector.
Turning to the industry of weapons dealing, an estimated 40 percent of all corruption cases in international trade are linked to the sale of arms. There is the infamous BAE al-Yamamah arms sale about which books and movies were written, and there is an entire Wikipedia entry dedicated to Lockheed’s bribery scandals that starts by saying,
The Lockheed bribery scandals encompassed bribes and contributions made by officials of U.S. aerospace company Lockheed from the late 1950s to the 1970s in the process of negotiating the sale of aircraft. The scandal caused considerable political controversy in West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Japan.
Lest anyone think that is somehow a relic of past bad behaviour, Forbes magazine (hardly a bastion of progressive thought) wrote the 10 worst things about Lockheed’s lobbying fraud in 2015, saying
Lockheed Martin paid the Justice Department $4.7 million to settle charges it fraudulently paid a lobbyist with illegally-used taxpayer funds. It paid the lobbyist, a former U.S. Representative, to help it get it a giant, no-bid, $2.4 billion-a-year contract…for many years to come. Lockheed’s astonishingly corrupt influence peddling, with illegal taxpayer funds, has so many sleazy aspects that only the ten worst can be briefly covered.
A 2024 report into UK company BAE systems notes its recent history of arming regimes involved in human rights abuses; something for which it would be in no way unique. Meanwhile, few of us need any more proof of the immorality of the industry’s role in the destruction of Gaza and the genocide of Palestinian people.
Much more recently and locally relevant, a 2025 inquiry by the Auditor-General has revealed that since 2016 NZDF personnel have accepted over 2,500 gifts and hospitality offerings from the Defence Force’s commercial suppliers, valued at nearly $419,000.
Bryce Edwards of the Integrity Institute wrote a scathing piece about NZDF practices noting:
The Auditor-General’s findings…read like a how-to manual for undermining integrity. Between 2016 and 2025, NZDF staff logged an eye-popping parade of perks from companies angling for Defence contracts. Nearly 80% of these were officially justified as “building business relationships”. In other words, defence brass claimed that chugging wine at corporate-hosted functions and accepting luxury sports tickets was just part of nurturing good supplier relations…
NZDF’s top brass have defended the practice, insisting there was “no evidence… of inappropriate influence” on any contract decisions. They claim these supplier engagements are vital for maintaining “constructive working relationships with commercial suppliers… particularly in the context of future procurement”. In other words, we need to play nice with the arms dealers so we can buy nice arms.
Let’s unpack that: The Defence Force is essentially saying military procurement is a schmooze-fest by necessity.
Yes. Exactly. A schmooze-fest by design. Lots of high priced dinners, expensive engagements with powerful people who all buy into the group think of militarism – and who all happen to financially benefit from it.
Death trading at Parliament
On Halloween this year, the NZ Branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society is hosting its annual conference at Parliament. While there are attempts to delineate different parts of the industry as civilian or military, in reality, the top aerospace companies are the same as the top arms dealers: Lockheed, Boeing, Airbus, RTX (formerly Raytheon), United Technologies, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, General Dynamics.
The rapid development of space technologies is creating many new ‘start up’ businesses, but like Rocket Lab, lots of them are either linked to the big weapons companies, or soon bought out by them.
The Parliament event will feature Kevin Short as its keynote speaker. Other speakers include representatives from weapons companies Pratt Whitney (a subsidiary of RTX) and Bell Textron; all are keen to talk about the “industry’s role in New Zealand’s future.”
Given the government’s $12 billion war industry spend up plans, there will certainly be plenty of profiteering in their future. They will also seek to embed US militarism more firmly into the minds of members of parliament from across the political spectrum.
There will be resistance
Peace groups are mobilising against the industry and unmasking its ‘spacewashing’ public relations spin for the war profiteering that it is. Rocket Lab Monitor on Māhia Peninsula and Peace Action Ōtautahi in particular have been pulling off the industry’s cultivated mask of important scientific inquiry, advancement of humanity, and the nobility of space exploration and revealing the naked, ugly face of imperial exploitation and war profiteering underneath.
Peace Action Wellington will be holding a Halloween noise demo outside Parliament on the morning of the conference to drive the weapons dealers out and to educate more people about the harm of this huge new wave of weaponisation and conquest.
Another, better world is possible: dismantling the arms industry is one step towards that place. We hope you will join us in demanding it.