Local production is the key way of resupplying our military with these essential consumables of conflict. These are the lesson of recent wars from Ukraine to the Red Sea and even the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. So spending some of the $56bn annual defence budget on Australian-made drones instead of ordering a small number of this US-made weapon shows Australia’s Defence bureaucracy is learning and equipping our military effectively.
The Switchblade 300 is a tube-launched munitions system with a range of about 10km. It was designed in 2011 and has been used by the Ukrainian military since 2022.
This is the first armed drone to be bought by Defence. We are among the last sophisticated forces to adopt these weapons. Defence planners are beginning to admit that any military must have drones in its order of battle, be able to use them, lose them and get more to continue the fight.
Unfortunately, the announcement shows Defence is still treating drones in a similar way to bigger systems such as fighter jets, armoured vehicles, ships and submarines. It’s taking a long time to examine a small number of options, then choosing “the best” against detailed requirements developed by staff at Defence HQ. After years of deep thinking, we get a contact with a well-established supplier to the US military for a small number of one short-range drone.
In the world of drones and warfare, success looks entirely different. This year Ukraine’s defence industry aims to produce 1000 kinds of drones – aerial ones, armed and surveillance types, land, sea and undersea types. It plans to make one million units of these different types. Russia is desperately trying to do the same.
The counter-drone world requires the same diversity, variation and numbers. That’s because one weapon – even “the best” drone – is an easier problem for an enemy to defeat than 100 or 1000 types with different electronic signatures, capabilities and ways of operating.
Like the Houthis and the Azerbaijanis, the Ukrainians know you need to have a flow of drones to replace the ones you use and lose.
In Australia, we seem fixated on the now vanished peacetime era where a small number of “warstocks” were bought, stored and cared for lovingly. This leaves us with no clear idea of how our military will have enough of anything if a war starts and the military uses and loses the small stocks at hand.
Customers for the US-produced Patriot missile defence systems found this out recently when the Biden administration told partners with orders for these missiles that they’d have to wait because the US government has chosen to supply Ukraine first before meeting contractual orders from others. The same prioritisation will happen when the US military demands first call on limited US production for everything from drones to missiles, torpedoes and parts for big systems such as the F35 and Super hornets.
Australia has medium and small companies that are making, and selling internationally, armed and unarmed drones that fly, move on land or operate on or under the sea.
The Defence bureaucracy will show it is responding to events in the real world when it places contracts with Australian companies with active local production lines.
Defence should stop its default approach of buying from US catalogues after the US military has made all the decisions. Volume and diversity can come from our local companies, and we know the Australian Defence Force will be their priority in a time of conflict.
The Switchblade’s 10km range implies a plan to get our defence force close to an enemy force. How the government intends to do that is not explained in the latest national defence policy statement. Defence has a plan to make the army amphibious but nothing explains how our force is supposed to get “close with the enemy” after as yet unbuilt ships deposit a force somewhere in the Indo-Pacific.
Michael Shoebridge is the founder and director of Strategic Analysis Australia.
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Australia’s Department of Defence has found a way to buy a small number of Switchblade armed drones from a US company. In the world of drone warfare, our military will need many types of drones and they will use and lose lots of them in any credible conflict.