As drones dominate battle space in the Ukraine-Russia war, the biggest take-home for Australia is to turbocharge innovation and shake off its risk-averse, dawdling military acquisition process.
Delays and cost blowouts have long plagued major Australian defence projects but the game-changing nature of drone warfare in Ukraine must be a wake-up call, retired Australian Army major general Mick Ryan warns.
He’s travelled to Ukraine to analyse drone warfare and characterised Australia’s present drone capability as “limited”.
“The Australian Army has the same number of drone units today as it did before the war in Ukraine started,” he tells AAP.
“We’ve been very slow, we have been intellectually slovenly and we have been very arrogant.
“We think what happens in Ukraine isn’t relevant to the Pacific but the reality is it is extraordinarily relevant; we just need the right translations.”
Canberra must re-evaluate its appetite for risk and failure, he says.
“We are still a low-to-zero-risk organisation in the Australian government; it is not an institution that is willing to tolerate failure with taxpayers’ funds, even if you learn from it.
“They are two very significant and political aspects that absolutely have to change before we make significant progress,” the military strategist says.
“It requires a top-to-bottom reassessment of how procurement works … it needs to be more bottom up and better connected to defence industry to have a faster feedback loop.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Lincoln Parker from Australia’s Defence Innovation Network, a state and federally funded collaboration between nine NSW and ACT universities, which is producing drone prototypes that will ultimately be tested in Ukraine.
“Speed is the new stealth,” says Mr Parker, who was a keynote speaker at the International Drone Show in Odense, Denmark.
“Certainly for Australia, that is not something we have ever been focused on.
“Particularly in the Department of Defence, acquisition cycles are talked about in the decades. You are going to lose if you don’t change that mindset.”
The Albanese government has flagged $22 billion for drone, counter-drone and other autonomous system tech over the next decade.
But the big dilemma for the government is that drone technology is dating quicker than fast fashion.
“The Ukrainians are facing new advanced technology coming from the Russians (backed by the Chinese) on a weekly basis,” Mr Parker tells AAP.
Defence’s top brass urgently needs to think about potential supply chain issues, he says.
“We don’t have land borders … we don’t have a sovereign supply chain.
“We’re in big, big trouble; we really need to take these lessons to heart or we’ll be in strife,” Mr Parker says, pointing out 90 per cent of the world’s magnets are controlled by China and there is no magnet recycling program.
Likewise, the majority of rare earth minerals processing is done in China.
Denmark’s Chief of Defence Michael Hyldgaard says it is vital western countries closely study the dynamics on the battlefield in Ukraine to give their soldiers a fighting chance in future conflicts.
“We need to be better and faster, to cope with the consistently changing warfare,” he told a public event at the Folkemødet on the Danish island of Bornholm.
According to Royal Danish Defence College associate professor Andreas Graae, key trends stemming from the Ukraine war include some drones having “last mile autonomy” as they zero in on targets, a 20 km-plus kill zone on the frontline and “gamification” (Ukrainian military units getting points for kills and destroyed tanks).
There’s also expanded scale for long-range deep strikes.
In December 2022, a Ukrainian 650km drone attack on a southern Russian airbase was considered cutting-edge. Fast forward four years and the Ukrainians achieved a 1750km drone strike on a Russian oil refinery.
On the airfield at the Odense International Drone Show, Ukrainian former-lieutenant-turned-drone-maker V’yacheslav Shvydak shows off his company Dropla’s Danish-made unmanned ground vehicle.
“These are getting destroyed very rapidly on the battlefield. The life expectancy is that you can do five missions,” Mr Shvydak says.
The unmanned ground vehicle, worth about the cost of a second-hand car, is being used for logistics and medical evacuations like a modern-day Simpson and his Donkey.
Dropla also has an AI system called Blue Eyes that hunts Russian ambush drones and explosive ordnance in Global Navigation Satellite System-denied environments.
“Ambush drones (are a) regular drone on an optic fibre cable, which means it is not radio-controlled, which means it does not emit any radio frequency … you don’t see it coming,” Mr Shvydak says.
Initially, he started his venture with humanitarian ideals at the heart, wanting to do landmine detection.
“One guy from the (Ukraine) special forces approached us and it was a very blunt and direct conversation.
“He said, ‘What you are doing for the humanitarian de-mining is very cute but literally stop doing bullshit and help the front line; if we do not hold the frontline there will be no land to de-mine,’ ” Mr Shvydak says.
“I want one thing for my people, to stop losing their DNA on the battlefield.”