New Zealand could soon supply countries worldwide with drones and unmanned vehicles capable of development and deployment within just a few weeks.
That was one scenario outlined as military and civilian leaders met today to outline a new strategy.
At its core, the Defence Industry Strategy is about getting tech sector start-ups talking to the military about meeting fast-changing threats.
But it’s also about creating a new industry, a New Zealand arms export industry.
And that industry is being created with the Russia-Ukraine war and rise of drones as major influences.
The Herald asked Minister of Defence Judith Collins how much Ukraine’s experiences had informed New Zealand’s thinking around the strategy.
The short answer: a lot.
“It’s been incredible for people to see, not only that your neighbouring country or somebody close to you or somebody that you’ve had a lot of business dealings with can actually become an adversary, but that you can actually stand up to it, if you are prepared to be agile.”
Collins said Ukraine had built its own arms or defence industry in innovative ways.
“They’re building all over the place. That tells you what you can do.”
She added: “But you need good friends, you need great intelligence, which we have ... but you’ve got to have the high tech.”
Syos Aerospace founder and chief executive Sam Vye said the new strategy could boost local tech companies in numerous ways.
He was at the Defence Force’s leadership centre at Whangaparāoa with colleagues, displaying Syos drones and an uncrewed six-wheeler which from a distance looks suited to being a moon buggy.
Vye said the new strategy could help university graduates in technology take ideas to the defence sector.
“There’s a lot of companies out there that do dual-use civil and defence, and, if you look at it historically, a lot of the major companies around the world actually grew their systems and matured their products through defence and that allowed them to come back into the civil sector and be a global leader.”
He added: “What we’ve seen in our experience, being small, being an SME ... actually means that you’re really agile, and anyone that’s tracked the Ukrainian war notices that you need to be able to have spiral development and iterate in weeks.”
So, if a nation found itself under attack from the Kremlin and asked Syos for 1000 drones, how long might that take?
Vye said he would have to ask a few questions.
What exactly do you want the drones to do? What is the problem you’re facing?
“Then we will get them to you in weeks.”
Some might wonder if a world of cheap drones and unmanned vehicles being made at breakneck speed will displace the huge companies developing fighter aircraft and aircraft carriers in multibillion-dollar projects over many years.
Not so fast, Vye said.
“There’s still a requirement behind the primes, behind those large defence contractors, behind the large aerospace companies, because we still need crewed vessels, we still need frigates.
“And we still need large half-a-billion dollar programmes.”
He said those projects were often too risky for small and medium-sized enterprises.
“So this is where actually the large defence contractors are shifting their model a little bit to work collaboratively with SMEs such as Syos.”
The New Zealand Defence Force and Syos aren’t the only ones thinking about new technology for warfighting.
They may also not be the only ones contemplating how companies can move between civilian and military uses for their products.
But the Syos founder said some of New Zealand’s limitations could drive innovation in this context.
“Some of our competitors are awesome companies, but a lot of the market isn’t able to iterate as quickly,” Vye said.
“And a lot of that comes down to that sort of New Zealand style of, ‘Hey, we have to use off-the-shelf components, we have to build it simple, and we have to do it cost-effectively’.”
The Government has made it clear it hopes a successful defence industry would start earning crucial export dollars.
Still, Vye said there was work to do.
“We have a good tech industry. But that’s not a defence industry.”
John Weekes is a business journalist covering aviation and courts. He has previously covered consumer affairs, crime, politics and courts.