Pandemic has seen NZ Defence Force training suffer - chief

New Zealand Defence Force.

The NZ Defence Force chief says it will take quite a few years for our armed forces to be back at pre-pandemic levels of readiness to deploy.

Air Marshal Kevin Short said with borders shut and defence forces manning MIQ facilities training for soldiers has suffered.

"As time as gone on our capabilities, individually for their training and unit-wise has decreased but as you've seen with the Solomon Islands deployment we do keep a number of our forces ready to go at short-notice as we are required to.

"We have to have access to exercises overseas as well, so borders have to open up for us to be given the experience, in a large exercise for instance with Australia and it is also a means with which we can assess our own capabilities make sure they're on a par with international norms."

Short said the Defence Force is continuing to lose troops who don't want to work at MIQ or who are being poached by the private sector.

"It's a growing problem, it has increased over the last year, month by month."

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