Sobering defence warning as Australia lags in tech race

Australia's military would struggle to defend its bases from attack because it is lagging in the drone technology arms race, a senior defence figure warns.

Retired major general Mick Ryan told the Sydney Dialogue on Wednesday that Australia has a long way to catch up in the development of counter-autonomy systems.

"If you have a look at every military base in Australia, we would be hard-pressed to defend them to be quite frank," the former head of the Australian Defence College said.

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated the vulnerability of traditional military forces to relatively cheap and agile drone technology.

More information available to operators has made drones even more lethal and greatly reduced the time between detection and destruction of targets, Mr Ryan said.

There has been no greater incentive to develop technology than the Russian invasion, Ukraine's ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko said.

"Before the war, we had 10 companies producing drones - now we have 60," he told the conference.

"We see phenomenal breakthroughs in electronic warfare, in targeting systems, in other platforms because we just don't have time."

Palmer Luckey, founder of US defence contractor Anduril, said Western countries have sabotaged their ability to produce military hardware by handing over industrial capacity to adversarial nations.

"I have to look at our strategy and recognise that it's been totally broken and totally wrong and has left us very ill-equipped," he said.

"The US has burned through huge quantities of its stockpiles in what is really a relatively small conflict relative to what we could be drawn into in the future, not just for ourselves but on behalf of our allies and partners."

Earlier, Mr Myroshnychenko urged Australia to regain its status as the largest non-NATO contributor to Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

Australia's contribution has slowed since its early support to Ukraine in the months following the invasion in February 2022, falling behind Sweden and Finland, which had not been a NATO member until Tuesday. 

Mr Myroshnychenko said more military contributions are essential for Ukraine's war effort and signal Australia's commitment to upholding democracy to Pacific neighbours.

"Bushmasters ... have been extremely valuable and effective on the battlefield - we need more of that support," he said, referring to the Australian-built armoured vehicles given to to Ukraine by Australia.