Defence Minister Wayne Mapp has conceded that there is a substantial combat component to the operations being carried by the SAS in Afghanistan.
The death of Lance Corporal Leon Smith on Wednesday was the second among New Zealand's special forces deployment in two months.
Lance Corporal Smith was shot and killed in Wardak province near Kabul on Wednesday. He was part of an elite team of New Zealand soldiers supporting the Afghan Crisis Response Unit.
Dr Mapp says the SAS has been carrying out hundreds of operations in Kabul and surrounding areas over the past two and half years.
He acknowledges that mentoring work with the Afghan Crisis Response Unit is dangerous and puts New Zealand troops in range of guns and grenades.
While Dr Mapp says that means there is a substantial combat component, Prime Minister John Key says it is not right to describe the SAS mission as a combat role.
"In a combat force you're a front-line force, you're out there leading the charge," Mr Key said.
"The CRU (Crisis Response Unit) lead the charge and we support them but if in that support something goes wrong then we go in and help them."
Mr Key said he wants to make it crystal clear New Zealand soldiers are acting as mentors and become actively involved only when the circumstances demand it.
Governor demands explanation
The Governor of Wardak province is is demanding to know where the SAS got its military intelligence from for the attack.
The New Zealand Chief of Defence Force, Lieutenant-General Rhys Jones, said on Thursday the operation was a pre-emptive attack on Taliban insurgents suspected of planning a mission in Kabul.
He rejected suggestions the SAS might have got caught up in a dispute between two families.
A freelance journalist in the Afghan capital Kabul, Bette Dam, says Wardak authorities are sticking to their original assertion - that the SAS helped Afghan forces attack a family who had nothing to do with the Taliban insurgency.
She says the governor told her troops operated without advice and intelligence from his administration.
Ms Dam says Afghanistan's Peace Council believes a rival family may have told authorities the family were insurgents.
Prime Minister John Key maintains that the operation involved the Taliban and says he has no reason to doubt the Defence Force chief's information that the raid was appropriate and mandated.
