A Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Ghost Bat drone is displayed on the first public day of the Australian International Airshow on 28 March 2025. Photo: Paul Crock / AFP
New Zealand could benefit from Australia building a wall of military drones to keep China at bay.
A defence analyst said Ukraine provides the inspiration for a much larger wall, possibly of three layers of air drones and sea drones too.
Dr Malcolm Davis has written about this for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), saying the Australian platform may work better, if allies co-operated.
"To essentially add in a New Zealand layer to an Australian drone wall, that could be very useful," he said.
"If, for example, China were to get a forward military presence into the southwest Pacific, I think that it would be highly useful to have a New Zealand component to this.
"That would effectively plug-and-play into the Australian system, and we'd be working together to ensure the defence of both countries."
The layer with the furthest aerial reach - out to 2800km off the coast - could comprise a Boeing drone called the 'Ghost Bat'.
At well over A$10 million each, the Bat is costly compared to many of Ukraine's shoestring creations, but 10 times cheaper than an F-35 fighter jet, with sophisticated sensors.
Behind them, he proposes a second layer of much cheaper interceptor drones.
"They would operate over the Arafura and Timor seas, intercepting any threats that evaded the Bats.
"This would be the mainstay of the drone wall and would need cheaper expendable platforms, performing a single role, but acquired in large numbers."
Canberra has put A$1b into developing the Ghost Bat within Australia, creating hundreds of jobs. It has been testing how the drone can operate in concert with jet fighters.
"There'd be no reason why New Zealand couldn't invest in the Ghost Bat programme itself and reconstitute its fixed-wing air combat capabilities," said Davis. "It wouldn't have to necessarily buy sort of fighters like the F-35 and so forth."
Deterring China
The drone wall could also "plug-and-play" into an American system, he said.
The US Navy had a plan called 'Replicator' to field thousands of drones in the Indo-Pacific. It hit problems, and Reuters reported last month that the Pentagon was trying anew to quickly introduce hundreds of American-made drone models and a training programme.
"We'd be wanting to acquire capabilities that could work with the United States, and indeed with other partners and allies, so Japan, for example," Davis said. "We'd be wanting, for example, to have common data links, command and control, that sort of thing."
Rather than provoking China, a drone wall would be an effective deterrence.
"No-one's talking about sinking Chinese ships in international waters in peacetime, but we do actually have to have the ability to maintain a watch on what they're doing, to maintain surveillance and, in wartime, take action to defend our interests.
"I think that this is where greater investment in autonomous systems in general and concepts like a drone wall really come to the fore."
Drones second to space only
New Zealand's new defence industrial strategy puts drones second, behind space, among the top three strategic industrial base priorities.
The Defence Force and Space Agency are under orders to come up with a "base statement" on drones and counterdrone systems.
Alongside that, the NZDF has put out a tender to set up a technology accelerator like the Australians have, to identify, develop, test and integrate new and emerging technologies into defence capabilities.
"Many promising innovations outside the traditional defence sector are being missed from consideration, and the proposed accelerator programme could provide structured and agile pathways to engage with such innovations," its tender said.
Davis said drones would not be in place of conventional systems - Australia plans to buy Japan's Mogami-class frigates and NZ is moving closer to following suit, after meetings in Malaysia this week - but in addition to them.
"What we're talking about is complementing those ships at sea and those fighter aircraft with drones.
"You would have forces both on the sea, under the sea and in the air, and you'd probably have support from satellites in orbit."
Janes has reported that "Japan and New Zealand have begun government-to-government talks on the improved Mogami-class frigate and how it might fulfil the Royal New Zealand Navy's (RNZN's) requirements".
Davis said the Ukrainians were using much smaller, lower-cost drones.
"The idea would still be to have low cost of acquisition in comparison to crewed platforms, so that we could get large numbers of these drones.
"The whole point of this is to generate mass."
It was early days and he did not think the partner militaries were talking this way yet.
"We're just starting to find our legs with this.
"If we can develop these systems so that we can produce them in high volume at low cost and do so rapidly, then you have a magic combination there that allows the Australians and New Zealanders, the Americans and so forth to dramatically boost combat capability in the face of that threat from China, and I think we're just starting to get started on that process."
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
