Rob Krushka: Headquarters Joint Forces New Zealand at 25
Commander Joint Forces New Zealand Major General Rob Krushka MNZM, speaking with Nicholas Dynon, reflects on the evolution of HQJFNZ.
In July 2026, Headquarters Joint Forces New Zealand (HQJFNZ) marked 25 years since its establishment on 1 July 2001.
Its quarter-century has encompassed operations in Afghanistan, enduring deployments in the Middle East and elsewhere, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief across New Zealand and the Pacific, and an increasingly complex range of multinational exercises and activities.
Over this time, the headquarters has come to occupy a central position in the planning, command and control of New Zealand military operations.
Established while New Zealand forces were deployed in East Timor, HQJFNZ now operates in a markedly different strategic environment—one characterised by renewed strategic competition, conflict in Europe and the Middle East, rapidly changing technologies, and a growing emphasis on multi-domain operations.
“The benefit of having a Joint Force Headquarters is that we can manage current operations, we can surge for new activities, and we can continue to support long term commitments.“
Major General Rob Krushka is well placed to reflect on that evolution. The current Commander Joint Forces New Zealand, he has a personal connection with the headquarters dating back to its beginnings. When HQJFNZ stood up in July 2001, MAJGEN Krushka was serving as a company commander with the fourth New Zealand battalion rotation in East Timor, giving him an operational perspective on the new headquarters from its earliest days.
In this interview with Line of Defence, MAJGEN Krushka reflects on HQJFNZ’s first 25 years, the development of joint command and control, relationships with New Zealand’s military partners, and how the headquarters is adapting to meet the demands of a more contested and complex security environment.
ND: A reading of history suggests that at the beginning of this century interservice rivalry between Army and NZDF led to varying degrees of dysfunction in relationships between these and the Ministry of Defence. Over the past quarter of a century, how much influence has HQJFNZ had on the development of better relationships and processes between the services?
RK: The inception of joint force headquarters was born from a realisation that we could no longer work in three single service silos and of the importance of coming together from an NZDF perspective. Around the same time as Joint Forces was established, we had also been through the establishment of a tri-service capability development branch, so we were moving away from single services developing capability to an NZDF approach.
The importance of establishing the Joint Force Headquarters was to ensure that we were fit for purpose for future operations, noting the shift from predominantly single service or single domain activities to multi-domain activities.
ND: Did the establishment of the headquarters predate the East Timor deployment?
RK: We were in the middle of the Timor deployment when the Joint Force Headquarters was established. On the 1st of July 2001, when the Headquarters stood up, it was around the time of the fourth battalion rotation in East Timor. I was actually deployed as a company commander on Batt Four, so I was on the receiving end of the establishment of the Joint Force Headquarters.
ND: So you experienced it in person operationally?
RK: Yes, although there was the battalion headquarters above us that was working directly back into Joint Force Headquarters. But we definitely noted an improvement in the responsiveness to our needs and requirements while we were deployed as the Joint Force Headquarters stood up and established themselves.
9/11 occurred while I was deployed in East Timor. Obviously, planning and preparing the New Zealand response to that event became a key focus of the Joint Force Headquarters. But one of the key takeaways for me over that period was that although there was a significant world event occurring, Joint Force Headquarters was still able to manage the existing operations as well as prepare for future operations. This is something that has evolved and that we have continued to work on over time.
ND: Do conflicts between raise, train, and sustain, and command and control functions arise? And, if so, how are they dealt with?
RK: They do. Like most organisations, there are a lot of things you would like to do that you just don’t have the resources to do. So we do need to prioritise. There is always that requirement.
The beauty of having a Joint Force Headquarters is that you have got a multi-domain headquarters from where we can ask what is most important? What is the effect we’re trying to achieve? And, therefore, how do we prioritise what we need to do and how do we allocate the limited resources that we have to achieve those outcomes?
We have recently formally established within the HQ an effects-based Board where we are able to look at linking from the National Security Strategy through the military strategy into the HQ’s operational level campaign plan and what the NZDF, and we as a nation, need to achieve. We are able to use the Board to prioritise and synchronise the activities that we carry out offshore.
ND: Did that change occur in the wake of the publication of the National Security Strategy?
RK: From a formal perspective, yes, but we’ve always done things in that way; we’ve talked about effects-based activities and outcomes for quite some time. But having the National Security Strategy, and then the military strategy that was released early this year means that we are able to be really clear and focussed on what it is we’re doing and why we are doing it.
ND: Are there currently any concerns about any one service dominating the culture and processes within the joint HQ?
RK: Not from my perspective. We are a tri-service headquarters, and we have a good balance of services across the organisation. The planning process that we use in the Headquarters, although its origins are in the land environment, is an internationally recognised joint military appreciation process.
The way we’ve established the headquarters considers both regional and domain type functions, enabling us to link across all three services as well as the space and cyber domains. We have just established an information warfare component command within the HQ, so we really are positioned for multi-domain operations rather than the single services.
ND: How does the NZDF joint C2 arrangements compare with our partners in terms of both command and control clarity and effectiveness, but also the preparation of forces for deployment?
RK: I think it is similar, albeit nations have slightly different ways of doing things and often there is a difference in scale. But if I look across at some of our key partners, such as Australia, Canada and the UK they have the equivalent of our Joint Force headquarters, and Japan has just established a joint force headquarters. So the concept is similar across a number of nations.
The way we do it here in New Zealand is a little bit unique from the perspective of our size and how we bring it together. The thing I like about the clarity that the New Zealand model has is that the component commanders within the headquarters effectively sit on both sides of the ‘raise, train, sustain’ part of the equation: the single service domains as well as the operational, deployed, joint activities side.
So the component commanders that sit within this headquarters – maritime, land, air, special operations, and now the information warfare component command – are the lynch pin that are responsible for a lot of the ‘raise, train, sustain’ activities. Then the forces are force assigned to me as the commander joint forces to employ, generally offshore, and the component commanders still remain in that chain. So it makes it clear from a consistency perspective and from a transitional perspective, from operations back into the raise, train, sustain space and vice versa.
ND: So there’s a seamlessness that provides continuity between ‘business as usual’ transitioning through to deployment.
RK: Absolutely. And I think that for a force of our size, it makes sense. We are not duplicating functions. It means that we have a more seamless transition. The key thing is that through the components we have a depth of knowledge regarding the trained state of the force element that we are deploying and we are well aware of the capabilities that we have and any risks that there might be to conducting any activity.
ND: What observations have you made over time or have been made over time by the NZDF on the degree of positive influence that Headquarters Joint Forces have had on improving our relationships with partner militaries?
RK: I think there are a couple of aspects here. From a relationship perspective, what it means is that given many other nations have similar constructs, I have equivalent commanders across a whole range of nations that we work with. I am therefore able to have point-to-point conversations, and it simplifies how we talk about operational outcomes.
I have regular meetings with a number of my partner counterparts, either in person or via VTC. When we work with the United States via their combatant command system, I have strong ties with the two key combatant commanders with whom we traditionally conduct operations or activities. The Joint Force Headquarters has really enhanced how we do that because we have been able to establish habitual relationships.
From an effectiveness of force employment perspective, it has meant that we have developed over time to have a greater ability to command and control multi-domain activities where we might have maritime assets with air assets, and land assets, working in the same environment or within the same area of operations. Our multiskilled headquarters personnel understand the environments and also how those come together to create the greatest effect.
ND: Are there observations by senior personnel of the difference that headquarters joint forces has made in the way that the services cooperate on deployment?
RK: It has been shown that we are more cohesive as an organisation for those deployments. I don’t have any statistics, but reviews that we have done have highlighted that although we have some areas where we need to improve, we have now got really good linkages between the Joint Force Headquarters, Defence Headquarters, Strategic Commitments and Engagements, and into the Ministry of Defence.
So how we understand government intent, the strategic environment, what may be required for a particular activity, and then how we deliver it is really well joined up. Having a single flow from a Joint Force Headquarters perspective into Strategic Commitments and Engagements – who work for the Chief of the Defence Force – and then the close relationship they have with the Ministry of Defence, means that we are able to better meet the requirements of our government.
ND: The 25th anniversary of HQJFNZ has recently passed. What, from your perspective, are the highlights of that quarter century?
RK: There are so many. We’ve recently celebrated the 25th anniversary, which itself was a great milestone. We were able to get a couple of the previous commanders to the headquarters to share some stories around how the headquarters has evolved. It was a fantastic opportunity to gain insights into how and why they did things previously, which we can learn from as we continue to evolve. It was a really good opportunity to look back at our history, where have we come from, and where we are heading.
I wouldn’t want to single out any particular highlight, but 9/11 occurred only a few months after the Joint Force Headquarters was established. That was the first really big planning event that the headquarters had to undertake with the deployment of the SAS into Afghanistan, which was then followed with conventional forces and other activities.
We were actively involved in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014, including 21 of our Task Group Crib rotations with the PRT in Bamiyan Province, along with SAS deployments, staff officers, and other things. That is quite a memorable and significant undertaking over 13 years-worth of activities.
There are also the large number of humanitarian assistance and disaster response activities. I’m really proud that, as a defence force, we have been able to support both domestically, and in and around the Pacific and wider regions. I think that is a really important aspect that we need to remember.
And then there’s our support to enduring missions: the Multinational Force & Observers (MFO) in the Sinai, the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO) in Israel, Lebanon and Syria, the United Nations Command (UNC) in South Korea, and more recently the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). There are several enduring and ongoing operations that we support concurrently with any HADR activities and new missions as they come up.
The benefit of having a Joint Force Headquarters is that we can manage current operations, we can surge for new activities, and we can continue to support long term commitments.
ND: How is Headquarters Joint Forces evolving to meet the requirements of contemporary deployments, the changing nature of threats, increased strategic competition and the constantly changing nature of conflict?
RK: The first thing is to acknowledge that we are in a very complex geostrategic environment with Ukraine, Russia, the Middle East, and strategic competition in our near region. It is a complex environment. The ability of Joint Force headquarters to be responsive to needs and to conduct planning in order to provide options to government is really important.
I talked earlier about the effects-based approach that we take to things, and I think that is really critical and something that we continue to develop so that we maintain optimal linkages from the strategic level into the operational level where we execute activities.
There has been a shift in focus for the defence force over the last few years. It is borne by the strategic environment and expressed in terms such as “war fighting ethos” and “enhanced lethality”. There has been a definite shift from an NZDF perspective to focusing on a war fighting environment. That enables us to then also support peace monitoring, peace support operations, as well as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief – but we can’t lose focus on the strategic environment that we’re in and in our ability to defend New Zealand.
From a joint force perspective, we always have people deployed offshore. One of the great aspects of this job is the ability to get around and visit our people deployed on exercises, joint activities and operational missions. Every time I visit one of the operational missions, senior leaders from among our partners always – without prompting – comment on the professionalism and capability of our people and how they just get stuck in and get the job done.
It’s really pleasing to hear that. It is one of the highlights of this job to be able to see our people in action, doing what they joined the Defence Force to do, and the huge credibility that they have, and what they do for our nation and the image of our nation offshore.
