XBradTC

The Royal New Zealand Air Force first bought the A-4K Skyhawk in 1970, primarily for the maritime strike role. A few years later, when Australia retired their last aircraft carrier, New Zealand bought 10 A-4Gs to supplement the existing fleet of 14 A-4Ks. 

By the late 1980s, the RNZAF Skyhawk fleet was facing obsolescence, while the airframes still had quite a bit of service life available. Serious consideration was given to purchasing the F-16. That, however, would have been prohibitively costly. At one point, the US government considered simply giving retired early block F-16As to New Zealand, but the costs associated with training, infrastructure, spare parts and other expenses would still have been too high. 

Instead, the decision was made to upgrade 21 of the 24 Skyhawks in service to a new, common standard known as the A-4K Kahu. 

An APG-66 radar was installed, as well as entirely new avionics, mission computers*, weapons computers, and radar warning systems. 

The Kahu was a reasonable success, greatly adding capability to the RNZAF at very minimal cost. 

In 2001, the New Zealand government decided that maintaining any combat aircraft capability was too expensive, and withdrew the Kahus from service. They did, however, continue upkeep and kept the jets in storage.  

In 2012, Drakken International bought 8 of the Kahus, and today operate them from their Lakeland, FL facility, providing contract adversary services to the US Air Force. 

 

 

*Yes, the Data Transfer Module for the mission planning system is the same cartridge you used to have to blow into to get it to work on your Nintendo.